Songs: Let There Be More Light, Remember a Day, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Corporal Glegg, A Saucerful of Secrets, See-Saw, Jugband Blues.
Type of Music: Psychedelic Rock
Comments:
Set the Controls for the Future of the Band.
The Pink Floyd´s second Album is basically Part II of the Star Wars that started with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But there is one big difference: Syd Barrett. Or better, his absence. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds got the better of him and he had to leave the band.
One final song, Jugband Blues with the immortal last words "And what exactly is a joke? " marks his departure. It´s not a very good song unfortunately.
I'm sure that many a tear was shed by the remaining band members but I also suspect that Roger saw his chance here to lead the band in the direction he saw in his mind.
Still, with Syd out we miss the genius or the "madness" that had marked The Piper. Because Roger Waters is no Syd Barrett. He wrote his version of the Interstellar Overdrive and named it A Saucerful of Secrets. It´s not bad but I hear a craftsman and not a genius, crazy as Syd might have been. And Syd´s Scarecrow is now called Corporal Glegg and it´s only half as funny. Roger would find his own way in the seventies but to me this record is Roger´s Piper Revisited.
Richard Wright wrote (Weird Word Sequence) two songs for the album namely Remember a Day and See-Saw of which the first one is the better of the two. So everybody did their best to show they could manage without Syd, but maybe it was too early for that in 1968.
That leaves us with Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. It was written by Roger but the other band members contributed to the song as well and it is the only moment on the album where you sense that they are capable of writing an interesting, complex and experimental song as well. It´s too little to save A Saucerful from being more than an average Psychedelic Rock Album. It did however gave them confidence. The confidence they needed to be able to make Dark Side in the future.
Syd of course was replaced by Singer/Guitarist David Gilmour and that was a lucky hand as time would tell.
Rating: ******* (7 out of 10)
Black = Good Songs
Green = Great Songs
Red = Could Be Better
Who should buy this Record: Only for the real Floyd Fans. Of which there are a lot of course, including me!
