The Best of Syd Barrett: Wouldn’t You Miss Me?

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Track List: 1. Octopus 2. Late Night 3. Terrapin 4. Swan Lee (Silas Lang) 5. Wolfpack 6. Golden Hair 7. Here I Go 8. Long Gone 9. No Good Trying 10. Opel 11. Baby Lemonade 12. Gigolo Aunt 13. Dominoes 14. Wouldn’t You Miss Me (Dark Globe) 15. Wined and Dined 16. Effervescing Elephant 17. Waving My Arms in the Air 18. I Never Lied to You 19. Love Song 20. Two of a Kind 21. Bob Dylan Blues 22. Golden Hair

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Pop culture’s fascination with the psychically damaged has inspired a pantheon of cult heroes, from Brian Wilson through Sky Saxon, Roky Erickson, and Kurt Cobain, whose enduring–if troubling–appeal could give a cultural psychologist a life’s worth of study. Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett has long been one of the most obsessed over. Listening to this first-ever distillation of the “best” of Barrett’s brief post-Floyd recording career (which essentially ended in 1970), it’s not hard to understand why. Barrett’s childlike side (displayed here on such Lewis Carroll-esque fare as “Octopus,” “Terrapin,” and “Effervescing Rhino”) and almost painfully innocent love songs sometimes feel like the lost blueprint of alt rock, while his space-case vocal delivery and distinctly surreal sense of timing and rhythm give each cut a hypnotic sense of intrigue. It’s all a far cry from the intricately baroque pop psychedelia of his brief tenure in Pink Floyd. Something (LSD? Insanity? Both?) clearly shattered Barrett’s consciousness between the band’s debut album Piper at the Gates of Dawn (he left the band shortly afterward) and the spare, shattered acoustic ballad poems from his first solo album (The Madcap Laughs) featured here. The more accessible, pop-conscious ethos of its follow-up, Barrett (highlighted by “Baby Lemonade” and the amusing “Gigolo Aunt”) were largely studio illusions conjured up by sidemen such as Floyd’s David Gilmour and Richard Wright. Barrett fans should also note the presence here of the previously unreleased “Bob Dylan Blues,” a wry, talking blues parody of the great Zimmerman and allegedly one of Barrett’s earliest compositions. –Jerry McCulley