The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Eight albums in and we’ve gone from a quiet little bar in anytown USA, steeped in nostalgia and sweetness to something else entirely. It was building from the start and although that only comes through in hindsight and by looking at the trajectory of his career, it doesn’t seem completely shocking that Tom Waits would end up making an album like Swordfishtrombones when he did, in 1983. Rising out of the jazz, blues and pop standard traditions he explored in previous albums, this is a theatrical reconstruction of those genres by way of a junkyard. The album kicks off with the stop motion percussion of “Underground,” setting the stage for this collection of songs made of things that the mainstream has discarded or buried. There’s an immediate pieced together feel to the sound with what could be various cans and bottles being used for percussion and a guitar that could be playing on the couple of random strings left on it when it was thrown away. And yet somehow the music is cohesive and there is a melody there that is almost recognizable as jazz or blues or perhaps something more primal. This is the first album Waits produced himself and it’s striking how different it is. There were hints of this sound here and there before this album, but here, up front and in your face, it truly is awesome. And yet, the old jazz poetry that Waits is so damn good at is still here, in tracks like “Shore Leave,” a track that somehow manages to be breezy and smooth amid the refuse of the…

and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Mike Engler’s review on the first song on The Dark Side of the Moon was described as a good mood change and intensity. “The 1st song Speak to me is a cool sounding intro. It sets the mood for the album well, and the intensity rises until Breathe slams to a start. This song, most likely either advocating marijuana use or explaining how grand the air is, is a masterpiece.” –Mike Engler (http://pinkfloyd.net/albums/?review=1034671547) Both the lyrics and the…

attention led to a record deal with EMI, which led to Norman Smith, a jazz musician, producing their debut album: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) right next door to The Beatles when they were doing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). At this point, all the band members had experimented with drugs. Although for Barrett, drugs became a larger part of his life than any of the other Pink Floyd. When they last played at the UFO club in May, the band squeezed through the crowd and…