01	Astronomy Domine						04:12
	02	Lucifer Sam						03:07
	03	Matilda Mother						03:08
	04	Flaming						02:46
	05	Pow R. Toc H.						04:26
	06	Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk						03:05
	07	Interstellar Overdrive						09:41
	08	The Gnome						02:13
	09	Chapter 24						03:42
	10	Scarecrow						02:11
	11	Bike						03:21

Capitol CDP 7 46384 2
1967 EMI Records Ltd.

Syd Barrett - LeadGuitar & Vocals
Roger Waters - Bass Guitar & Vocals
Rick Wright- Organ / Piano
Nicky Mason - Drums

Released August 5 1967.

Recorded at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London.

Produced by Norman Smith

Track Listing:

1) Astronomy Domine (Barrett)
2) Lucifer Sam (Barrett)
3) Matilda Mother (Barrett)
4) Flaming (Barrett)
5) Pow R. Toc H. (Barrett, Waters, Wright, Mason)
6) Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk (Waters)
7) Interstellar Overdrive (Barrett, Waters, Wright, Mason)
8) The Gnome (Barrett)
9) Chapter 24 (Barrett)
10) The Scarecrow (Barrett)
11) Bike (Barrett)





Artist Pink Floyd
Album Title Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Date of Release Aug 5, 1967

The title of Pink Floyd's debut album is taken from a chapter in Syd Barrett's favorite children's book, The Wind in the Willows, and the lyrical imagery of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is indeed full of colorful, childlike, distinctly British whimsy, albeit filtered through the perceptive lens of LSD. Barrett's catchy, melodic acid pop songs are balanced with longer, more experimental pieces showcasing the group's instrumental freak-outs, often using themes of space travel as metaphors for hallucinogenic experiences - "Astronomy Domine" is a poppier number in this vein, but tracks like "Interstellar Overdrive" are some of the earliest forays into what has been tagged space rock. But even though Barrett's lyrics and melodies are mostly playful and humorous, the band's music doesn't always bear out those sentiments - in addition to Rick Wright's eerie organ work, dissonance, chromaticism, weird noises, and vocal sound effects are all employed at various instances, giving the impression of chaos and confusion lurking beneath the bright surface. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn successfully captures both sides of psychedelic experimentation - the pleasures of expanding one's mind and perception, and an underlying threat of mental disorder and even lunacy; this duality makes Piper all the more compelling in light of Barrett's subsequent breakdown, and ranks it as one of the best psychedelic albums of all time. - Steve Huey

1. Astronomy Domine (Barrett) - 4:12
2. Lucifer Sam (Barrett) - 3:07
3. Matilda Mother (Barrett) - 3:08
4. Flaming (Barrett) - 2:46
5. Pow R. Toc H. (Barrett/Mason/Waters/Wright/Wright) - 4:26
6. Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk (Waters) - 3:05
7. Interstellar Overdrive (Barrett/Mason/Waters/Wright/Wright) - 9:41
8. The Gnome (Barrett) - 2:13
9. Chapter 24 (Barrett) - 3:42
10. The Scarecrow (Barrett) - 2:11
11. Bike (Barrett) - 3:21

Syd Barrett - Guitar, Vocals, Cover Design, Back Cover
Roger Waters - Bass, Guitar, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Nick Mason - Drums
Richard Wright - Organ, Piano, Keyboards, Vocals
Pete Brown - Engineer
James Guthrie - Remastering
Doug Sax - Mastering
Norman Smith - Producer
Vic Singh - Photography
Roger Wright - Organ, Piano

1999 CD Capitol 59857
1987 CD Capitol C2-46384
1967 LP Tower ST-5093
1995 CD EMI 7243 8 31261
1994 CS Capitol 46384
2001 CD EMI 65731





Astronomy Domine
Composed By Syd Barrett
Performed By Pink Floyd
Length 4:12
Appears On Piper at the Gates of Dawn [1967]


