Tonight Let's All Make Love in London

I've had a nasty lingering cold for awhile now. I'm figuring it's just a metaphor for the state of the world. A kind of congested and wheezing condition, maybe not terminal but certainly disheartening. It's the stuff you can't see (germs, credit default swaps) that will lay you out.

So winter in Chicago, a bad cold; I've done a lot of reading lately. There's a cool little used bookstore a few blocks from my apartment. I sometimes wander in and just pick something off the shelf. That's the old fashioned way of finding a book.

Sometimes you come across a book that you'd never specifically order, but since it's sitting there, it's cheap, ($8 bucks) you think, "what the hell."

So I plunged into Nicholas Shaffner's "A Saucerful of Secrets, The Pink Floyd Odyssey." I'm not the biggest Pink Floyd fan in the world, but I've always enjoyed listening to some of their discs, especially "Dark Side of the Moon," and "Wish You Were Here." In the 70's listening to Pink Floyd was some kind of cultural marker. The bongs helped.

I thought "The Wall" was pretty much an overblown piece of crap, (as well as a perfectly realized 4 sided dystopia) and certainly the movie is a hideous example of a self-absorbed Rock Star who thinks he's the center of the world. I mean I guess that's the theme of the movie, but it's seems it's also Roger Waters primary modus operandi.

Roger Waters comes across as a control freak who makes no compromises, who has made some supremely compelling music, grand and ambitious, and who has also made enemies wherever he goes. In some ways Waters is the ultimate, self-absorbed artist, one who wants to save the world, but seems to despise everything and everyone in it. Some call him Megalomaniac. I find him completely fascinating and a little repellent too.

I certainly admire his commitment to his vision.

Anyway, the book is a great read, it's interesting how focusing on a group or a person, taking them through the decades of their existence really illuminates the world, culture, society, politics, business, music, fashion, etc. It's a story about us too. And since I lived through some of the times described in the book it is quite the personal odyssey too.

The book is dominated by some interesting personalities, primarily, the aforementioned Roger Waters, David Gilmour (those two dudes ended up hating each other) and of course the Madcap, the Crazy Diamond himself, Syd Barrett.

Ironically both Barret and Waters ended up outsiders to their own band. The last phase of Pink Floyd was firmly in the hands of David Gilmour.

Syd headed up the band in their early "underground days," when they were the house band at a club in London called UFO. Some consider that early version of the band the real deal. Certainly it was an experimental, arty band, that didn't have a lot of commercial potential. Maybe a lot like Syd himself.

Anyway, I found a very rare clip, (who knew it even existed?) of Syd and company playing "Interstellar Overdrive" live at UFO and at a recording session. There are some great scenes of the English Hip Psychedelic scene in it's infancy and glory.

You can even see Syd Barret wanking away on his Danlectro and his mirror Fender Esquire guitar. Man those times are long, long gone. Did they ever really happen?

It's all from a movie called "Tonight Let's All Make Love in London." It's worth giving a try, (maybe a little spacey and annoying, but also sort of enjoyable), almost like finding a video of a lost island tribe on Atlantis or something. I'm thinking the drugs were probably better then, although really they didn't seem to sit well with Syd one bit.