Though he even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­peared from the pub­lic eye, Syd Bar­rett did not fade into obscu­ri­ty all at once after his “errat­ic behav­ior,” as Andy Kahn writes at Jam­Base, “led to his leav­ing” Pink Floyd in 1968. The found­ing singer/songwriter/guitarist went on in the fol­low­ing few years to write, record, and even spo­rad­i­cal­ly per­form new solo mate­r­i­al, appear­ing on John Peel’s BBC show in 1970 and giv­ing a long Rolling Stone inter­view the fol­low­ing year. He even start­ed, briefly, a new band in 1972 and worked on new record­ings in the stu­dio until 1974.

Bar­rett released two solo albums, The Mad­cap Laughs and Bar­rett, in 1970. Like the solo work of Roky Erick­son and Skip Spence—two oth­er trag­ic psy­che­del­ic-era genius­es with men­tal health struggles—Barrett’s lat­er com­po­si­tions are frus­trat­ing­ly rough-cut gems: quirky, sin­is­ter, mean­der­ing folk-psych adven­tures that pro­vide an alter­nate look into what Pink Floyd might have sound­ed like if their orig­i­nal inten­tions of keep­ing him on as a non-per­form­ing song­writer had worked out.

Assist­ing him dur­ing his stu­dio ses­sions were for­mer band­mates Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour. The band still admired his sin­gu­lar tal­ent, but they found work­ing, and even speak­ing, with him dif­fi­cult in the extreme.

As Gilmour has described those years in inter­views, they car­ried a con­sid­er­able amount of guilt over Barrett’s ouster. In addi­tion to the heart­break­ing trib­ute “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” Gilmour has often per­formed Syd’s solo songs onstage in affect­ing, often solo acoustic, ren­di­tions that became all the more poignant after Barrett’s death in 2006.

In the videos at the top, you can see Gilmour play two songs from Barrett’s The Mad­cap Laughs—“Ter­rapin” and “Dark Globe”—and fur­ther up, see him play “Domi­noes” from Bar­rett, with Richard Wright on Key­boards. Gilmour has also revis­it­ed onstage Pink Floyd’s ear­li­est, Bar­rett-front­ed, days. Just above, we have the rare treat of see­ing him play the band’s first sin­gle, “Arnold Layne,” with spe­cial guest David Bowie on lead vocals. And below, see Gilmour and Wright play a ver­sion of the ear­ly Floyd clas­sic “Astron­o­my Domine,” live at Abbey Road stu­dios.

It was, sad­ly, at Abbey Road where the band last saw Bar­rett, when he entered the stu­dio in 1975 dur­ing the final mix­es of Wish You Were Here. Over­weight and with shaved head and eye­brows, Bar­rett was at first unrec­og­niz­able. After this last pub­lic appear­ance, he felt the need, as Waters put it, to “with­draw com­plete­ly” from “mod­ern life.” But the trag­ic final months with Pink Floyd and few sight­ings after­ward should hard­ly be the way we remem­ber Syd Bar­rett. He may have lost the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with his for­mer friends and band­mates, but for a time he con­tin­ued to speak in haunt­ing­ly strange, thor­ough­ly orig­i­nal songs.

This col­lec­tion of videos comes to us via Jam­Base.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Syd Barrett’s “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant” Comes to Life in a New Retro-Style Ani­ma­tion

Short Film Syd Barrett’s First Trip Reveals the Pink Floyd Founder’s Psy­che­del­ic Exper­i­men­ta­tion (1967)

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Every genre of music has its lin­eages and fil­i­a­tions, and each gen­er­a­tion tries to out­do its pre­de­ces­sors. In no genre of music are these rela­tion­ships so clear­ly defined as in hip-hop, where good-natured bat­tles, furi­ous beefs, nos­tal­gic trib­utes, and guest appear­ances explic­it­ly con­nect rap­pers from dif­fer­ent eras, cities, and styles. Since the ear­li­est days of hip-hop, groups have formed crews and loose alliances, built their own labels and media empires togeth­er, and defined the sounds of their region. At the cen­ter of it all was the turntable, which found­ing fathers like Kool DJ Herc repur­posed from con­sumer play­back machines to elec­tron­ic instru­ments and pro­to-sam­plers. No mat­ter how far the music has come in its sophis­ti­cat­ed adap­ta­tions of dig­i­tal stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy, hip-hop’s essen­tial archi­tec­ture came from the meet­ing of two turnta­bles, a mix­er, and a micro­phone.

