Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
Pink Floyd.
Track 3 on Side 2 is the Dave Gilmour song, called “Fat Old Sun”. This is unique on this record, in that it is the only track therefrom that featured in their live performances for several years thereafter. It is an utterly brilliant piece, and like so many others from these earlier LPs, very much a harbinger of things to come. It starts off with a dreamy and immensely beautiful section which gradually builds up to a rock classic, all of course featuring the wonderful and inimitable electric guitar of Dave Gilmour.
The final track on the LP, Track 4 on Side 2, is the second longest after the title track, which occupies all of Side 1. This is a quirky thing called “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”, credited to all four members of the group, and for me it is the weakest track on the album. The title is, in fairness, an entirely honest description of the content of the piece, which is essentially a meandering, piano based, and jazz influenced ramble. There are sound effects like that of bacon cooking, but there is no singing as such; rather, there are some mumbled spoken words. Of these, the clearest and most memorable are: “Marmalade, I like marmalade.” It is nevertheless not unpleasant to listen to, in its own odd way.
The title track was originally called “The Amazing Pudding”, recorded for a John Peel session. On 16 July 1970, however, during a break in recording, Peel bought a copy of the Evening Standard, which contained a report about a woman who had had an atom powered pacemaker fitted to her chest. The headline of the story was “Atom Heart Mother”…
Strangely, the band did not rate the LP; Roger Waters said it was “a really awful and embarrassing record.”
This is the middle section of the gatefold cover:
Listentomusicanywhere's Blog 
Comments