Progressive Rock
Cambridge is hosting a week of events dedicated to Syd Barrett from 3 to 10 October. Barrett would have turned eighty on 6 January this year. Neil Jones, Mark Wilkinson and Rob Ayling are behind it, and everything raised goes to mental health charities.
The exhibition opens on Saturday the 3rd at the Openspace Gallery, 54a Cherry Hinton Road, and runs until the 10th, closed on Monday the 5th. It gathers original Barrett paintings, a signed Mick Rock photograph and work by guest artists.
On Friday the 9th comes “Clowns and Jugglers, The Songs of Syd Barrett”, a double coloured vinyl and double CD of his songs performed by David Gilmour, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, Kula Shaker, Martha Wainwright, Soft Machine, Mystery Jets, Robyn Hitchcock, Rosalie Cunningham, Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats, Love and Henge. Wilkinson designed the sleeve, and the CD carries bonus tracks.
That same Friday holds three events: at 2pm Rob Chapman discusses his biography “A Very Irregular Head”, at 5pm filmmaker Roddy Bogawa presents “Have You Got It Yet?” with outtakes nobody has seen, and at 8.30pm the film screens at the Cambridge Picturehouse with a Q&A. The two afternoon sessions are fifty tickets each.
The concert is on Saturday the 10th, World Mental Health Day, at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, and it is sold out. Kula Shaker headline, with Soft Machine, Men on the Border, Diana Silveira & The Psychedelic Circus, Radhika and Pünk Floyd also playing, and a liquid light show by The Mad Alchemist. “The family wholeheartedly support these exciting events in aid of mental health charities,” says Rosemary Breen, Barrett’s sister.
It is the hall where Barrett gave his last live performance, on 24 February 1972, fifty-four years ago.
Text by Guillem Cardós