Pink Floyd - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967

I've posted two Pink Floyd albums already, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of all the stuff of theirs I plan on posting. However, before I post more of their stray tracks stuff, I want to post some of their BBC performances. For late 1960s and early 1970s Pink Floyd, their BBC recordings are essential, both in terms of the breath and quality of the songs performed, but also the excellent sound quality.

So here's Pink Floyd at the BBC in 1967, at a time when Syd Barrett was still a member of the group. Nearly all of these come from "The Early Years" box set. But there are a couple of things I did that are different from just making an album of all their 1967 BBC appearances.

For one thing, sadly, there are no BBC versions of their great hit "See Emily Play." In fact, no good live performances of this song by the band have been recorded at all. (They did play the song a time or two on TV, but they just mimed to the record.) However, there's one partial exception: the song was recorded well for a 1967 concert in Stockholm, Sweden, and that performance was included on "The Early Years." But unfortunately, the vocals were recorded so low that it's as if they don't exist. So consider this an instrumental version.

The original song "One in a Million" wasn't included on "The Early Years." Maybe it's a sound quality issue. The vocals are muffled and distant, making it nearly impossible to understand the words being sung. But the instrumental part sounds as good as lots of other things that made "The Early Years," and any Pink Floyd originals from 1967 should be treasured. The song is mostly an instrumental anyway, and one can treat the vocals as just another instrument.

The original instrumental "Tomorrow's World" is also on "The Early Years," but there's a big problem with it. It comes from a BBC science documentary "Tomorrow's World," and parts of the song have an announcer loudly talking over the music. So I made an edit just of the two sections without the talking and spliced them together. That makes it just over a minute long, but I considered it interesting enough for inclusion anyway.

The band did two songs for a BBC science documentary that were marred by a narrator talking over large portions of the songs. Thanks to the sound editing program X-Minus, I figured out a way to split the audio from the music. The song "Tomorrow's World" is a really nice instrumental in a longer version than before, since I could include a bit more where there had been the narration. "Green Onion" is a cover of the classic instrumental. I hadn't included it previously due to narration over the entire thing. It's not the greatest, but it does show Syd Barrett's guitar playing.

I also added "Reaction in G." I'd skipped it before because it's only 40 seconds long. (Clearly there should have been more, but the BBC only played that much, and the rest apparently has been lost.) Furthermore, the BBC DJs talked over most of that, so there wasn't much left. But now one can at least hear all of it clearly.

The total length of this album is 40 minutes, which is an ideal length for an album of the era.

01 Astronomy Domine (Pink Floyd)
02 One in a Million (Pink Floyd)
03 Matlida Mother (Pink Floyd)
04 The Gnome [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
05 The Scarecrow [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
06 Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
07 Reaction in G [Instrumental] [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
08 Flaming [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
09 Tomorrow's World [Instrumental] [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
10 Green Onions [Instrumental] [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
11 Scream Thy Last Scream (Pink Floyd)
12 Vegetable Man (Pink Floyd)
13 Pow R. Toc H. (Pink Floyd)
14 Jugband Blues (Pink Floyd)

https://www.imagenetz.de/hGy3b

I normally detest using black and white photos for cover art if anything in color can be used instead. But in this case, I found an actual photo of Pink Floyd at the BBC in 1967. Specifically,  they're at BBC's Maida Vale Studios on October 9, 1967. I cropped the photo somewhat to focus in on the band members. From the larger photo, I gather they're listening to a playback of their BBC performance. Of course, I had to colorize the photo, because everything in psychedelic 1967 was in vivid color. ;)