August 4, 1967 - Pink Floyd and The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

While Sgt. Pepper's would become the soundtrack to the summer of love, the first album I have actually released in the summer is "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn", the debut album from British rock band Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd were a four-piece psychedelic rock band from London, England consisting of Syd Barrett (guitar, lead vocals), Roger Waters, (bass, vocals), Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals) and Nick Mason (drums, percussion). While most people agreed that Pink Floyd's music was an interpretation of LSD, frontman Barrett was the only drug user at the time. Barrett did write the majority of the songs (1 is written by Waters, and 2 instrumentals credited to the whole band), and Pink Floyd took psychedelic rock to entirely new places with their debut. The album is a mix of shorter, poppier songs and long experimental tracks. 

Side 1 begins with "Astronomy Domine", which features both Barrett and Wright on lead vocals. The guitar and bass give the song a very outer space feel and we already see that with Pink Floyd it's not just rock with psychedelic sounds added, these guys are an auditory acid trip that happen to use rock instruments. This song would become one of their live staples, and was usually played with extended trippy solos, almost doubling the length of the song. Next up is "Lucifer Sam", a song about a cat named Sam. Yup, a cat. It shows off the typical Barrett vocal style and is driven by a simple guitar riff. Track 3 is called "Matilda Mother" and has Wright joining Barrett on vocals once again. It has some great keyboards from Wright, and it's his playing that is usually carrying the songs, while Barrett's guitar is off-beat making strange noises. Wright really shows what he can do in the next track, "Flaming", which has some really great organ as well as piano. All the band members play great on this song, and it has some psychedelic imagery in the lyrics as well. Track 5 is "Pow R. Toc H.", which has no lyrics, but features lots of weird noises from Wright, Barrett and Waters. Once again Wright shines on keyboards, and while this is definitely a strange song, it's the kind of strange psychedelia that just absorbs you. Side 1 concludes with the Roger Waters song "Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk". Waters performs lead vocals, though there aren't many on what is a really rocking track. I believe it is easily the best song on Side 1, featuring great drumming and bass, some awesome guitar and once again, some truly excellent organ from Wright. This shows that even early on, Waters was able to write music for instruments he didn't play, and his ideas amount to a really great song. 

Side 2 starts with the near 10-minute instrumental track "Interstellar Overdrive". It starts off led by guitar and bass and feels like a solid rock song, but around the 2:30 mark the guitar starts to wander into the high end of the fretboard and Wright's keyboards get more prominent after another 2 and a half minutes of jamming Barrett lets loose with a wicked guitar solo and this song is showing some of the first elements of progressive rock for Pink Floyd, with different sections all pieces together into one masterpiece. Around the 6 minute mark it gets quiet except for the keyboards, and Mason plays some trippy cymbal work. It all wraps back into the opening riff that started it all, except this time it sounds like an echo. These lengthy tracks were not normal for the time, and certainly couldn't be played on the radio, but they are a staple for Floyd. Track 8 is called "The Gnome", which has Barrett back on vocals as well as acoustic guitar. It's just a weird little track about gnomes, bit of course it still has some cool piano work from Wright. "Chapter 24" is up next, and it is a solid vocal performance from Barrett, less silly than his other songs. It's got some cool bass from Waters and some great organ from Wright as well. Another silly track is up next, "The Scarecrow", which has Mason on some clickety-clack percussion and Barrett doing much faster vocals. It also has (shocker!) some more cool keyboards from Wright. The album ends with the very odd track "Bike", which sounds almost like a circus tune. It's about trying to win over a girl with various things, including a bike, a coat and a mouse. It has some slide whistle, which really makes the circus feel, and it even slows down for what seem like a finale. However, around the 2 minute mark we get various bike whistles and bells as well as other percussion noises from Mason. This weird noise at the end of the song evokes memories of a very famous song that would come much later, and it is what I like to call "organized noise". It's definitely noise, but there is still a rhythm in there and Pink Floyd turn a bunch of racket into a fittingly psychedelic ending. 

That concludes "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn", and what an introduction it was to Pink Floyd. Richard Wright shines on almost every song, and I'm really excited to see where these guys will go next. That wraps up the summer of love as well, see you in the fall!