V/A LIKE BLACK HOLES IN THE SKY - THE TRIBUTE TO SYD BARRETT (Dwell Records, USA, 2008)
Now this is quite a surprise! A tribute to the the founding member and original master mind of PINK FLOYD, Syd Barrett who died 2 years ago.
I could start telling you how much I always loved early PINK FLOYD and how I fell onto my knees in front of Syd Barretts musical genius, but truth is, I used to pretty much detest PINK FLOYD in my young years. When I was 14, my teacher forced the whole class to the cinema where we had to watch “The Wall”. Sure, I could relate to the pictures and I too felt like a victim of fascism when I had to get up at at 7 in the morn just to go to school and had my head used as a dump for all kind of nonesense. But why on earth had the music to be so dull yet pompous? Why didn’t these rock stars scream out their anger? I didn’t get it. Besides, the girl who sat next to me and looked a bit like Brooke Shields in her own semi-erotic version of Robinson Crusoe, didn’t tolerate my wandering hands, whereas the same theater had turned out to be a perfect little fun park during AC/DC’s “Let there be Rock: The Movie”. It had to do with PINK FLOYD, I was sure about that.
It wasn’t until I first heard VOIVOD’s monstrous “Nothingface” LP. This LP, as you know, is a milestone (somebody’s only got to cut the grass around it) and it featured a PINK FLOYD cover version. It gave me second thoughts. As soon as I had the opportunity, I borrowed a friend’s copy of “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, PINK FLOYDS debut album from 1968. What a revelation! And how different that sounded compared to “The Wall”. ‘m sure this record made a lot of young lads and lassies way happier than the pseudo-political drivel of “The Wall”. I was born too late.
Tribute albums are a dangerous thing. Ever so often, the band that’s being paid tribute to is much better than the acclaiming bands. These albums are one terrible drag to go through. The worst case scenario is that the cover versions are so dull and dumb it makes the original song material appear dubious. That is not the case here. BLACK HOLES IN THE SKY is one of the few tribute albums I can think of that don’t really fall back behind the original band. Au contraire, it’s extremely refreshing and intriguing to hear how the bands featured succeed in pumping fresh blood in old songs. It starts off with one of the comps highlights, the incredible “Vegetable Man” as presented by KOSMOS, a band of which I never heard before.Totally awesome, staying pretty close to the spacyness of the original version. Next up are KYLESA. Honestly, I thought “oh no” as I had seen the band live a few years ago and it was total dung. But boy, they do deliver the goods with the classical “Interstellar Overdrive”, giving the song a fantastic touch of Rudimentary Peni / Christ on Parade-ism, which as you might have guessed works extremely well with Syd Barrett songs. Ace! So is INTRONAUT’s version of the crazy “Arnold Layne”, another cover that’s not too much on the experimental side. “Matilda Mother” by STINKING LIZAVETA is good, but not as great as the first three. “Late Night” by JARBOE is a wicked, sexy track that makes you wanna do things. PENTAGRAM who cover “Flaming Lips” are sort of disappointing, but maybe it’s only because I never liked the original song. It’s a bit boring. A band named GIANT SQUID of course had to pick “Octopus”, adding a nice bit of a Violent Femmes vibe to the original song, which I think is very well done so. YAKUZA cover “Lucifer Sam” and make it sound really Doomy - heavy, mean music, great! JESU do as you’d have expected them to do: Dissecting “Chapter 24″ and pressing it through what is basically the Head Of David meat grinder. Awesomest! UNEARTHLY TRANCE, another band of which I haven’t even heard the name, are back to a more conservative interpretation as is DREDG, who interpret “Astronomy domine” (this song should not be covered anymore since VOIVOD laid their magic hands on it, if you ask me). “Rats” is presented by CIRCLE and is another winner. ZODIAK close this tribute with “See Emily play”. Another outstanding song, with a lot of heart.
If you’re in the mood for the kind of entertainment that doesn’t threat you like you were an idiot, then do yourself a favor and check this out. And don’t be all too careful with that axe, Eugene.
Here’s one song for you to check out:
And here’s the label’s site and the myspace site.
Pär wrote:
Early PF is so bad that´s almost unlistenable. They turned good after the junkie was tossed out of the band. Barrett is defenitly a good reason to stay off drugs.
The PF that came later is another story, one of the best bands ever.
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 12:17 pm | Permalink
Admin wrote:
Pär. Pär! PÄR!!!!!
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
justin wrote:
Par, I disagree with you on the early Floyd thing but you gotta love stements like, “They turned good after the junkie was tossed out of the band.” I think maybe he had psychological problems like many of us before he was ever a “junkie”. Erich I liked the Wall and way back when thought that people might get it but they just thought it was “cool”. Oh well thanx for the taste of what seems like it shoule be a pretty cool record.
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 1:24 pm | Permalink
Peter - KBD Records wrote:
I almost fainted when I read Pärs comment. PF WITH Syd is among the best shit ever recorded. No it’s not up for discussion.
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 1:28 pm | Permalink
Tony wrote:
Uiiiiiwwww. Sure tastes and all that. But seriously, this is bad good music. Not good bad music. What we readers of this blog need is some Terveet Kadet leather boots and 1982 to drag the blog back up after this bottom of junkydom. Word!
