Pink Floyd: pre or post Syd Barrett?

syd was a legit psychomaniac, paved the way for dysmorphic instrumental excursions

i prefer post-syd floyd for the content, but the man is a damned legend

 
Pink Floyd is a band I wish I were more familiar with. I don't think I've ever actually heard Syd Barrett era? I'm familiar with Dark Side, Animals, and Wish You Were Here era. Whatever that is.

Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper have always been my classic rock staples for better or worse. Although I'm listening to Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds because of this thread. Apparently that's post Syd? I have no clue. One of you boomers need to educate me. I'm a tweenie bopper.
 
Post Syd for sure. All their 70's albums are fantastic. After the Wall... forget it. The Floyd albums post Waters are pretty awful, that last one they did with snippets of old keyboard parts by Rick was laughably bad.

Amused to Death and Is This the Life We Really Want by Waters were ok. His live shows are amazing and at least he plays stuff from Animals.
 
It's hard to make this comparison There are only two albums with Syd and they are almost a complete different genre.

I love all of Pink Floyd, and this argument among fans always results in senseless discussion.

TeezzyD said:
Pink Floyd is a band I wish I were more familiar with. I don't think I've ever actually heard Syd Barrett era? I'm familiar with Dark Side, Animals, and Wish You Were Here era. Whatever that is.

Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper have always been my classic rock staples for better or worse. Although I'm listening to Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds because of this thread. Apparently that's post Syd? I have no clue. One of you boomers need to educate me. I'm a tweenie bopper.
Click to expand...

Play Meddle and Obscured to Clouds. If you like those two, then go after Atom Heart Mother and if you enjoyed that, then go for the albums with Syd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and A Saucerful of Secrets.
 
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All 4 eras of Pink Floyd has their charm, personally i prefer the later one (The Gilmour one) but i can appreciate the early Syd one too.

godhandiscen said:
Play Meddle and Obscured to Clouds. If you like those two, then go after Atom Heart Mother and if you enjoyed that, then go for the albums with Syd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and A Saucerful of Secrets.
Click to expand...

TeezzyD said:
Pink Floyd is a band I wish I were more familiar with. I don't think I've ever actually heard Syd Barrett era? I'm familiar with Dark Side, Animals, and Wish You Were Here era. Whatever that is.
Click to expand...

Also, time to post this great chart again.

wBJYguP.png
 
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I must be some oddity that likes the Gilmour era just as much as Waters.
 
Syd, and only Syd. Piper is one of the finest LPs of the era. Vegetable Man would have been a hell of a single.

Loathe all I have heard of later Pink Floyd.
 
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Syd Barret was a genius, and an interesting character, but Roger Waters and David Gilmour were/are the real backbone of Pink Floyd.

One of the greatest songs ever written. Two of the best guitar solos ever played. It doesn't get better than this :

 
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Post, really like Gilmour's melodic structure and odd time signatures,also honorary mention to Alan Parsons for his production on the dark side of the moon.
 
I'm a David Gilmour guy myself, I love all the classic albums but The Division Bell is the one I always go back to. I don't really like early Pink Floyd.
 
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Post-Syd for me. Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Animals, Final Cut, and Momentary Lapse of Reason are all incredible album (The Wall is okay but I usually do not like double LPs as they ask far too much of the listener). Output that good & consistent is rare in bands, which makes them easily top 5 best bands of all time, IMO.

To be fair, I've only recently begun to give the post-Waters catalog a fair chance. I have listened to their earlier works but haven't been able to find the same love as their most celebrated works.
 
drganon said:
Post syd. Their four album run of dark side of the moon to the wall is amazing.
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yeah its hard to beat this. some of the best music that came out of that era was from those albums.

i was never a big fan of pink floyds earliest stuff. their first two albums come off as almost poppy to me. after that they got weirder and weirder (in a good way), eventually leading to dark side where things became a little more focused and they calmed down on the weirdness.

so for me, i dont care for the syd years, and if i want really trippy, psychadelic stuff i got for everything from their 3rd album leading to darkside, then of course from darkside to the wall is their best shit (imo), and everything after the wall im not too crazy about (its not "bad" like some people exaggerate, they just lost something big when waters left)
 
Post, but post could not exist before pre. The real question is, how the hell did Nick Mason stick around so long. He's a pretty unskilled drummer.
 
