SYD BARRETT The Madcap Laughs UK 1st Press Psych LP near MINT

	£		95
	$		126

SYD BARRETT The Madcap Laughs, UK  Harvest 1970 1st pressing LP with Gramophone Co text and no EMI box on  label (post 1971 copies have that). SHVL 765. Earliest pressing 2G, 2G matrix  endings, 1 G, 1 R stampers. Superb copy, possible the best I  have ever seen.

A note on  grading: I use the RC  standard grading policy with the addition of a + or  – to denote a slight  increase or decrease in grade. The record has been played  once for aural  grading a on a Rega RP6 with a Rega Exact cart and inspected under 100W bulb for  visual grade.

VINYL looks perfect, has 4-5 ultra  light hairlines, most are barely visible, plays great near MINT all the  way with clean sound, just a few odd ticks here and there. A truly MINT playing copy may not be  possible, this is a great one for sure with just a touch of surface noise from  the pressing in the quiet moments.

Ernest J. Day laminated COVER is near MINT or better, some slight wear to  edges. See pics.

Comes with original white paper inner.

Good luck finding another  copy like this, these have become extremaly rare!

A quick comment about the  album

The world of music can be  surprising and full of contradictions. In many cases, something beautiful and  astonishing combines with something dirty and unpleasant. Great, sophisticated  ideas and ambitions may also come into contact with roguery in its purest form.  A great exemplification of this statement are the whereabouts of the first  leader of the Pink Floyd band.

Syd started preparing for his  solo debut in spring 1968. It took place right after other members of the  aforementioned band parted ways with him. At first, Syd collaborated with a  former band manager - – Peter Jenner. However, their mutual work quickly came to  an end. The performer disappeared for almost a year. He visited the studio again  in spring 1969. Supported by a producer called Malcolm Jones and such members of  such bands as, for example The Soft Machine, he started working with new energy.  The musicians not accepted the way Syd worked fully, as he was coming to the  studio with demo versions of songs written for the vocal and a guitar only. The  rest of the band had to record their instrument and they were granted only one  go, without prior familiarization with the compositions. Such an approach made  the recording sessions rather chaotic, but the work of the band proceeded rather  smoothly, even with the lack of unified keys, and constantly changed metros.  Barrett became more and more chaotic with every single session. What is more, he  became hard to work with. Then, Roger Waters and David Gilmour appeared. They  decided to finish the record by themselves; Jones was not allowed to work with  the band anymore.

When the album was published in  January 1970, Malcolm Jones was simply shocked. Only few compositions being the  result of initial, the most fruitful recording sessions were included on the  album. The majority of „The Madcap Laughs” was filled with unfinished, chaotic  demo versions prepared by Syd. They had a number of faults and quality issues.  Numerous polished, properly prepared and recorded songs were simply neglected –  for no sensible reason whatsoever.
To some extent, one may try to understand Gilmour and Waters. Initial months  after firing Barrett were notably difficult. During concerts, Barrett was not  only insulted, but also various coins and beer cans were thrown at him by the  audience. It is said that during one of his concerts ended with Barrett having a  cut on his forehead caused by a coin thrown by an unsatisfied listener. It must  be also added that virtually no one believed in Pink Floyd led by Roger Waters  and with David Gilmour as a guitarist and singer. The band was assessed poorly  by the managers, music-related press, and even – by the fans. Nevertheless, a  number of people believed in the talent of Syd Barrett. They believed that he  would achieve a great success and even neglected rumors about the increasingly  challenging cooperation with Barrett. By collecting tracks on „The Madcap Laughs”,  Roger and David did what they could to show the world that any form of  collaboration with him was simply impossible, that Syd himself was only a shadow  of the man responsible for „The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn”. They chose  particular songs on purpose, especially to show his creative breakdown. The  effect of such actions was a poor, unfinished, and chaotic album.

It cannot be stated that „The  Madcap Laughs” did not include any interesting tracks, however. Terrapin,  for example, is simply exceptional. The track is a lazy ballad sung by the  leader while being accompanied by guitar and few other instruments. Late  Night, a rock song is also a very pleasant experience. It has those typical  long noises reflecting Barrett hitting the strings of his guitar with a lighter. Here I Go is a nice piece of rock. What is more, it is probably the best  song on the album: it is an oneiric, mysterious ballad having the Golden Hair by James Joyce as its text.
From that moment on, certain difficulties begin. No Good Trying and Love You recorded together with the artists from the Soft Machine is somehow  disturbing: on the one hand, it can be sensed that they try to recreate the  climate of early, psychedelic songs of Pink Floyd, with the addition of (in Love You) elements of vaudevillian music – but a watchful listener can spot  a notable chaos of the song and disparity between the tracks, even with the  performers trying to mask it. In the second part of No Man’s Land –  interestingly developed rock song – no one even tries to mask the chaos  amplified by the whispered „steam of consciousness” of Syd.

The aforementioned chaos is  probably best experienced in the case of tracks, where Syd was left alone with  his guitar, without any other instruments accompanying him. It is the case with Dark Globe, with chaotic met rum, in Long Gone, She Took A Long  Cold Look, and Feel. When it comes to If It’s In You – with a  terrible clinker at the beginning, after which Barrett starts the song again,  being unable to sing clearly and properly – it must be stated that putting the  said song on the album was a mistake (or – as some say – a deliberate action).
In 1970, some might claim that those were the best pieces of Syd’s performance  and that there had been nothing better to publish. After many years, we know for  a fact that it was otherwise. We know that, even though they were not perfect,  such exceptional tracks as She Was A Millionaire, Swan Lee (Silas  Lang) and Bob Dylan’s Blues were not included, together with the  instrumental version of Lanky Part One, and almost 20-minute long Ramadhan… Almost all of them were presented to the public many years later.  That is why we may suppose that while listening to „The Madcap Laughs” we are  dealing with a manipulated album created in such a way to show that Syd Barrett  as an artist had the difficulty to come to grips with his mental side. It was  made to show that removing him from Pink Floyd was a necessity. The said thesis  seems to have been confirmed by the next solo album by Syd.

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