Syd Barrett

Happy Birthday, Syd

Posted January 6, 2020 by Floydian Slip

Syd Barrett
Jan. 6, 1946 – July 7, 2006

Posted in Personnel, Syd Barrett | Comments Off on Happy Birthday, Syd

Syd Barrett engineer Mike Sheady dies

Posted October 14, 2019 by Floydian Slip

Abbey Road Studios has announced sound engineer Mike Sheady has died.

Abbey Road calls Sheady “one of the world’s most well-respected senior classical engineers.” According to the studio, his 1988 recording of Mahler’s “Second Symphony” earned him the Gramophone Engineering Award.

Earlier in this career, Sheady engineered sessions for The Beatles, and was one of several engineers to work on Syd Barrett‘s “The Madcap Laughs” album, released in 1970.

Posted in Passings, Personnel, Syd Barrett | 2 comments

Glasgow man makes music from Syd Barrett’s garden detritus

Posted March 11, 2019 by Floydian Slip

Drew Mulholland, a lecturer and composer-in-residence at Glasgow University, has turned a handful of debris collected from the garden of Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett into a 8-minute audio recording.

Mulholland, who boasts of being labelled a “groovy academic” and “weirdy,” started producing avant-garde recordings as a teenager in the 1970s. In the ’90s, the Ghost Box label released an album of this work titled “The Séance at Hobs Lane” under his moniker the Mount Vernon Arts Lab.

His Barrett-inspired piece, “Mandy Rakes Up the Leaves Again,” was created with a collection of leaves, moss and twigs Mullholland found alongside the garden of Barrett’s former home in Cambridge. After arranging and gluing it to a 7-inch cardboard disc (pictured) and playing it through a record-player, he cut up the output and reassembled it into a collage of ghostly pops and snaps lasted just under eight minutes.

Barrett left Pink Floyd shortly after the band’s star began to rise in the ’60s, and famously retreated to his family home in Cambridge where we lived out the rest of his life.

Listen to “Mandy Rakes Up the Leaves Again” at Bandcamp

Posted in Merchandise, Personnel, Recordings, Syd Barrett | Comments Off on Glasgow man makes music from Syd Barrett’s garden detritus

Cambridge orchestra to premiere Pink Floyd-inspired piece

Posted June 30, 2017 by Floydian Slip

The Cambridge Concert Orchestra will premiere a composition by Tim Brooks (pictured) called “Grantchester Variations,” an homage to Syd Barrett and the band he helped found and inspired by Pink Floyd‘s “Grantchester Meadows.”

The piece “will certainly intrigue Pink Floyd fans and lovers of modern orchestral music,” according to orchestra chairman Jan Mentha. “The harmonies and rhythms evoke the early exploratory Floyd works. So far as the orchestra knows, this the only orchestral ‘tribute’ to the iconic band.”

The orchestra will perform the piece as part of its 50th anniversary concert Saturday, July 8 at West Road Concert Hall.

Brooks, of Cambridge, studied music at York University and gained a teaching qualification in music and drama from Leeds University.

More information is available at the orchestra’s website.

Posted in Events, Personnel, Syd Barrett | Comments Off on Cambridge orchestra to premiere Pink Floyd-inspired piece

Remembering Syd Barrett

Posted July 7, 2016 by Floydian Slip

Remembering Syd Barrett
Jan. 6, 1946-July 7, 2006

Posted in Passings, Personnel, Syd Barrett | 1 comment

Winners: Mojo featuring Syd Barrett

Posted May 16, 2016 by Floydian Slip

Congratulations to winners of copies of the new Mojo magazine, featuring Syd Barrett on the cover:

Marty Burch
Bulverde TX
John Martens
Crystal Lake IL
Peter Moore
Hatfield MA
Mark Vatousiou
Feedinghills MA

The magazine devotes 19 pages to the late Pink Floyd co-founder and the band’s early years.

Posted in Contests, Magazines, Merchandise, Personnel, Syd Barrett | Comments Off on Winners: Mojo featuring Syd Barrett

Win: Mojo featuring Syd Barrett

Posted May 9, 2016 by Floydian Slip

Register to win a copy the new Mojo magazine featuring Syd Barrett. The magazine devotes 19 pages to the late Pink Floyd co-founder and the band’s early years.

Included are two high-quality Floyd poster reproductions on heavy, coated stock; and a 14-track CD of “modern psychedelia” in a sleeve that harkens back to Floyd’s “Arnold Layne” single.

Posted in Contests, Magazines, Merchandise, Personnel, Syd Barrett | 4 comments

Syd Barrett on cover of Mojo

Posted April 25, 2016 by Floydian Slip

Syd Barrett is on the cover of the new Mojo magazine, hitting U.K. newsstands tomorrow.

The magazine devotes 19 pages to the late Pink Floyd co-founder and the band’s early years.

Included are two high-quality Floyd poster reproductions on heavy, coated stock; and a 14-track CD of “modern psychedelia” housed in a sleeve that harkens back to Floyd’s “Arnold Layne” single.

We’ll be giving away some copies on an upcoming “Floydian Slip.”

Posted in Magazines, Merchandise, Personnel, Syd Barrett | 2 comments

Play about Syd Barrett to premiere in Scotland

Posted January 29, 2016 by Floydian Slip

“One Thinks of it All as a Dream,” a new play focused on Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett, will premiere at the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (SMHAFF) in Glasgow in October.

SMHAFF commissioned the piece from Scottish novelist and playwright Alan Bissett (pictured).

“I … wanted to explore his multi-faceted character. He was by turns charismatic, selfish, principled and vulnerable. The legend of ‘Mad Syd’ has been enshrined in rock lore, but I wanted to get past the acid-casualty cliches to try and find the man beneath, in all his complexity,” says Bissett on the SMHAFF website.

“I took the decision to go backwards and forwards in time, through all the periods of Barrett’s life, to try and gain some understanding of the entwined roots of creativity and mental illness, as well as the various impulses which might have driven him to reject the modern world,” he adds.

The work’s title comes from a Barrett quote included in a 1971 Melody Maker interview.

“There are several characters in the show, but most of them are peripheral ‘journalists’ or ‘fans’,” Bissett tells Floydian Slip. “The three main characters, I suppose you could say, are Syd, Roger Waters and R.D. Laing, the psychiatrist. None of the rest of the Floyd are characters in the show.

“The show is not officially sanctioned in any way, and we haven’t had any contact with Syd’s family,” he adds. “I wouldn’t have written this play while Syd was still alive, but he is a historical figure now, to an extent.”

“One Thinks of it All as a Dream” will premiere at Glasgow’s Oran Mor in October and then move to the Traverse in Edinburgh and the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen.

This year is the 70^th anniversary of Barrett’s birth, and 10th anniversary of his death.

Learn more at the SMHAFF website

Addendum: This story was revised Jan. 31 to include additional exclusive quotes from Alan Bissett.

Posted in Events, Personnel, Syd Barrett | Comments Off on Play about Syd Barrett to premiere in Scotland