Kadve said:
Also, time to post this great chart again.

wBJYguP.png
Click to expand...
is this meant to be a flow chart for first time pink floyd listeners? dont get me wrong i think its great just seems a bit complicated if the goal is to tell a new listener in which order they should listen.

as someone who has listened to them all a lot, this is a cool chart to look at, however if i said i wanted to get into a band more and someone handed me an insane flow chart like this id be like uhhhhhh what? lol. not bashing on it bc like i said if youre already familar with them this is really cool!

id personally just tell someone to listen to darkside, wish you were here, animals and the wall (in that order), and if they want more, just listen to their discog in release order (skipping any live or compilation albums, those are like dessert for after youve listened to their discog)
 
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godhandiscen said:
It's hard to make this comparison There are only two albums with Syd and they are almost a complete different genre.

I love all of Pink Floyd, and this argument among fans always results in senseless discussion.



Play Meddle and Obscured to Clouds. If you like those two, then go after Atom Heart Mother and if you enjoyed that, then go for the albums with Syd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and A Saucerful of Secrets.
Click to expand...
More like 1 album with Syd, 3 songs on Saucerful, (one with Syd on vocals) and some singles. There is not enough Floyd Syd, and usually fans of 70's Floyd don't even know who Syd was and if they do, they don't dig it all.
 
TeezzyD said:
Pink Floyd is a band I wish I were more familiar with. I don't think I've ever actually heard Syd Barrett era? I'm familiar with Dark Side, Animals, and Wish You Were Here era. Whatever that is.

Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper have always been my classic rock staples for better or worse. Although I'm listening to Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds because of this thread. Apparently that's post Syd? I have no clue. One of you boomers need to educate me. I'm a tweenie bopper.
Click to expand...

Syd-era is all the nooodly 60's jazz-inspired shite that most non-aficionados don't associate as Floyd.
 
The post Floyd Syd stuff was produced by Gilmore and Waters and has lots of Canterbury psych players on it like Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine. Some damn good shit.

Btw Soft Machine absolutely rules too
 
Incidentally OP, if you have Amazon Prime Video there are some good PF docos on there which are a good get you up to speed on this: I recommend 'Whatever Happened To Pink Floyd?' to get you started (although this deals with Animals, it does cover the Barratt era).
 
I view the band as one ongoing project with three very interesting influencers in Syd, Roger and David. I prefer the band with the later two the most.
 
i would say Lucifer Sam is probably the most approachable song on Piper at the Gates of Dawn. it's like Batman or The Ventures or James Bond or something. Link Wray or Dick Dale. but with crazy space rock stuff we wouldn't really see again until Hawkwind. this was always my favorite from that record.



imo "Astronomy Domine" is the most Pink Floydian of the Barrett material. like this is the closest Syd will get to Dark Side of the Moon (tho "Interstellar Overdrive" feels much like the Live At Pompeii stylee)

 
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Post - up to Obscured by Clouds. After that, it's increasingly meh.

If you've never heard their 1970 Peel Session, do yourself a favour and track it down. It's fantastic.
 
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I loved Syd's music - both his stuff with Pink Floyd and his brief solo career. He was a wonderful songwriter.

Post-Syd PF had a run of great albums and became a very different beast. I think of them as almost distinct bands, much like comparing Joy Division to New Order.
 
one thing i really like about Syd era is the mix of fairy tales with dark stuff. he is singing about kings and gnomes and classic fantasy stuff but there really is this dark druggy edge to it. almost Proto Metal. that kind of goes with my theory that the origins of metal are classic fantasy/nerd culture (Tolkein and D&D) mixed with drugs.

"Matilda Mother" is a good example. the guitar lines are so angular and dark, it's almost proto metal. then there is that King Diamond octave jump he throws in there. it's like a musical jump scare!



then there's a song like "Scream Thy Last Scream". which is already a straight up awesome heavy metal song title. the song itself is very syncopated with lots of stops and starts and changing time signatures. it's badass stuff.



shame they never released this song at the time, it would have def blown some hippie minds.
 
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As I understand it, the thing about Syd is that everything that made him special couldn't be recorded. Those early live concerts were more or less instrumental, with Syd just improvising on guitar. Hendrix, Clapton, and Townsend all witnessed those performances.

Interstellar Overdrive is probably the closest to those moments.

His whole story is just more interesting. An art student playing with a bunch of architecture majors. He fell out of love with music as soon as it became a career for the others. He pretty much deliberately self-destructed on acid to escape it.

He wrote some beautiful songs:

 
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