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Syd Barrett Tribute: The Madcap Laughs

Maybe it’s true that time heals all wounds. After his death in July 2006, Syd Barrett’s sister insisted Syd had never been really crazy—or, at any rate, that he had not suffered any symptoms of or been treated for mental illness since the 1980s, and prior to that had merely spent some time in a private “home for lost souls.” The girlfriend he beat over the head with a mandolin shortly before the other members of that little band he founded, Pink Floyd, approached a psychiatrist for advice on how to address the “Barrett problem,” might also have the distance now to laugh off his psychoses. Certainly the friends who locked Barrett in a linen closet during a particularly bad acid trip have been joking about it for years. His sister said of those who tried to pull Barrett out of his isolation, which began in 1968 after just three brilliant, weird years with Floyd, “He knew what they wanted but he wasn’t willing to give it to them.” Dave Gutierrez of the Irving Klaws, on the other hand, has been organizing just what Buffalo Floyd fans have wanted for six years now: a night-long tribute to the sad, mad, gorgeous genius of Syd Barrett.

Sunday, January 6. Mohawk Place

47 E. Mohawk Street

(855-3931, mohawkplace.com)