check out the laughing gnome by Bowie if you doubt it; Sad barrett was the founding father of Glam Rock as well as Space and Psychedelic Rock. His wearing of a feather boa and glamour directly influenced Mark Bolan, Bowie and Donovan in the London scene
That's a great way of putting it, Chris, and it's in fact that asymmetry that keeps it listenable and prevents it from getting stale. Also why it's my favorite Syd song.
I've always felt David Bowie perfectly summed up Syd when he said "There was something not quite with us about Syd that really appealed to me strongly. There was a Peter Pan quality about him" Beautiful human being. Shine on you crazy diamond 🎸💎
As someone said: Hes the Legend of legends,the ultimate rock cult figure and very definition of psychedelia,which is the coolest thing one could be,a true artist.
@@robertcooney1938 that was a terrible hint you little stinker. How is anyone supposed to use that to figure out what else the song is about? You're also wrong, it IS about a carnival ride. :P
Even David Bowie looked up to Syd. He said there was a Peter Pan quality about him, David Gilmour said everyone in Cambridge thought Syd was a legend before he was famous, he definitely was a haunting, unique man. RIP SYD BARRETT 1946-2006
@@deVon30241 And you see Markham on a Laugh-In show (or two) bridging skits with that. But here's a far older recording that just might fit: George M. Cohan and "Life's a Funny Proposition After All," I kid you not. Actually quite eerie.
Trip to heave and ho Up down, to and fro' You have no word Trip, trip to a dream dragon Hide your wings in a ghost tower Sails cackling at every plate we break Cracked by scattered needles The little minute gong coughs and clears his throat Madam you see before you stand Hey ho, never be still The old original favorite grand Grasshoppers green Herbarian band And the tune they play is "In Us Confide" So trip to heave and ho Up down, to and fro' You have no word Please leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride! Isn't it good to be lost in the wood Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood Meant even less to me than I thought With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed Well, the mad cat laughed At the man on the border Hey ho, huff the Talbot "Cheat" he cried shouting kangaroo It's true in their tree they cried Please leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride! Please leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride! The mad cat laughed At the man on the border Hey ho, huff the Talbot The winds they blew and the leaves did wag They'll never put me in their bag The seas will reach and always seep So high you go, so low you creep The wind it blows in tropical heat The drones they throng on mossy seats The squeaking door will always squeak Two up, two down we'll never meet So merrily trip forgo my side Please leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride!
Excellent job, though I believe Huff, as in Huff the talbot needs to be capitalized. Huff is q talbot, a now extinct breed of dog. He appears in a nursery rhyme about a dog and cat who fought The War of The Roses. Syd would have been familiar with that one.
I always thought it was "the madcap laughed...", like album title, but listening closely it does sound like he's singing "mad cat"... You live and learn...
@@Beatumpop You're only 16 and you are already listening to Floyd and Syd. I never started listening to them till i was 21. Remember A Day's a favourite. My first records were Saucerful, Piper and Relics. Heard this lp soon after. I thought he was off his head in some songs. : )
@@happyfreeliferc barrett (like Waters and Gilmour ad well) was a very strong beatle fan.. All the Pink Floyd were inspired by The Beatles, as so many time they declared officially
It's a bit silly to say that someone doesn't sound mad after listening to them perform for four minutes or so...spending a month with him trying to make this album might be a glimpse into his mental state.
I agree despite all the weirdness that happened that stands on its own...no matter he had struggles not agreeable or popular in the long run. Glad Cambridge gave him recognition like they did.
his weirdness is what truly made him great. he created greatness, but had big issues that drug him down, he had severe highs and lows and no balance like the normal person, and he dwelled on the lows which took him to unreachable territories. his desires gripped a negative force and it took his mind. sad loss. at least we got a taste of his art.
