Thursday, August 25, 2011

Syd/Early Floyd Demos May Finally Surface

photo- capitolemiarchive


Could early Pink Floyd demos with Syd Barrett finally see the light of day? We've heard bootlegs of 'Lucy Leave' and "I'm A King Bee", but what about the titles "Walk With Me Sydney" and
"Double O-Bo"?


Jen D at the WHATEVERSHEBRINGSWESING Yahoo Group shared this bit from Nick Mason in the new UNCUT:


New copy of Uncut just came in the post (Bolan cover) - There's a
feature & Nick interview re the Dark side Immersions set & his vault.
From the article by David Cavanagh
"...So far these three albums -easily Floyd's biggest sellers - are
the only one's confirmed for ' Immersion' editions. Unofficially,
though, plans are afoot that will electrify Syd Barret's fanbase. But
more on that later...

The Floyd story started with Syd Barrett, their first songwriter,
their first leader, the man who gave them their name. At a certain
point in the interview I look Mason in the eye and as him if 'Why Pink
Floyd...? is going to be the point in history when "Scream Thy Last
Scream", "Vegetable Man" and other unreleased 1967 tracks are finally,
after many dashed hopes and false alarms, going to receive an official
release.
Mason [at once]: "Yes. I would love that. If we did an 'Immersion'
version of the early stuff, we could have all of those, and then we've
got some demos that were made really early on, which I think are just
charming. these come from 1965 and include 'Lucy Leave', "I'm A King
Bee", "Walk With Me Sydney", and "Double O-Bo". They're very R'n'B. Of
course we were yet another English band who wanted to be an American-s
style R'n'B band. We recorded the demo at Decca. I think it must have
been, in Broadhurst Gardens. A friend of Rick's was working there as
an engineer, and managed to sneak us in on a Saturday night when the
studio wasn't operating."
Have you always know of this tape's existence?
Mason: "Yes, I've always had a copy of it."

"Nick came in with a huge box full of quarter tapes which had been
sitting in storage," relates Andy Jackson. "When we trawled through
them, there were a lot of early recordings, pre-Piper, when they were
playing "Louie, Louie" and being an R'n'B band. Then there were quite
a few Barrett-era Floyd tracks that never got released, which were
mixed recently as part of [the work done on] An Introduction To Syd
Barrett, when we didn't know that they weren't going to get used.
There is potentially the material to make an album of unreleased
Barrett-era stuff."

In other words [I ask Mason], there'll be an 'Immersion' edition of
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn? Or else an 'Immersion' that twins
Piper with A Saucerful Of Secrets?
Mason: "More likely to be the latter, but yes, definitely. Personally
I think the two albums go together very well, if you position the
tracks suitably, because 'Jugband Blues' on Saucer is Syd's song and
it's his farewell moment in a way"

That 1967-68 'Immersion' set will probably come out next summer Mason
estimates. It will have been a long. long wait."

^ followed by Vernon Fitch on the quality of live Syd Floyd recordings
(he mentions the 'new' Stockholm concert being decent quality) & a
box out on Syd era outakes.

-- 
support fund for indie labels affected by sony warehouse fire
http://cognitivedis sonancerecords. com/labellove/
My blog: http://jenna- appleseed. livejournal. com
A Strummer/Clash etc. inspired fanzine http://bit.ly/ jsemailsig

No comments:

Post a Comment