Pink Floyd “The Piper At the Gates of Dawn” 1967. Today, January 6th, would have been Syd Barrett’s 75th birthday (b. Roger Keith Barrett, 1946, d. 2006). Pink Floyd’s debut album The Piper At the Gates of Dawn was the only album to fully feature Barrett – he wrote the vast majority of the LP, plays lead guitar and vocals; Barrett only performed on a couple of the band’s second album A Saucer Full of Secrets and left the band during its recording. Despite his highly abbreviated role in Floyd, he loomed large through most of the group’s history, his persona and mental health/drug use the inspiration for some of their most successful releases including The Wall. Ours is the US version of The Piper on Tower Records; it differs from the UK release on EMI in the order of the tracks, plus the US version has the UK single-only song “See Emily Play” (#6 UK). The Piper At the Gates of Dawn went to #6 in the UK and #131 in the US. It’s now considered one of the best albums ever and a master of the psychedelic era. And it is way out there: a weaving twee pastoral English pipes a-piping with spaced-out vocals, keyboards and guitar. “See Emily Play” is one of the more accessible tracks, as is the sole Roger Waters-penned track “Take Up My Stethoscope and Walk” (listed as “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk” on the UK edition) which has a bit of Kinks garage-power pop going on, and the epic “Interstellar Overdrive″ has got some serious heavy rocking going on in the midst of the crazy.