‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ springs to mind. I first heard this record in an extremely mangled form, as part of a cassette reissue of the 1973 compilation ‘A Nice Pair’, which comprised tracks from ‘Piper’ and Floyd’s second album. Weirdly, on the cassette release the tracks were completely jumbled up (ie. songs from the two albums were interspersed seemingly at random). I can only assume that this was to do with timing, as it was as double album on a single cassette. Anyway, I’ve had an uneasy relationship with the running order ever since. At first I disliked quite a few of the songs, mainly the ‘freakout’ tracks, but also ‘The Gnome’ which used to make me cringe with its childish rhymes (gnomes, homes, hood, good) but which I now adore and find utterly enchanting. The only track I’ve really never come to terms with over the years is ‘Pow R Toc H’ which just sounds to me like a failed experiment. What I’ve never understood is why they didn’t include ‘See Emily Play’, which was recorded around the same time. Swap those two songs, move ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ to the end, and you’ve got a contender for greatest album of all time.