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 2:41 pm | Permalink
ziggo wrote:
“Sure, I could relate to the pictures and I too felt like a victim of fascism when I had to get up at at 7 in the morn just to go to school”
This made my day! Brilliant!!!!
Punks raving about “junkies”??? WTF??!!!!
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 4:10 pm | Permalink
Jay Thurston wrote:
Jesus fucking Christ, every time I think of Syd Barrett I get fucking flashbacks from all the LSD I did in the early 1980’s. Syd was great, Pink Floyd sucked ass. End of fucking story.
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 4:15 pm | Permalink
mrpoopy wrote:
Yeah, you might be losing some cred by posting this one, but I’ll admit to playing the shit out of the 1st Floyd LP and the two Syd solo LPs as a kid. Every punker had to listen to some “normal” music sometimes + didn’t any of you guys ever date a chick that hated punk rock? Perhaps you’re all homos.
The two subsequent LPs, “Saucerful of Secrets” and “Umaguma”, have a couple good tracks that hail back to the glory days of Syd but every Floyd recording after “Umaguma” is boring prog rock.
Posted on 14-Oct-08 at 5:04 pm | Permalink
Jamie wrote:
love your reviews erich! always spiced up with some good and witty stories. i’ve seen this for download on some blog already and that’s the best example for why GBM rules over every other blog. no mass consumption here. great keep it up!
Posted on 15-Oct-08 at 12:59 am | Permalink
Peter - KBD Records wrote:
I’m at work and was thinking about how much early Pink Floyd rule. Just wanted you all to know.
Posted on 15-Oct-08 at 1:43 am | Permalink
Admin wrote:
Thanks for sharing it with the group, Peter!
Posted on 15-Oct-08 at 2:25 am | Permalink
Tony wrote:
I am at work, listening to Gai in the office, and was thinking how crap music history is. As Chaos Channel said: Boycott suck history!
Posted on 15-Oct-08 at 8:17 am | Permalink
Pär wrote:
I´m home from work and early PF is still horrible. Boring drug music for boring drug users. Now I think I´m gonna glay the good Floyd - Dark side of the moon.
Posted on 15-Oct-08 at 8:27 am | Permalink
ian wrote:
whenever I think the Floyd _ I can’t get beyond the wall - loved it at the time (& good movie), but now think of the bloated revision ‘come back’ version…anyhow props for the diversity - listenting to just h/c gets pretty damn boring. I’m bummed that in my narrow-minded ounker days I missed out on a lotta coll music that wasn’t ‘punk’…its only now that i’m finally discovering how coll some of this old stuff is (early Stones, Who, Easybeats etc etc)…look to top of webpage folks! The Dexys LP is a ripper & is mandatory listening on any morning when making breakfast!
Posted on 15-Oct-08 at 3:29 pm | Permalink
Paris wrote:
Nobody here is talking specifically about the live performances, which are far more revealing than the studio material, imho. If you listen, for instance, to the collected BBC sessions from 1967-1969, you can hear the differences pre- and post-Syd. My own preference is for the work PF did from 1968-1970, just after Syd left the band, but a large part of that was their rethinking and development of music that he had initially introduced. You can hear a lot of this in the collection available at the Brain Damage podcast. Some highlights from this period are the Paradiso shows in both 1968 and 1969 (the latter being all instrumental), the Zappa improv on Interstellar Overdrive from 1969, and probably most stunning, the Electric Factory show from 1970.
Posted on 15-Oct-08 at 10:56 pm | Permalink
Admin wrote:
Since I’ve never been much of a PF fan, I never cared to get into the subject any further, but I’m taking the advice, Paris, and will see if I can get ahold of some of the material you mentioned. Thanks for the input!
Posted on 16-Oct-08 at 5:45 am | Permalink
horst wrote:
kosmos, by the way is Aways new band…
Posted on 17-Oct-08 at 9:10 am | Permalink
horst wrote:
also. stinking lizaveta rules
Posted on 17-Oct-08 at 7:37 pm | Permalink
readgeorgesbataille wrote:
speaking of zappa i’ve got a “using the chicken to measure it ” tattoo on my arm zappa is pretty hard to beat as far as “normal” music is concerned (as put by mr. poopy) listen to the IMPOSSIBLE
Posted on 21-Oct-08 at 4:13 pm | Permalink
Epper wrote:
Erich, welcome home! Next time we smoke the peace pipe we’ll talk about Floyd and maybe also the Beach Boys’ «Pets Sounds» and «Smile».
BTY. Why not mention Roy Harper’s «I Hate The White Man» in this context? Roy’s an ole Friend of the early Floyd as well. BTY II. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is from 1967, not 68, recorded in the studio next to the Beatles doing Seargent Pepper. Nice year it was, nice summer back then for me to be born.
Posted on 25-Oct-08 at 10:37 am | Permalink
Pär wrote:
Zappa sucks as well.
Posted on 25-Oct-08 at 12:06 pm | Permalink
readgeorgesbataille wrote:
mad cap laughs
Posted on 20-Nov-08 at 4:07 am | Permalink
readgeorgesbataille wrote:
or something to the effect; oh’ wait fire in the head just announced that nick blinko is next to godhead with power electronics
Posted on 20-Nov-08 at 4:09 am | Permalink