“What Exactly Is a Dream? And What Exactly Is a Joke?”
Years before they hit it big with Dark Side of the Moon, there was an entirely different Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett instead of David Gilmour. Imagine if you gave the Jungian Shadows of a 1960s British blues band mega-doses of LSD and a recording studio and then told them to have at it: you would probably wind up with something like their debut album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn.12 Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett era was fun while it lasted, but it didn’t last long. After couple of years and one very interesting album, the candle Barrett was burning at both ends burned all the way out. By their second album, Saucerful of Secrets, all the band could get out of Syd was one very weird song: Jugband Blues. The song is a madcap misadventure through and through, enjoyable if you like that sort of thing but frustratingly jarring if you do…
