imo, Barrett>Waters>Gilmour

Barrett was the best with lyrics
Waters was the best with concepts
Gilmour was the best musician

No.

Yeah. Never mind that he wrote the majority of their damn music. Let's completely overlook the fact that he's a better songwriter/lyricist than Barrett, that Gilmour is a guitar god and that they have at least 6 albums that are better than Pipers.

Syd was a messed up druggy with only 2 decent albums in his incredibly brief career, and I guess I don't share your sophisicated tastes if I can't accept that Syd's legacy absurdist lyrics and incredibly sloppy guitar playing is better than Dark Side of the Moon.

You know how much of The Beatles career the word Psyhedelic rock defines?

About 4 or 5 songs.

Is this the SAME Barrett I've heard on Pipers at the Gates of Dawn and Madcap Laughs? 2 good yet incredibly overrated albums. I dont think Piper would have been anything without the great band behind it. His lyrics were absurdist fun, but calling it genius just makes me sick.

I'm glad they went without Syd, because Pink Floyd without Barrett is what I choose to define as Pink Floyd. I won't deny that his inspiration stayed with the band forever. But Pink Floyd in the 70s far surpass anything by Barrett. I'd even take an obscure album like Obscured by Clouds, hell maybe even The Divsion Bell over Piper, let alone DSOTM, Meddle, WYWH, Animals and The Wall. We can agree to disagree about which era is better.

But we're talking about talent here. I just don't understand how anyone could think Barrett is the most talented. He sings, plays guitar and writes songs on the level of a 10 year old.

Yeah, fair enough.

But he was the most creative. And to be honest, Walters' concepts were generally infantile and silly, even though legions of fans find that hard to accept. If you wanna get rid of Barrett from the definition of Pink Floyd, fine, but then it's Gilmour all the way. He's great. Walters is no genius at all far as I can tell.

First of all. It's Waters.

And calling Water's lyrics infantile and silly while defending Barrett? Sure post Syd Floyd have some songs with rather simple or silly lyrics, like Money. But they also have Wish You Were Here and Animals.

I wouldn't call Waters a genius, but thats because I think Pink Floyd were a band greater than the sums of its parts. Waters, Gilmour and Wright are all great musicians and contributed to the songwriting and were important in defining the band post Syd. I wouldn't call them geniuses as individuals, but I think they are more deserving of the term than Syd, and as a team I think they really were pretty genius.

uhhhh yeah, we've been over this already

hahahahaa, walters.

waters' lyrics >>>>>>>> barrett's lyrics

It's Waters' concepts that I find unimpressive.

The best Floyd material came in the Syd period. Piper @ Gates Of Dawn and Saucerful Of Secrets are their masterworks.

There is nothing from their 70s material that is truly great imo except POSSIBLY Wish You Were Here. I don't even think they were near being one of the best bands of the 70s but their late 60s work made them one of the greatest of the 60s. My overriding feeling is that much of the material written solely by Waters is the stuff of a hack writer. The best songs on say Wish You Were Here were the cowritten ones. By the point that Waters totally came to dominate, I feel the band became totally unimpressive (e.g. Animals and The Wall).

Boo boo put it best when saying that working together, you could call some of 70s Floyd genius. They were imo mediocre at best, however, with Waters as the sole songwriter. Pity it ended up like that.

F*ck me for always confusing the edit and quote buttons, I accidently edited your post. Sorry about that, I tried to restore it back to it's original form the best I could.

I love his concepts, they tend to be simple but they work.

Different strokes for different folks, I couldn't disagree more.

Funny that theres only one song on there written by Barrett. Waters and Wright wrote and sang everything else. Barrett only appears on 3 tracks, Jugband Blues which he wrote, Remember a Day which he plays slide guitar on and Set The Control for the Heart of the Sun where he only contributed barely audible guitar parts.

[QUOTE]There is nothing from their 70s material that is truly great imo except POSSIBLY Wish You Were Here. I don't even think they were near being one of the best bands of the 70s[quote]

Sucks for you then, they're my FAVORITE 70s band.

I disagree strongly with that, Animals is one of the most ambitious Floyd albums and while The Wall gets a lot of hate these days, it's one of my favorites personally, I consider it to be the last "true" Pink Floyd album. Though I really like The Division Bell as well. The Final Cut and Momentary Lapse of Reason were really just solo albums under the Pink Floyd name.

I think Animals and The Wall are amazing, I do really hate The Final Cut though, thats when it got to the point that Waters pushed the rest of the band out of the picture almost completely. Waters wrote the bulk of Animals and The Wall but it still sounded like Pink Floyd and it still sounded like a band. The Final Cut was basically just Waters ranting about Margaret Thatcher over elaborate arangements and Gilmour being reduced to a session musician playing only a brief solo here and there.

I really liked their last album The Division Bell, since it has Gilmour, Wright and Mason working like a band again and marked a return to the DSOTM sound that made them popular to begin with. Gilmour is an excellent songwriter in his own right, though he can't really craft potent lyrics like Waters could. Waters has always been the conceptual mastermind behind Pink Floyd post Syd, but I admit Waters has dried up after The Wall, and even when he has a great concept, he can't get it to work like he used to because he dosen't have the band anymore.

I tell you this much. I'd sell my left testical for Waters, Gilmour, Wright and Mason to get back together and make a new studio album.

This is a fact, but the record is clearly full of Barrett's influence all over the place, regardless of his direct input.

That would be awesome. That is, for them to make a new album - not for you to sell your left testical ;).

I'm glad at least we can agree though that when Waters was basically clearly just going it alone without any input from the other band members at all, it sucked a$s.

Yeah but you did'nt counteract my statement backing up the fact that Barrett was influential.

Meddle, Animals and DSOTM are definitely great albums.
sometimes you don't need a lot of lyrics(animals) for it to be good.
DSOTM was a commercial break through...fine, but still the fact remains, that it was one of their best albums. Well, you can say this is my opinion. Fine keep it as my opinion itself, but i really do want to know what makes animals or DSOTM average. Waters might have written the majority of the stuff, but i don't see much evidence of a 'hack writer' in some of those albums. Just because they had 'not so good' album in between isn't enough of an evidence.
These are all imo, pointless speculations. Any band can go through bad albums. And not to forget, the progressive aspect of their music remained quite intact as well.