COME AROUND, MAKE IT SOON, SO ALONE!

“Baby Lemonade” was the opening track for Syd’s second and last solo album “Barrett”. Backed by David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Jerry Shirley, Syd recorded the song in early 1970. The opening chord sequence was spontaneously recorded by Gilmour as Syd warmed up on the guitar. The song also made an appearance when Syd guested John Peels Top Gear in February 1970. In the words of author Rob Chapman: “With its evocation of drizzle and despair, and its palette of greyness and fog, Baby Lemonade’ establishes the dominant mood of the album. A melancholic detachment tinged with just a hint of despondency. One immediately gets a picture of someone stood very still by the window sill’ watching a crowd of midnight revellers in the street outside, or perhaps sarcastically applauding the antics of a bunch of pissheads in the beer garden of a provincial pub, as glimpsed morosely through a bar-room window. Throughout the song there is an overwhelming sense of someone killing time, amusing themselves to distraction with oddball acts like putting a clock in the washing machine or sending a cage through the post, and there is an indication for the first time that Syd’s capacity for weirdness is starting to sound self-conscious and strained. By the time we reach the pared-down telegram prose of ‘Come around Make it soon So alone’ it sounds like a heartfelt plea for someone to save his sanity. Rick Wright’s warm Hammond washes are a feature of the album and on ‘Baby Lemonade’ they underpin Syd’s distant and distancing observations with soulful substance. (From “Syd Barrett – A very Irregular Head”, Faber, 2010). Baby Lemonade is but one of many songs on Barrett which deal in non-sensical observations. Gigolo Aunt and Dominoes also share this meandering every day observations. ‪@ArtistontheBorder‬: In 2019 I made an animation simply called “Mural”. A series of panning panels taking the viewer from the Pink Floyd heyday to a later-year imagining of Roger (Syd) Barrett’s Cambridge. We (as in ‪@menontheborder‬ and me) were planning a concert experience in Stockholm during which this would have been the grand set piece. Covid came and the concert never happened. I repurposed the animation later on, now titled “Dust and Guitars”. You can still glimpse it behind the multitude of layers that was added on top. The animation for Baby Lemonade is a collage triplet. One part Syd Barrett mural. One part obscure Syd-references contest (How many can you spot?) and then there’s FART ENJOY. Andrew Rawlinson remembers. “Syd took to these experiments with relish. So when I sent him a book I’d made, he sent back FART ENJOY as a ‘reply’ (or maybe the sequel). I’m not sure about the exact date. I know where I was living, so that places it between the end of 1964 and the summer of 1965. He was in London (Tottenham Street I think, not Earlham Street) and I was in Cambridge. I don’t suppose it took him very long – he was always a fast worker. It’s seven sheets of cardboard held together by sellotape It’s also a little gem and as good a reflection of the man himself as I know: experimental, colourful, wide open and right on the button. He used the cut-up technique several times (‘Lieutenant Lunch Date’ and ‘Post Office Tower’), sometimes with nursery rhymes as an implied backdrop (‘Sprat Locket Patch’. ‘Hark!’). Origin of Floral Structures’ splices together a textbook and Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Jeremy Fisher. The collages and paintings are exactly like the words: a mixture of austere-bordering-on-abstract and what could be called blazing whimsy. (Just like his music). I doesn’t actually mean anything specifically. It’s intended to amuse, and I have a feeling RKB (Syd) would have had a slightly confused chuckle. At least I know I chuckle at it from time to time. And yes…if you must: I found the originals for both the “Post Office Tower” and “Build Big Frankie”. Listen to the song on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/1pk0lk… Syd Barrett Official Webpage: https://www.sydbarrett.com/ Syd Barrett Official Facebook: www.facebook.com/syd.barrett Syd Barrett Official Instagram: www.instagram.com/syd_barrettofficial

Animation by Alexander Stubbe Teglbjaerg: ‪@ArtistontheBorder‬
Local topography consultant: “Future wife on the Border”.
Music by Syd Barrett