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Pink Floyd pushed the envelope in the mid-sixties and seventies with a cosmic sound that rolled reverb, screech and feedback into long instrumental arpeggios. Led by virtuoso guitarist Syd Barrett, the band's live-on-tour combination of soulful lyric...more

Pink Floyd pushed the envelope in the mid-sixties and seventies with a cosmic sound that rolled reverb, screech and feedback into long instrumental arpeggios. Led by virtuoso guitarist Syd Barrett, the band's live-on-tour combination of soulful lyrics and palpable melody backed by psychedelic light shows rocked fellow Brits and guaranteed blockbuster status for debut album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." Genius and madman stand cheek by jowl on the scale of creativity, however, and Barrett, already unstable, began a descent into darkness that made him and his music undependable if not frightening. Bassist Roger Watters emerged as the band's next visionary and Pink Floyd's seismic, "Dark Side of the Moon" broke them big-time into the American market. "The Wall" followed in '79, a hit with fans if not their critics due in part to a lighter, more pop-trend sound. "Momentary Lapse of Reason" in '87 and "The Division Bell" in '94 were successful, post-Waters releases, demonstrating that the band could muster a good enough facsimile of their cutting-edge genre to please both devotees of their early music and younger fans whose context for the seventies is a history book....less