Syd Barret, original Pink Floyd member dies

This is a sad loss – but it seems less like a sudden loss, and more like the final step in a loss that has been ongoing pretty much since the start of Pink Floyd.

Pink Floyd has always been on my top five list – well, maybe not so much in the Final Cut days, but they made some ground up after Waters left, when their music wasn’t just him working through his issues anymore. I never saw them live in the Waters era, but I did see them at RFK Stadium in DC on the Division Bell tour; it was pretty amazing.

The thing that really amazes me about PF in recent years (for example, when watching the Live8 performance from last year) is that David Gilmour has actually become a better guitarist over the years. For me, they always more than made up for any lack of virtuosity with their crystal clear production, and with their tightness as a band. But if anything, Gilmour is better now than he was when Floyd was at its commercial peak. (And they’re still amazingly tight: when they played Live8, you’d have thought they were just wrapping up a full tour, instead of playing together live for the first time in years.)

With most bands, I tend to prefer the albums that kind of fall between those that are considered their most successful (artistically or commercially). PF is no exception: for me, Animals and Meddle will always be the albums that most resonate emotionally with me. I’ll also always have a soft spot for Piper at the Gates of Dawn – not just because it was their first album, and the only one with Barrett fully involved, but also because it fully shows the great twisted-psychedelic-pop sensibility of their early years.