I always loved this song because [a] It's utterly wonderful, and [b] I always get the feeling that it will all fall to bits before it finishes - I don't know why, but I've always thought that. I love it even more because of that. I know of no other song like this. Nobody's song collection is complete without a bit of Syd. ;)
Not written by me the creditor was anonymous but this guy sums it up great. "Some of this stuff has more meaning than at first glance, just really listen and try to imagine what he's saying. I would agree, most of his imagery only a person so "on the border" betwen reality and madness would understand, but if you try you can get close. If you think about it, why would he put so much spirit and energy into performing the song if he just put words together in 10 minutes....He refers to himself alot in the song, the "madcap" is him completely insane laughing at the "man in the border" which is also him. He's trapped in the madcap's side and can't cross the border, therefor the madcap laughs at him for even trying. He refers to tripping and sides alot, almost as if he himself knows he's on a continuos trip (reference to insanity) that he can't or wants to get out from ("please leave us here")....Don't dismiss what he says as just rambling, just pay attention and you'll get the big picture..."
Every single word and line has a very specific meaning. This one has zilch to do with HIM being "on the border". He is describing a 60s British carnival from the perspective of the barker. What sounds like gibberish is period slang, quotes from English poetry and novels, etc. There are excellent scholarly analyses of this song available. One major example is the "man on the border" part- from a book of poetry by Edward Lear from 1888 (a book that Syd pulled much other material from, btw, so he def owned and read it - see poem below). Syd was whacky, but he was also a VERY serious poet who knew the English literary canon inside out and upside down. Of course Lear himself wrote much nonsense, but when quoting someone else's nonsense, Syd is making a literary reference, not indulging in psychedelia. Even the "madcap" was originally a reference to a poem about a carnival ride (obvious in an earlier draft of the lyrics, that one a quote from a book of poems edited by Kenneth Grahame, massive influence on Syd, as "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" is a chapter name from Grahame's Wind in the Willows; Apples and Oranges on Barrett is also full of Grahame quotes, as is The Gnome) "There was an old man on the Border, Who lived in the utmost disorder He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat Which vexed all the folks on the Border"
yes but as an artist syd would be using the words to express,in part, his condition and relationship to his old band and the record industry, (as in the octopus ride), jug band blues, dark globe, here i go etc. the man on the border is roger waters (the half mad) syd is the fully madcap!
simply great Mr Syd Barrett, now I am 56 years old and I listen to Pink Floyd since I was 11 years old, I love you Syd you are a Genius, Thank you for your love and Music,
@@pasqualemuzzupappa8596 è la verità... syd barrett ha scritto una canzone dedicata a bob dylan. E ha preso moltissimo del suo stile. La stessa cosa ha fatto david bowie che ha scritto anche lui una canzone per bob dylan ed è stato influenzato da dylan stesso come da syd.
Gilmour is great, but the thing is that he plays a lot different from Syd. And his solos are great especially in ''Dogs'' and ''Pigs''. I'm not gonna suck Gilmour's ball's, but he's very good
David Gilmour played drums and bass on this track, but he far from did on the whole album, some of the tracks are backed up by Soft Machine, like Love You and No Good Trying.
I honestly cant believe this song doesn't have more plays. Just from artists alone. The songwriting is nothing less than perfect. God was this guy amazing. People like syd could've wrote songs without guitars or drums. Poets unite for one final night.
Syd Barret is similar to Van Gogh in the sense that the norm can't appreciate the complexity. The potency of his talent is awesome & sadly, escapes common understanding.
Oh please, syds music was great but alot of it truly is what you get at face value. Barring a few tracks, I really dont believe syd was a savant of deep complex music like you do. Some songs are just a throw together of random sound with hardly any rhythm, and with lyrics, syd mostly was more concerned about the sound of the words working with the music rather than the meaning of them.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Syd Barrett. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of 60s counterculture most of the lines will go over a typical listener's head. There's also Syd's optimistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his lyricism - his personal philosophy draws heavily from surrealist literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these songs, to realize that they're not just catchy- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Syd Barrett truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Syd's existential catchphrase "I've got a bike you can ride it if you like," which itself is a cryptic reference to Carroll's English epic Alice in Wonderland I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Syd Barrett's genius unfolds itself on their computer screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a Syd Barrett tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
@@tetsuoumezawa5833 if you’re so smart why is your bank account balance embarrassingly low and coupled with a glaring lack of any meaningful life accomplishments?
