The Vindictives - Bike
Pink Floyd - Bike

(Too many covers? Too soon for more Vindictives?)

Did you ever like a band because you were supposed to? When I was first getting into music, my entry way was 'classic rock' mostly via KLSX and their annual Labor Day Top 100 Countdown. One year I taped the top 25 or so and tried desperately to take note of who sang which song. There were a few tracks by Pink Floyd, who up until that point were purely a band I had seen t-shirts for. They seemed good enough and seemed to mentioned in the same breath as The Doors, Zepplin or The Who. So eventually I decided I needed to own at least Dark Side of the Moon. I listened to it a bit (since it was probably among the 6 CDs I owned) but could never totally get into it and let my interest in Pink Floyd fade away.

The story could end there. Or I could have been completely turned off to the band after I discovered just who really listened to Pink Floyd and wore those t-shirts. But whenever "Comfortably Numb" or "Money" came on the radio throughout the years, I'd at least listen for a little while before changing the station.

Harsh Segue.

The Vindictives released a double-10" of all cover songs in the mid-nineties, Partytime for Assholes, which was intended to be a tribute to the various bands but comes closer to a Dickies tribute. One of my first music-geek projects was to compile all of the original songs. This was before the days of the internet and I spent a lot of time listening to friends and digging through bargain 45 bins. I compiled most of the songs but there were a few that always alluded me.

On a random spur, I decided to get out my old CD copy of Partytime where all of the songs are combined into one long track. With my new computer skills, I realized I could finally break up that CD into a listenable version. Then I realized, why don't I just google some of these lyrics for which I never discovered the original artist.

One of the strangest songs covered is "Bike." I always wondered who could sing a song about mouse who hasn't got a house. (I don't why I call him Gerald.) The lyrics seemed almost a perfect for the Vindictives who once sang, "Everything I've got has certain places to go: a self for that thing and a drawer for that thing." And the stripped down punk version leaves a lot to the imagination as to the original music.

Google wasn't exactly straight with me. But I did find a post on someone's MySpace page with the complete lyrics attributed to S. Barrett. A little cross referencing and sure enough, "Bike" is a Pink Floyd tune. Closing out Pink Floyd's debut album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the deceptively simplistic structure and lyrics at the opening of the track mark a harsh contrast to the open orchestrated-noise given a minute-and-a-half in the song's finale. And keep in mind this was released within months of Sgt. Pepper's... There must have been something in the water; I think it was LSD.

(Buy Piper at the Gates of Dawn at Amazon.)
(Buy Partytime for Assholes at Amazon.)