Pink Floyd fan I take it HandThatFeeds? So am I.
Syd Barrett wish you were here you crazy diamond.
OCTOPUS
Transcribed from Track 7 of The Madcap Laughs
'Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro
You have no word
Trip, trip to a dream dragon
Hide your wings in a ghost tower
Sails cackling at every plate we break
Was cracked by scattered needles
The little minute gong
Coughs and clears his throat
Madam you see before you stand
Hey ho, never be still
The old original favourite grand
Grasshoppers green Herbarian band
And the tune they play is "In Us Confide"
So trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro
You have no word
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the Octopus ride
Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood
Isn’t it bad so quiet there, in the wood
It meant even less to me than I thought
With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds
Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed
Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, Huff the Talbot
"Cheat" he cried shouting kangaroo
"It’s true" in their tree they cried
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride
The madcap laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, Huff the Talbot
The winds they blew and the leaves should wag
They’ll never put me in their bag
The seas will reach and always seep
So high you go, so low you creep
The wind it blows in tropical heat
The drones they throng on mossy seats
The squeaking door will always squeak
Two up, two down will never meet
So merrily trip and go my side
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the Octopus ride'
All too often dismissed as a fantasist who created lyrical montages from drug-driven word salad imagery fragments. Barrett in time will assume his rightful place in the canon of English poetics, to which he made vital contributions.
The song ‘Octopus’was the first single by Syd Barrett as a solo artist was released on 14th of November 1969, two months before the release of his first solo album
The Madcap Laughs In its most literal interpretation the work recalls memories of fairground rides, collated with a sea-faring poem. Barrett’s song resounds with a long string of references to rhymes, poems, and songs culled from English folk lore. In Syd's own words, "The idea was based on those number songs like ‘Green Grow the Rushes, Ho!’ where you have twelve lines each related to the next and an overall theme. It’s like a fool-proof combination of lyrics, really, and then the chorus comes in and changes the tempo but holds the whole thing together." Also the works of English classics scholar, poet, translator and novelist Robert Graves, a favourite of Syd’s, figure prominently in ‘Octopus’.
Britain’s oldest travelling funfair, Midsummer Fair, has been held on Cambridge’s Midsummer Common for over 800 years. At the end of June, an encampment of lorries rolls into the university city of Cambridge and the county town of Cambridgeshire, England, on the River Cam approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of London. The cavalcade brings in dozens of fairground rides, tents, games and diversions. Assembled on the Common for several days, townspeople flocked with their children, a vivid alternate fairground world. Walking through the amusements tent, the scent of mown grass rising up through the tent in the heat, Midsummer fair was magic.
A visit in to the fair 1963 when he was around 17 along with Libby Gausden left Syd with strong memories, ones that he sketched in a letter. Further, his trip to the Skegness Butlin’s Holiday Camp took him through a Pleasure Ground with octopus ride and vibrantly painted carousel with stallion horses. The Octopus ride, with gyrating arms, bright with lights, whirled on a central axis, while centrifugal motion spun each car whether the occupants liked it or not. Octopus rides were built by a company called Lusse of Blackpool in the 1930’s. The machines proved popular, with dizzy rises, and sweeping plunges.