I remember one night eating to many mushrooms and this song kept playing on repeat, shattered my brain and i was cast into insanity in an extremely paranoid state. I was truly the madcap. Good times.
@@BernardoFernandinoDellaCosasti you should be ashamed of yourself for your attempt at shaming people, I can say whatever i want, the most they'll do is remove something if its deemed to "offensive" lol. Get outta here
@@camblas6380 You can't say whatever you want, it's the basic definition of living together. There are rules to respect, so get lost under your bridge, acid eater
Love this song, it has a fantastic rhythm with the lyrics where it sounds like he's going to fall over himself and it'll all fall apart and it never does
Listening to this song I can just hear how Blur got their sound. you know the multitracked vocals, the english accent the kind of rhythm. I'm just thinking of "Country House" in particular though
Octopus/Syd Barrett Trip to heave and ho Up down, to and fro' You have no word Trip, trip to a dream dragon Hide your wings in a ghost tower Sails cackling at every plate we break Was cracked by scattered needles The little minute gong Coughs and clears his throat Madam you see before you stand Hey ho, never be still The old original favorite grand Grasshoppers green Herbarian band And the tune they play is "In Us Confide" So trip to heave and ho Up down, to and fro' You have no word Please, leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride Isn't it good to be lost in the wood? Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood? Meant even less to me than I thought With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed The madcap laughed at the man on the border Hey ho, huff the Tolbert "Cheat" he cried shouting kangaroo It's true in their tree they cried please leave us here close our eyes to the octopus ride The winds they blew and the leaves did wag They'll never put me in their bag The raging seas will always seep So high you go, so low you creep The wind it blows in tropical heat The drones they throng on mossy seats The squeaking door will always squeak Two up, two down we'll never meet Please, leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride Please, leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride
Really strong Bowie vibe which really is the other way around...woulda been nice to see Syd work with Cale Bowie and Eno etc discreetly and spare in sound...just a dream
Syd Barret gave his life for psychedelic rock. Literally... he lost his mind searching for sound on psychedelics and tbh this sound is beautiful. RIP you are a king in Rock in Roll Music.
That first Floyd album, his two solo records, plus that grinding garage rocker 'Lucy Leave', I think he did enough in that short time to allow him to walk away and be a home body for the rest of his days. You can stack it up against anything and it always shines a bit brighter.
sung in an english accent, it's rough, it's got edges but this is how he played and the lyrics have a staggering range and invention, maybe most people now are used to listening to americanised over-produced mush sung in a mid-atlantic accent, most people aren't fit to judge this
rabbitss11 love the lyrics but a lot of them are charming gibberish be honest ... mixing unrelated concepts into interesting sounding phrases with no literal meaning. Many of the lyrics convey a mood rather than a defined meaning.
Rockland Times: I agree...and I've been a Pink Floyd fan for 39 years...a Syd Barrett fan for 34 years. By this time in Syd's life, he was too far gone. Many of his lyrics are a "word salad". Listen to "Scream Thy Last Scream" and "Vegetable Man". They are bizarre, to say the least. Syd was threatened with plagerism on Piper At The Gates Of Dawn's "Matilda Mother". Two versions of that song exist. He snarfed the original lyrics from Beloc's "Cautionary Tales for Children". Pink Floyd were threatened with a lawsuit so they had to go back and change some of the lyrics.
@SUCKRPUNCHED it's really not "well documented" ; rather it's well insinuated and has taken on a life of its own. Actually, If you dig enough you'll find suggestions that it was his use of Mandrax (quaaludes) that caused his seeming disassociative behaviour. There's actually not even any definitive evidence that Syd was a heavy user of LSD (with a number of his friends stating he might've used it a handful of times at most). {NOTE: to be fair, one doesn't need to trip constantly In order to be profoundly influenced by a psychedelic) I mean, whatever, we weren't there and I wasn't even close to being alive at the time, but that's part of the written record pertaining to one Roger Keith Barret. He was an odd guy For sure, but he was also a pretty clearly brilliant one. Perhaps the suggestions of mental illness are accurate (the "hairless appearance" was especially odd), but it's also equally possible he just found out he didn't want to be a rockstar, having found out what being a rockstar meant....
