Friday, July 21, 2006

Won't you miss me/won't you miss me at all...

"I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house / I don't know why, I call him Gerald / He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse"... [difficult, to the point of unlistenable] He is perhaps the least listened-to pop artist to have ever received such fulsome and, some might argue, extravagant posthumous praise. I just read that Syd Barrett, co-founder yet short-lived member of Pink Floyd, died. At some uncertain time. In some uncertain circumstance. Apparently the best songs were about him. Pink Floyd went on to become one of rock’s most influential bands. Many of their songs and albums dealing with the disintegration of the mind were either directly written about Barrett or influenced by his decline. Pink Floyd would then spend their musical careers answering criticisms that they were cashing in on their founder’s collapse. Syd's was a quintessentially English leavetaking - suburban anonymity.

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