Amazingly, it has taken until 2024 for somebody to release a project under the name ‘Punk Floyd’. Perhaps, in fact, it hasn’t – maybe this is a name that has been used incessantly and I’m just unaware of it. Obviously, I know of the jokey reference in the Rutles movie but has anyone used the name for an existing project? Surely there is, at the very least, a tribute band out there playing Pink Floyd songs in a punky style. Feel free to chip in with examples in the comments.
Anyway, the latest all-star (we’re using the word ‘star’ cautiously here) collection of cover versions from Cleopatra Records takes a different tack to their usual facsimile projects, by having a bunch of punky old farts covering Pink Floyd songs. Perhaps this is not as unlikely as it sounds. The ‘anti-prog’ year zero sloganeering of the punks of ’77 always had more to do with posturing than genuine contempt – while the kids on the street probably did have a very real hatred for all the swaggering rock gods of old (while worshipping a new generation of swaggering punk rock gods, but there you go) the bands themselves – at least that first wave of acts like the Sex Pistols and the Damned – had closeted love of old hippies and complex time changes. The Pistols might have worn ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirts but was anyone really convinced?
In any case, the Floyd were far removed from the sort of pompous prog that was (temporarily) brought down by punk – Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes and the like. The band simply got on with what they did, effectively ignoring punk (though, by coincidence I’m sure, 1977’s Animals has more political fury and social commentary than was found on most punk records). As the poster band for punk anger, they always seemed an odd choice. And as years went by, the old punks gradually revealed their admiration for Pink Floyd – first through the work of Syd Barrett, who offered a safe entry point (Syd, after all, had left the band after one album and was a whimsical eccentric) and then beyond into the whole back catalogue. It’s hard to complain about boring old farts when your band has been around for half a decade, I suppose. Of course, the old punk fans tended to cling to their animosity into middle age, while documentary makers also stuck with the myth that punk changed everything and that it was a good thing.
So. Punk Floyd. A tribute album from acts that we might kindly describe as second-division punk acts. Or, more kindly, second-wave, the bands that came along once the punk revolution was underway. Let’s dig in, shall we?
The album opens with Eater performing Eclipse, the closing track from Dark Side of the Moon. An odd choice for the first track on a record, even in a bouncily generic punk version that comes with metalised guitar breaks. It’s not bad – a bit anonymous, perhaps, but it’s good to see that the band have learned to play since their 1977 debut.
Jah Wobble and Jon Klein’s cover of Time (again from Dark Side of the Moon) takes a similar direction, and this is the point where I begin to see the potential problem with this project. One laid-back Floyd song sped up and backed with riffing guitars and the sort of solos that old punks would have thrown their hands up in horror at is fine. An entire album full of covers like this will get old rather quickly though. But let’s carry on.
Next, we have U.K. Subs covering Comfortably Numb. There’s a certain irony in the fact Subs frontman Charlie Harper was older than many an old fart back in 1977 – born in 1944, he’s two years older than David Gilmour. While the previous two tracks are solid enough, this cover is all over the place and feels like a band going through the motions. It begs the question – how many of the bands that appear on these ‘tribute’ compilations are simply doing so for the money? I rather imagine that the answer is ‘all of them’, though I can’t imagine that Cleopatra is paying a fortune. Here’s the thing – every one of these albums seems to feature many of the same artists and none of them feels as though there has been much thought put into things. The idea of ‘Punk Floyd’ seems to be to play the song a bit faster than the original with punky guitar riffing. I suppose that this is better than snarky piss-taking, but it feels rather lazy, as though everything has been knocked out on demand as quickly as possible.
What’s next? Astronomy Domine by Fear. Well, this has potential – a heavy slice of psych trippiness from Pink Floyd’s first LP, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. For a moment, it seems that Fear is going to give the track a Black Sabbathesque doom rock interpretation, but this is lost the moment Lee Ving starts to sing; then, everything becomes very generic again save for moments of discordance that might be impressive if they didn’t just ape the breakdowns of the original. In the end, this feels like a long and difficult slog – and it is only two and a half minutes long.
Next up it is Skids – fucking hell, really? Are they still going? Bizarrely, their cover of Breathe is the best thing here, even though it doesn’t feel very ‘punk’ – it’s a moody, groovy cover and finally, something feels as though the band has put more than a cursory effort in. The best covers take a song and make it feel fresh and new, entirely removed from the original while still respecting it. That’s what we get here. The mind boggles.
The Dead Boys take on Pigs on the Wing, the minute-long acoustic opener and closer from Animals. How are they going to drag this out for four minutes? Well, by duplicating the track perfectly (other than getting the lyrics wrong, swapping ‘buggers’ for ‘bothers’ if my ears don’t deceive me), with a cack-handed bit of guitar-soloing in the middle. To be fair, the 8-track version of Animals joins the two parts together in a similar – if more musical – fashion, so there is no invention at all at work here.
Peter and the Test Tube Babies take on Bike from Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and this isn’t exactly a stretch to punk up, given that it was a bit of a chaotic thrasher to begin with. As such, it’s perfectly efficient, but like the tracks on the previous Cleopatra Pink Floyd tribute that I’d heard, it is entirely pointless unless you have a restraining order against you, preventing you from playing actual Pink Floyd records.
