A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS

Guitars and organ open the first track, "Let There Be More Light". Rick Wright gives it an interesting ethereal feel but the track drags a bit to the end with scaling guitars and thrashing cymbals. Roger Waters is a poet, like Peter Hammill. He articulates songs in spoken voice to good effect, but he's not really a singer. And he doesn't possess Peter Hammill's emotive qualities as a singer. "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" is not a particularly interesting song, but it does have an interesting riff on the bass guitar. Maybe that's the reason Roger Waters is so attached to the song, frequently performing it in his solo act. It's a struggle to see where Dave Gilmour fits into the band at this stage. I assume his voice is somewhere in the chorus, but it's hard to pick. Also, you don't get the customary Dave Gilmour guitar playing. I assume here he is simply covering the Syd Barrett guitar parts.

"Saucerful Of Secrets" is a great song. Full marks to Roger Waters. The first section is very ethereal. You feel like you're floating in space. It has similarities to the Bela Bartok music from Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey. From the middle section it breaks into a drum roll from Nick Mason before a quiet execution of organ, then a final break into full chorus. Rick Wright features in two songs, Remember A Day and See-Saw. You forget what a good voice Rick Wright has. His voice tends to be relegated on Pink Floyd albums. Both songs are surprisingly good, very melodious, but more in keeping with the psychedelic pop ideas of Syd Barrett than the direction of Space Rock, Roger Waters is taking the band.

Last, but not least is Syd Barrett's Jugband Blues. Some people think the song reflects Syd Barrett's detachment from reality and his slow decline into mental derangement. I disagree. I think Syd Barrett is in full control of his faculties when he wrote it. The song is full of double meanings, very prophetic, very Monty Python before the age of Monty Python and very terminal. When the band members break into brass instruments during the middle of it, I think Syd is making a statement on commercial art, the futility of it. There is some hypocrisy in the lyrics to what is a fantastic Roger Waters song, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", as Syd Barrett is painted out to be a flawed Christ like figure, which he never was. In reality he was booted from the band. It's not as if for the first or last time a creative artist hasn't turned up to a gig, turned his back on the audience and not played his instrument. These days the artist would be shunted off to the psychiatrist, patched up and returned to the road. In Syd's day mental illness was shunned so there can't be any blame attached to the band the way it unfolded. The genius of Roger Waters is the way he spun the narrative of the apocalyptic tale of an unrecognizable bloated, bald headed Syd Barrett turning up at the recording studio at the very moment Pink Floyd were laying down the tracks for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". Syd Barrett was a clairvoyant. He knew one day Roger Waters would write a song about him. His response is in the lyrics to Jugband Blues, "La, la, la, la, la". Edit: I stand corrected. There is no Bela Bartok music in 2001, A Space Odyssey. I don't know why I think Roger Waters draws inspiration from the film. My misjudgment. Maybe it's the images in the film: when you close your eyes you imagine Pink Floyd. Gyorgy Ligeti is nothing like Pink Floyd.

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