@@atomeyes99 I'm pretty sure Gilmour chose not to play guitar for any of Syd's tracks, as he saw his role as helping his friend, not taking over the project. In any case Syd's guitar has so much character and suits his voice and vocal delivery so well that adding another guitarist would have detracted from the charm and flow of the music. Syd is anyway the only guitarist listed for this album and I think for all of his solo work. Syd's guitar always sounds good, he had an ear for how much was just enough for the song, he had a little trick bag of effects and simple, catchy licks he knew how to apply, and some bounce in his rhythm that went with the nursery rhymish lyrics.
@@NiskRanThawll Yes Dave played other instruments on the album, my comment was specifically about guitar. I don't have the source for the quote but I recall that DG purposely didn't play guitar on any of Syd's sessions because Syd was still capable of playing well and because Syd's playing was distinctive and gave a particular character to the songs. Which I think was a good decision from a personal and a musical point of view.
Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro You have no word Trip, trip to a dream dragon Hide your wings in a ghost tower Sails crackling at every plate we break Cracked by scattered needles Little minute gong Coughs and clears his throat Madam you see before you stand Hey ho, never be still The old original favorite grand Grasshoppers green Herbarian band And the tune they play in us confide So trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro' You have no word Please leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride Isn't it good to be lost in the wood Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood Meant even less to me than I thought With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border Hey ho, huff the Talbot Cheetah he cried shouted kangaroo So through their tree they cried Please leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride The madcap laughed at the man on the border Hey ho, huff the Talbot The winds they blew and the leaves did wag And they'll never put me in their bag The seas will reach and always see So high you go, so low you creep The winds it blows in tropical heat The drones they throng on mossy seats The squeaking door will always creep Two up, two down we'll never meet So merrily trip for good my side Please leave us here Close our eyes to the octopus ride
Trip to heave and ho' Up, down, to and fro' You have no word Trip, trip to a dream dragon Hide your wings in a ghost tower Sails cackling at every plate we break Cracked by scattered needles The little minute gong Coughs and clears his throat Madam, you see before you stand Hey, ho, never be still The old original favorite grand Grasshoppers green herbarian band And the tune they play is "In Us Confide" So, trip to heave and ho' Up, down, to and fro' You have no word Please, leave us here Close our eyes To the octopus ride Isn't it good to be lost in the wood? Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood? Meant even less to me than I thought With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border Hey, ho, huff the Talbot Cheat he cried shouting "kangaroo" It's true, in their tree they cried Please, leave us here Close our eyes To the octopus ride Please, leave us here Close our eyes To the octopus ride The madcap laughed at the man on the border Hey, ho, huff the Talbot The winds they blew and the leaves did wag They'll never put me in their bag The seas will reach and always seep So high you go, so low you creep The wind it blows in tropical heat The drones they throng on mossy seats The squeaking door will always squeak Two up, two down, we'll never meet So merrily trip forgot my side Please, leave us here Close our eyes To the octopus ride
Remembering Syd Barrett January on 6, 1946. He was an English singer, songwriter, and musician who co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd in 1965. Barrett was their original frontman and primary songwriter, becoming known for his whimsical style of psychedelia, English-accented singing, and stream-of-consciousness writing style. He began a brief solo career in 1969 with the single "Octopus" and followed with the albums The Madcap Laughs (1970) and Barrett (1970), recorded with the aid of several members of Pink Floyd. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Barrett
I finally understand the song, its not worthless ramblings, its syd explaining what its like to be alone with himself and the madcat. Being lost in the wood, isnt it good to be lost in the wood? so much meaning, but you forget the painful truth is a price to pay and in return you gain a creative trait. Insanity