Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, The - Pink Floyd > Reviews > How I Lost My Virginity!

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks	Mixed
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Good
Value for Money

Advantages:	Some wonderful tracks and hilarious lyrics .  .  .
Disadvantages:	Some very weird ones too .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Gosh, I am being candid with you this week! This time, I have decided to let you in on a secret about my love life. But more on that later. Read on.

I have a penchant for cheesy pop. I love Steps, Hear’say, Kylie, Atomic Kitten, Abba, Darius and Will Young. But I also have a darker side to me too and a lot of that is satisfied by the wonderful Pink Floyd.

I first discovered Pink Floyd back in 1986 when my First Love (yes, him again) lent me a load of his records. These included a large helping of the Floyd. I listened to The Wall and Comfortably Numb remains my all-time favourite song.

Another of his records that he lent to me was this one – Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It must have worked, I currently have fourteen Pink Floyd albums, although most are on tape and so far, I only have three on CD (Echoes, Momentary Lapse of Reason, Dark Side of the Moon).

My copy of Piper (I’ll stick to that in future, before my fingers drop off) is an old one on tape. It’s not even an original, so it definitely needs replacing soon. It’s a bit grainy and you need to turn the volume up high to hear it, but it’s worth the effort.

Piper is quite different to some of the later and more commercial albums Pink Floyd did. This one is from 1967 - two years before I was born – and is very hippyish in style, some might say completely insane. I won’t go into long reams of details about the band, but Syd Barrett was at the helm during this album and you can tell. Syd is to sanity what George W Bush is to world peace.

So let me stick the album on and give you a bit of a virtual sound-fest. I will try to deliver the layman’s view of the album and not come out with a lot of technical stuff – probably because I don’t do techie, I just do what I like or don’t.

I am also writing this review in real time, writing while I listen.

We begin with…

1. Astronomy Domine

This is a track where the vocals sound so laid-back, you could believe they were falling asleep while recording it. It stops and starts with the vocals disappearing (You can’t hear snoring, but I still have my suspicions!) then half-heartedly returning for a bit of faint wailing. This is quite instrumental in large parts though and the lyrics are fairly hard to discern.

VERDICT : Very hippie. A bit heavy for me. 5/10

2. Lucifer Sam

This is rockier, has much more oomph and a very definite sixties feel to it. You can definitely nod your head and tap your feet to this one. I think Oasis would cover this one well actually.

VERDICT : Good fun, catchy, but seems quite short. 7/10

3. Matilda mother

This is more my sort of thing. Quite soft and almost poetic. Of course, being Floyd, it does float off into great wailing and gnashing of guitars to full effect, but overall, it’s another reasonably gentle track.

VERDICT : Enjoyed this one. 8/10

4. Flaming

Unicorns, eiderdowns, foggy dew? It’s all here. Another one that’s completely off its head, but it’s very charming. You do wonder what the hell these guys were on, but if they can create this album, I’ll forgive them. I’m not so keen on the weird musical bits though, I prefer the simplicity of the vocals with the guitar strumming along.

VERDICT : Another good one I really like. 8/10

5. Pow R Toc H

This one starts with an audition to get in the BBC Special Effects department! Then it goes into drums and piano, tinkling and banging, as you do. This one’s rather meandering, it feels like when you’re reading a book and there’s paragraphs of description and all you want to know is whether he dies or not. You never do find out. But it sounds like there are loads of monkeys laughing in the jungle, then a spaceship comes down and takes them all away. No, it does, really.

VERDICT : A lot of noise that goes on a long time. 4/10

6. Take up thy stethoscope and walk

A strong beginning to this one with a hard drum beat and lots of shouty vocal bits. Then it goes all weird. You can imagine lots of longhaired men and women in brightly coloured pink swirly clothes dancing to this, with stoned expressions. Can’t think why. Still, it’s evocative if nothing else.

VERDICT : Rather bizarre. 5/10

7. Interstellar overdrive

Another rocky start, which gets those heads tapping (unless you’ve been partaking of illegal substances, in which case it might wake you up). Obviously that spaceship is back again (the one with the monkeys) as there are a lot of beeps in this one, which sound like an alien trying to contact Earth. Then one of them leans on the switch and it all goes a bit mad. Poor Syd was definitely mad. This one goes on forever. I went to the loo and made a cup of tea and it was still going on, when I got back. <Twiddles fingers for next ten minutes>

VERDICT : I blame it on drugs myself. 3/10

8. Gnome

Ah, Class with a capital C. This is wonderful. Play it to your kids, they’ll love it too. From the plinky-plonky opening, it is extremely catchy and tells you all about a gnome called Grimble Gromble. It’s a lovely little stand-alone poem too.

VERDICT : Singalong time. Great stuff. 9/10

9. Chapter 24

This one isn’t quite as enchanting as Gnome, but it’s a lovely little song. However, it does fade into obscurity when compared to the best tracks on this album (i.e. I had forgotten it!). Nice and gentle, very laid-back vocals, but clear enough to hear the words. (God, I sound so OLD!)

VERDICT : Pleasant, but forgettable. 7/10

10. Scarecrow

Another multi-layered percussion-heavy intro. Then it goes into a little ditty about a scarecrow. This sounds a bit like a folk song and is another one the kids might enjoy, but it lacks the light and catchy beat of Gnome and does get a bit hippyish towards the end.

VERDICT : Not bad, but not great. 6/10

11. Bike

“I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you like…” So begins a Pink Floyd classic. A perfect mixture of a lovely flowing tune and a cute little story with hilarious lyrics. Here we meet a mouse called Gerald. Anyone that can put a mouse called Gerald into an album deserves a listen for that reason alone. Wonderful.

VERDICT : Along with Gnome, this one’s my favourite. 9/10

Overall, I love the feel of this album, which has some almost child-like nursery rhyme aspects to it. It does have a huge helping of weirdness though. I would not recommend this to people who have never listened to Pink Floyd before, because it might put you off. But any fan will love it – well, maybe not all of it, but there are enough flashes of genius in there to make it a worthwhile purchase.

Now back to my title! I lost my virginity in 1988 at the age of 18 ½ to the accompaniment of this album. Whereas the sexual act works very well during the languid tracks and even more so in the rockier ones, it is very hard to keep your mind on the job (ahem) when the Floyd are singing about a gnome called Grimble Gromble or a mouse called Gerald.

Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd is available on CD from Amazon for £9.99. I’ll put it on my Christmas list now, I think.

DISCLAIMER : KarenUK was perfectly sober and sane while writing this review. It’s the music that’s stoned.