The Queers also stick to the safety of Syd Barrett with See Emily Play and while this cover doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it’s a solid cover, rocked up but with a pleasing retro psych organ swirl running through it. It sounds effectively retro and is certainly an album highlight. But here we are, eight tracks in and we’re still only halfway through. if nothing else, these albums don’t skimp on the content.
With D.I.’s Brain Damage, we’re back to the fairly generic punked-up style of the opening tracks. I don’t want to labour the point but really, you can ‘punk up’ anything by playing it fast and it reminds me of those compilations of identical American novelty punk bands who all seem to have taken their idea of what punk is from the Toy Dolls. Except that the Toy Dolls were clearly having fun with Nelly the Elephant, whereas these acts just seem to be going through the motions. Who is this album for, I wonder? I honestly can’t work out who will be buying it. Not old punks, not Pink Floyd fans, and certainly not young people. These albums clearly sell, or else there wouldn’t be so many of them. But the whole thing just feels baffling.
Next, it’s the Anti Nowhere League, who have form with lively cover versions. What will they do with Hey You from The Wall? Their cover is unexpectedly quite effective, taking on board the original song’s slowly building intensity and they give it a certain moodiness and atmosphere. Listening to this track, a thought struck me. Let’s say that these old bands have maintained the punk animosity towards Pink Floyd over the years based on an assumption of what they did – maybe a focus on the musical style rather than the songs themselves. I wonder if they came to this with the idea of piss-taking, then read the lyrics and realised that the songs are often bleaker, angrier and darker than most nihilistic punk. Maybe, maybe not. It does strike me that lyrically, Pink Floyd post-1972 are closer to the spirit of punk than most people acknowledge.
A lot of the Barrett-era Pink Floyd is also not hugely removed from punk in nature, and Lucifer Sam seems a shoo-in for covering. A pity, then, that MDC’s version is a mess, unsure if it wants to be full-on punk or a bit psychedelic or just shouty nonsense. Dreadful stuff.
The Nile Song, probably the Floyd’s heaviest, thrashiest number, is oddly watered down by The Members, who at least give it a slight stoner rock vibe, which feels rather appropriate. It seems odd that a cover of a 1969 Pink Floyd song by an old punk band would be more psychedelic and less noisy than the original, but there it is.
The most original cover here might be by the Angry Samoans, who get Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two), Pink Floyd’s unexpected disco-flavoured song that became the final British Number One single of the 1970s (and the first of the 1980s). Look, you either like the determined wackiness of the Angry Samoans or you don’t. I don’t, so this was always going to be a struggle for me. There’s a level of contrivance here that irks me, even if the band has unquestionably made the song their own. But it might grow on me.
The Vibrators get Pink Floyd’s debut single Arnold Layne, a nice, safe option for a punk band. And they do a decent enough version, never pushing the boat out too far from the original. And this is where the vinyl LP ends. I’ll be damned if I can think of why anyone would buy something like this on vinyl, but there it is. For those of you opting for the CD or streaming versions, there are three more tracks to enjoy. I wonder what the bands not considered worthy of the LP think about being relegated to ‘bonus track’ status? I doubt that they care, but boy, imagine being relegated to the has-beens on a project like this.
JFA’s cover of Money has a backing track that sounds less like punk riffing and more like an audio sample that is caught in a loop, but it does suddenly slip into a Sixties groove midway through, grafting the Beatles’ Money into the song – two covers for the price of one! It’s all a bit of a mess, to be honest, with more time signature changes than the average ELP track.
Interstellar Overdrive is not exactly the hardest Pink Floyd track to punkify, and Chrome’s version is suitable experimental and avant-garde. Given that the original track was essentially an opening and closing riff that the band could then improvise during, this version feels like an authentic – if rather too short – interpretation. It’s an album highlight – but is it punk? No. Is Chrome punk? I’m not so sure.
The final track sees Vibrators frontman Knox return for a second go, with Gigolo Aunt. You may be aware that this is not a Pink Floyd song at all, instead being a Syd Barrett solo number. But let’s not split hairs. This is an album highlight, in fact, a bouncy little track that captures the vibe of Barrett’s ramshackle original while giving it more of a groove. It’s a foot-tapper, and if it sounds more 1970s glam than punk… well, I’m not going to complain.
And there you have it. A fairly pointless exercise that would benefit from being chopped down – being generous, I would keep nine of the seventeen tracks here. But none of them feels essential, and I say this as someone who loves a cover version. Perhaps if you listened to the tracks one or two at a time, it might seem less unnecessary – wading through the entire album in one sitting became rather exhausting. I do wonder, though, if the whole multi-artist ‘tribute album’ idea has been run into the ground. When this sort of thing first began, there seemed to be a sincerity to it that has been lost as more and more of the damn things emerge, often with the same bands popping up again and again. Did anyone involved in this genuinely want to pay tribute to Pink Floyd? God knows. While the press release for the record tries to present it as an act of reconciliation and forgiveness, you might take a more cynical view of the whole thing.
In any case, should you wish to explore further, you can listen to Fear’s Astronomy Domine here.
DAVID FLINT
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