Pink Floyd – “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” (1)

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

The previous picture of “See Emily Play” was too dark, so here is a lighter one:

Pink Floyd did not formally release another single in the UK until 1979. In this respect the ISB were similar, but did actually release a few singles from time to time. Another similarity is that I have CD copies of (nearly) all the LPs, and none has any bonus tracks.

Pink Floyd’s first LP was released on 5 August 1967. I was then embarking on a period of two years which time was unique in my life; during the whole of it, I did not have any opportunity at all to converse with any female person who was not related to me. The grammar school only took boys and all the teachers were men, the scouts were all boys, and church groups for young people below the age of 14 were strictly segregated by gender. So, from the time three months before my 12th birthday to that three months before my 14th birthday, the only girls i spoke with were my sister and my one female cousin; the women were limited to my mother, my aunt, and my two grandmothers. Moreover, of course, much was happening in that period to the music I talk about in this blog, and I had not the faintest idea about any of it.

Anyway, Pink Floyd’s first album was the only one (with one odd exception which we shall come to shortly) to feature Syd Barrett as a full member. It was called “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” which title is a line from “The Wind In The Willows”. I was able to buy a second hand copy of it shortly after starting university in 1974: