MOG

Fearlessly, the idiot faced the crowd - smiling.

Syd wrote three kinds of songs, really - aimless, cutesy, and very period-bound drivel like "See Emily Play" and "Bike"; ponderous unmemorable dirges like "Astronomy Domine," a couple where evidence of mad genius can be found - "Baby Lemonade," "Arnold Layne." It's hard to believe that after their very brief period with him fronting the band, during which they attained little more than a certain "hipness" factor among (what I picture in my mind as mostly brainless, Austin Powers-type) Londoners, and then went on, when Roger Waters took the helm, to more than ten years of immense commercial and artistic success, that anyone would ever describe the later years as "oft-neglected."

The two separate halves of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," incidentally, are mixed seamlessly into a whole on the compilation Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd. It sounds like a desecration, but it's actually gorgeous; I recommend it highly - it's seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds long fully assembled, and (as you remarked of XTC's "Complicated Game," AA), "I wouldn't trim it by a second."