Pay­ing homage to that hum­ble ori­gin, the Hip-Hop Love Blue­print by design house Dorothy takes the cir­cuit dia­gram of a turntable as the basis for a map con­nect­ing 700 of hip-hop’s major play­ers, from god­fa­thers like Cab Cal­loway, Gil Scott-Heron, and the Last Poets, to orig­i­na­tors like Herc and Grand­mas­ter Flash, gold­en age heroes like Run-DMC and Eric B. and Rakim, polit­i­cal artists like Pub­lic Ene­my and KRS-One, West Coast giants like N.W.A. and Dr. Dre, under­ground and indie rap­pers, turntab­lists and star pro­duc­ers, and every­thing in-between.

Con­tem­po­rary stars like Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Jay‑Z, and Kanye appear, as, of course, do the mar­tyred icons Big­gie and Tupac. The Beast­ie Boys, De La Soul, Eminem, Nas, Juras­sic 5, J Dil­la, Mos Def, MF Doom, Kool Kei­th, Run the Jew­els… you name ‘em, they’ve prob­a­bly made the cut. The dia­gram–view­able online for free, and pur­chasable for £35.00–even fea­tures the names of ear­ly break­dancers like the Rock Steady Crew and graf­fi­ti artists like Lady Pink and Futu­ra 2000.

As in ear­li­er such charts from Dorothy, like Alter­na­tive Love and Elec­tric Love, fans may find fault with the place­ment of cer­tain fig­ures and groups, and with the choice of empha­sis. Rap abounds in mas­cu­line bravado—and at times no small amount of misogyny—but it should go with­out say­ing that female stars like Salt ‘n’ Pepa, MC Lyte, Queen Lat­i­fah, Mis­sy Elliott, and Lau­ryn Hill are as influ­en­tial as many of the biggest male names on the chart. Yet not one of them gets top billing, so to speak, here. This unfor­tu­nate fact aside, Hip-Hop Love does a very impres­sive job of cat­a­logu­ing and con­nect­ing the most com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful, big-name artists with some of the most under­ground and exper­i­men­tal. Though we asso­ciate artists with par­tic­u­lar regions—Outkast epit­o­mizes the South, for exam­ple, Wu-Tang Clan is New York to the core—the blue­print pulls them all togeth­er, reach­ing out even to UK grime and trip-hop, in a schemat­ic that resem­bles one huge, inter­con­nect­ed elec­tric city. You can get your own copy of the poster online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

Enter the The Cor­nell Hip Hop Archive: A Vast Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion of Hip Hop Pho­tos, Posters & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

40 years ago, David Bowie record­ed “Heroes,” a song that tells the sto­ry of two lovers who embrace in a kiss by the Berlin Wall. How the song was record­ed gets won­der­ful­ly retold by pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti, in a post/video we fea­tured in Jan­u­ary 2016. Don’t miss it.

Above, you can watch Depeche Mod­e’s new cov­er of “Heroes,” record­ed to com­mem­o­rate the 40th anniver­sary of the song’s offi­cial release (Sep­tem­ber 23, 1977). “ ‘Heroes’ is the most spe­cial song to me at the moment,” Depeche Mode front­man Dave Gahan told NME. “Bowie is the one artist who I’ve stuck with since I was in my ear­ly teens. His albums are always my go-to on tour and cov­er­ing ‘Heroes’ is pay­ing homage to Bowie.”

In anoth­er inter­view with Rolling Stone, Gahan talked more about the expe­ri­ence of record­ing this song: “I was so moved, I bare­ly held it togeth­er, to be hon­est.” Watch­ing the per­for­mance, I got a few goose­bumps, I have to admit.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in a Com­ic Ani­ma­tion