AMG REVIEW: A voice sounding like someone from "mission control" crackles out of the speakers, as though your amplifier has suddenly tuned in a radio broadcast (but from which planet?). The beeping of what sounds like a signal from somewhere (or is it an alarm?) rises up, and there's a bass guitar plunking away before the drum attack begins and dissonant chords come in on the guitar - and then "Astronomy Domine" begins, its lyrics carrying the listener past colors and planets, mindscapes illuminated in a druggy haze and starscapes not seen from Earth, while Syd Barrett's lead guitar makes acrobatic leaps up and down the fretboard, trills and slides weaving around Rick Wright's organ Arabesques. Then the radio voice is back, before the band finishes the number, enunciating every syllable like a chant. "Astronomy Domine" was the opening track on the first Pink Floyd LP, and one of the most astounding album openers of its day or any other, a mind-bending piece of pop-psychedelia that oozed hallucinogenic ambience from its opening seconds and wove layer on layer of strange words and even weirder music. It was the band's first formal, "serious" statement (LPs being intrinsically more serious than singles in 1967) - four minutes and change taking listeners on an excursion into realms of psychedelic imagination in a space milieu (which was also relatively new in popular music in 1967), like a musical version of the "Star Gate" sequence from Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. What's more, it worked; the studio rendition of "Astronomy Domine," which the band had been making a popular part of their stage act, captured all of the immediacy of the live renditions in glittering sound that must have made some listeners in 1967 think their amplifiers were broken or their speakers shot. It served as a lead-in to what is arguably the best British psychedelic album of the 1960s, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and showed off a side of the band that was new even to anyone who'd heard the singles that they'd released up to that time. The mix of inside-the-mind, up-close-and-personal psychedelic ambience would outlast composer/singer/guitarist Syd Barrett's regrettably short tenure with the group, establishing a point of view separate from the pure fantasy and psychedelic nursery rhyme content of their earlier singles, and starting the group down the road toward their mega-platinum-selling Dark Side of the Moon; even the outer-space oriented lyrics would periodically manifest themselves on future projects. And for all of that, "Astronomy Domine" remains one of Pink Floyd's most obscure album tracks in America, mostly thanks to Capitol Records' botched job in releasing it originally and reissuing it once the band was popular in the United States. Pink Floyd was barely even a cult band in America in 1967, and the original U.S. LP release (on Capitol's subsidiary Tower label) deleted several songs, including "Astronomy Domine." That was no big deal to the powers that were until Dark Side of the Moon sold a kagillion copies in 1973, and the folks in charge at Capitol realized that they were losing the American rights to the group's future recordings after that album, so they wouldn't get the follow-up album; and that there was some early Pink Floyd material that wasn't currently available. The result was A Nice Pair, an album that purported to combine the band's first two LPs in one two-record set but managed instead to substitute the nice (but lesser, and Barrett-less) live version of "Astronomy Domine" from 1969's Ummagumma album for the studio original. Thus, Americans either had to buy the U.K. import of the first album or wait until the Capitol CD version of Piper at the Gates of Dawn (which did get the track selection right) showed up in the 1990s to have easy access to this record. No one, including Pink Floyd on Ummagumma, has ever done justice to the original, as daring and bold and dazzling an opening track for an album career as there's ever been. - Bruce Eder



Interstellar Overdrive
Composed By Syd Barrett/Nick Mason/Roger Waters/Richard Wright/Roger Wright
Performed By Pink Floyd
Length 9:41
Appears On Piper at the Gates of Dawn [1967]


