Pink Floyd – The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)

I didn’t obtain this record until the early Seventies, though strangely enough I heard probably all the songs live in the Summer of Love itself.  A long story, but Stowmarket Carnival Committee decided to have a rock concert and booked an unknown band who just happened to release ‘Arnold Layne’ a few weeks before this gig in a small Suffolk town.  My cousin Eric was in one of the bands playing early on.  Not sure how it happened but I met the band backstage before the show and got their signatures on a ten-bob note, which I proceeded to spend later in the evening on several pints of ‘stout and cider’ – well, how was I to know they would become the phenomenon they became.  I was out of my mind by the time they came on but remember the incredible noise and the rudimentary light-show and the one track – ‘Astronomy Domine’ – or was it ‘Interstellar Overdrive’.  Well, I eventually got round to the album itself, which compared to their sublime mid-Seventies stuff was quite different indeed.  Truly extraordinary stuff really and it makes much of Sgt. Pepper, released the same year, appear quite tame.