“It’s great doing these songs, because although I didn’t write them, I feel as though they wrote me,” Robyn Hitchcock says in the middle of this two-hour deep dive into the world of Roger “Syd” Barrett, performed shortly after the Pink Floyd founder’s passing. The entire show is a delight, a fitting tribute to the Crazy Diamond; the recording itself is a wonder, too — an audience tape, but crystal clear.
Robyn has plenty of pals to help him out here — the Heavy Friends are both familiar (Morris Windsor, Kimberley Rew, Terry Edwards, Paul Noble) and new (Blur’s Graham Coxon, Belle and Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell, Madness’ Dan Woodgate). It’s celebratory and loose at times, but they’ve definitely rehearsed. There are times during the electric numbers where you might think you’ve traveled back in time to the UFO Club circa 1966. The acoustic stuff, with Campbell adding moody cello, is great, too — Robyn really is the ideal interpreter of Barrett’s songs, reverent, but not too reverent.
My favorite bit here is “Reaction In G,” a Floyd obscurity which Robyn says they haven’t actually heard before. But they find that psychedelic spirit, sending Syd on his way with a noisy, exhilirating freakout.
Robyn Says: I think [Syd] kind of had raw talent. Most people, you know, they’ll have a tube of it, and they’ll squeeze out a little bit, and then they’ll mix in some turps, and they’ll… put a bit of it in. They’ll do an album and there’ll be two great songs that they’ll play forever, and then four not bad songs, and three songs that only their fan club like. They’ll have better and worse albums, and they’ll spread it out like that… But Barrett is like a kid who got hold of a tube of talent, the way that children would get hold of toothpaste – squeeze it all out. Barrett sort of went “Oh yeah,” – out it came. And then there was nothing left.
(Reblogged from doomandgloomfromthetomb)
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