AMG REVIEW: "Interstellar Overdrive" was Pink Floyd's first major space jam and perhaps the song most representative of what you might have heard them play in concert while Syd Barrett was in the band, though it wasn't too representative of the songs they recorded when he was in the group. Like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's slightly earlier "East West," "Interstellar Overdrive" was one of the very first of the long, psychedelic instrumental improvisations recorded by a rock band, running about ten minutes when it appeared on their first album in 1967. The main hook of the piece is a crunching, zigzagging descending riff played with vicious authority on Syd Barrett's guitar. As the rest of the band joins in, the riff eventually fades out of the picture, allowing space for Middle Eastern-like wanderings by organist Rick Wright. The song becomes almost structureless and tempo-less during its strangest sections, punctuated by strange guitar/ electronic noises that simulate the beeps of interstellar spacecraft quite well. Eventually, however, the band circulates back to the main grinding theme, stated again a few times at the end of the song with slower, more deliberate intensity, until it crashes to a halt. This riff, incidentally, originated when early Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner tried to hum Syd Barrett the main riff of a Love song he couldn't remember the name of (probably from Love's cover of "My Little Red Book," possibly "Stephanie Knows Who"). Barrett followed Jenner's humming with his guitar and used it as the basis for the principal riff of "Interstellar Overdrive." The studio recording on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is the one that most listeners are most familiar with, yet several other versions exist, from both the studio and the stage. There is an earlier, 16-minute version the band recorded for the soundtrack of Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, which is actually superior and more kinetic in its early section, though more tedious and drawn-out as a whole. There are also some live recordings from bootlegs, with both the Barrett and David Gilmour lineups, that show the band often improvised upon and changed the arrangement; one BBC broadcast, for example, is arguably superior to the studio version, introducing a wholly new middle section in which the keys dramatically rise and the guitars are scraped for particularly demonic electronic effects. The best-known of the few cover versions of "Interstellar Overdrive" are probably the ones by Pearl Jam, with several different ones showing up on their innumerable live releases. - Richie Unterberger




Scarecrow
Composed By Syd Barrett
Performed By Pink Floyd
Length 2:11
Appears On Piper at the Gates of Dawn [1967]


AMG REVIEW: "The Scarecrow," or "Scarecrow," is an early song written by Pink Floyd singer/guitarist Syd Barrett. Using a delicate melody and occasionally employing enjambment to get his lyrics to fit the meter, Barrett, with characteristic whimsy, describes a scarecrow that stood in a field, revealing in the third verse that the scarecrow "was sadder than me" but has now become resigned to his fate. Pink Floyd recorded the song in the spring of 1967 with a spare arrangement featuring a single-note organ part, clip-clop percussion, and electric and acoustic guitars supporting Barrett's vocal. It was released as "The Scarecrow" on the B-side of Pink Floyd's second single, "See Emily Play," in England on June 16, 1967. It was also included as "Scarecrow" on the group's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, released in England on August 5, 1967. It repeated both appearances on the releases of the U.S. single "See Emily Play" (as "Scarecrow") and Pink Floyd (as "The Scarecrow") later in the year. - William Ruhlmann





Pink Floyd - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Release Date: 1967

Track Listing
1) Astronomy Domine
2) Lucifer Sam
3) Matilda Mother
4) Flaming
5) Pow R. Toc H
6) Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk
7) Interstellar Overdrive
8) The Gnome
9) Chapter 24
10) Scarecrow
11) Bike

Member: Thekouderwunz
Originally fronted by the eccentric genius/Lead Singer/Guitarist Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd was a powerful, but yet whimsical psychedelic act that initially started out as a blues act in 1965 (hence where their name is an amalgam of Syd's love for American blues men Pink Anderson and Floyd Council) but with the band dabbling in mind altering substances, Pink Floyd was one of the major innovators in the Psychedelic movement.

Pink Floyd had continued to further their reputation as a great live act, but did not was not issued a recording contract until early 1967 by EMI, when they would go on to record one of, if not the definitive statement in psychedelic rock's history, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.

Like most of the music of the era, most of the music did not age well, but yet Piper At The Gates Of Dawn was a remarkable artistic achievement at the time of release, which would introduce the world to four remarkably, innovative musicians outside of The Beatles, and when it came to sonic soundscaping, asides for The Beatles, The Byrds and arguably Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground, not many could hang with Pink Floyd in that department, especially in band's earlier incarnation, which proved to influential on most of peers as well as bands like Can, Roxy Music and Tangerine Dream to name a few.

For all of the years that Pink Floyd would continue onward, with greater success, Piper At The Gates would prove too much for Syd Barrett, who would become a casualty of his own drug abuse, choosing to live his life as a recluse and leaving the music life behind, which although guitar whiz (and longtime band friend) David Gilmour would take his place in the band, his loss would later prove despite the band's success, a major void.

Charles