Paintbox (Pink Floyd) (LP 3504 - 3507)

Pink Floyd  The Early Years 1967 - 1972 (CD, Pink Floyd Records, 2016) ****  

Pink Floyd  Relics (CD, Harvest Records, 1971) ****  

Pink Floyd  A Collection of Great Dance Songs (Vinyl, Harvest Records, 1981) *** 

Pink Floyd  Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd (Vinyl and CD, EMI Records, 2001) ****

Genre: Prog rock, Psychedelic rock

Places I remember: Fopp, HMV, JB Hi Fi

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Money 

Gear costume: Echoes 

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5

Active compensatory factors: The early compilations from Pink Floyd are interesting in that they help flesh out the Pink Floyd picture.

The Early Years 1967 - 1972 is a two disc set of cherry picked highlights from a box set (The Early Years 1965 - 1972). It clearly shows the development from the Syd Barrett years to the pre Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd. As AllMusic points out: Certainly, the details of the box are missed, but on its own terms, The Early Years 1967-1972 is absorbing: it illustrates how Pink Floyd became Pink Floyd.

Relics is also a fantastic compilation of those early years. It focuses on early singles, B-sides, album tracks and one unreleased song, Biding My Time. The compilation contains material from the first three albums: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets and More.

A Collection of Great Dance Songs contains alternative mixes of Shine On You Crazy Diamond (with various 'parts' added together) and Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).

Money was entirely re-recorded, as Capitol Records refused to license the track to Columbia/CBS Records. David Gilmour re-recorded the track himself, playing most of the instruments. Dick Parry reprised his saxophone parts on the track. I prefer the original.

Echoes is the final album on my list. It has the advantage of spanning their entire career from the start to The Division Bell (although it came out before The Endless River). Loads to pick from then, and obviously it will miss something along the way which fans think should be included. For instance, somehow it leaves out Fat Old Sun!!

The sequencing of the tracks non-chronologically, in an effort to place more emphasis on the individual songs as opposed to the era they're from, works for me as the juxtiposition of tracks brings out a freshness.

The whole art package in vinyl form is brilliant too. Storm Thorgerson did the Echoes art which features recursive windows in multiple regressions as a nod to his own cover for 1969's Ummagumma, and the objects on each landscape refer to the Pink Floyd discography. It's worth buying the vinyl for that alone!

Where do they all belong? And that completes the Pink Floyd-a-thon. Next up in the P's: Plainsong.