1970 Albums

The Madcap Laughs > Barrett, Syd

Artist: Syd Barrett

Label: Harvest, EMI

Catalog#: SHVL 765, 1E 062-04 261

Format: Vinyl

Country: UK

Released: 1970-01

Strawberry Bricks Entry:

Syd Barrett’s departure from Pink Floyd was unceremonious: The band simply failed to pick him up before a gig in Southampton in January 1968. Later that summer, manager Peter Jenner took Barrett to EMI Studios for a few sessions; nothing came of them, and it would be a year until Malcolm Jones, head of the newly formed Harvest label, took Barrett on again—Jones’s 1982 memoir The Making of The Madcap Laughs is essential reading. But by May, Barrett decamped with Pink Floyd to Ibiza, where David Gilmour agreed to finish the album.

Artist: Trip (19)

Label: RCA Italiana

Catalog#: PSL 10460

Format: Vinyl

Country: Italy

Released: 1970

Artist: Twink

Label: Sire

Catalog#: SES 97022

Format: Vinyl

Country: US

Released: 1970

Strawberry Bricks Entry:

John Charles Edward Alder, aka Twink (after a popular home perm kit), hailed from Colchester, Essex, where he had formed an R&B band called The Fairies. After moving to London in 1966, the band released three singles that went nowhere, so Twink joined The In Crowd, which later morphed into Tomorrow. After a spell with The Pretty Things, Twink and a soon to be ex-Tyrannosaurus Rex Steve Peregrine Took started an embryonic version of the Pink Fairies, the fruits of which became Twink's debut solo album, Think Pink.

Artist: Soft Machine

Label: Columbia

Catalog#: G 30339

Format: Vinyl

Country: United States

Released: 1970-06

Strawberry Bricks Entry:

Soft Machine's Third album represents a significant shift from previous efforts. Their stream of consciousness songwriting had now given way to straight-out instrumental fusion. The album presents four compositions, each spanning one album side-adding to the confusion as to whether the Softs were still a rock band. The change was so intense within the group that the only vocal track, Robert Wyatt's superb "Moon in June," was recorded (the first section anyway) without participation from any other member.

Artist: Pete Brown & Piblokto!

Label: Harvest, EMI

Catalog#: SHVL 782, 1E 062-04566

Format: Vinyl

Country: UK

Released: 1970

Strawberry Bricks Entry:

Poet Pete Brown first set his words to jazz music in the early 60s, as a member of the New Departures. His The First Real Poetry Band featured John McLaughlin and Laurie Allan, but mostly made an impression on Cream, which led to his longstanding writing collaboration with Jack Bruce. In 1968, Brown formed the jazzy Pete Brown And His Battered Ornaments, recording two albums the following year; but he was fired from his own band before The Stones In The Park festival in July. Undaunted, Brown then formed Pete Brown & Piblokto!

Artist: Yes

Label: Atlantic

Catalog#: SD 8273

Format: Vinyl

Country: United States

Released: 1970-07

Strawberry Bricks Entry:

Yes' second album didn't break much new ground for the band, but it did confirm what most already knew: that they were a force to be reckoned with. In the studio, Eddie Offord sat, fortuitously, at the engineer's desk for the first time with the band. Yet Time And A Word wouldn't be the quantum leap Yes needed to propel them into the big league. In fact, the only leap here was Tony Cox's orchestral arrangements, a rather de rigueur post-psychedelic ornamentation of the day.