MOG

Don't get me started on Floyd's unreleased back catalog. Despite the existence of film scores, entire unheard concerts, studio experiments and songs that never made it to album, the Floyd people continue to dump pap on us like the recent "Oh, By The Way" boxed set: re-releasing, once again, the entire back catalog.

The EMI people need to release a real Floyd rarities box, containing stuff like the early singles as well as the music they made for the underground film "The Committee" in 1968; quality copies of all their songs from "Zabrieskie Point"; the song left off of "Saucerful Of Secrets" because of the sounds of a lady screaming that somehow got on the tape; the "household objects" experiments laid down in the studio after "Dark Side Of The Moon"; The Roger Waters' song "Bitter Love" left off of "Wish You Were Here"; plus the shit-ton of live stuff throughout the years (including the early versions of "Animals" songs "You've Got To Be Crazy" and "Raving & Drooling"). Hell, they could even clean up and throw the demos for "The Wall" on there for all I care. Some of this shit's been floating around in bootleg form for years, some has never been heard. The point is, instead of the nth re-release of stuff we already have, can we PLEASE get the rarities box set that Floyd freaks would actually be excited about?

Until that day comes, dig on this classic live Floyd cut from a John Peel BBC session, circa 1971. It's the band in post-Syd, pre-Dark Side, full freak-out form, probably my favorite era of the group. I for one had never heard this song, "Embryo", electric before (itself a leftover from the "Ummagumma" album sessions, released in acoustic form on the "Works" retrospective).

(Edit: And despite the tag, which for some reason I can't change, this live version does not actually appear on the "Works" best-of.)