Hey you! Yes, you! Do you get a kick out of buying mundane domestic household objects that used to belong to dead, drug-ravaged hippy singers? You are? Well today is your lucky day – you have the chance to buy Syd Barrett's bread bin.
The family of dead Pink Floyd founder and big-haired, acid-wrecked posho visionary goon Syd Barrett have announced that they are to auction off many of his possessions next week, with some of the proceeds going to charity. And the Syd Barrett auction has apparently stoked up interest from around the world, with global Syd fans eager to snap up things that he owned before he died so that they can tell their friends "See that chest of drawers? That's Syd Barrett's chest of drawers. Yeah, I know."
It's all the rage for singers to auction off their stuff these days, especially if a) it's right before Christmas and b) they're dead. Hardly a day passes without some old John Lennon tat being auctioned off, while still-alive – but strangely embalmed-looking – cannon-straddling power-pop priestess Cher recently made $3.5 million flogging off all her old shit. And whoever got their hands on Jerry Garcia's old toilet is indeed a lucky individual.
Ever since Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett died earlier this year, the charity auction of all his stuff has been inevitable. And now the dreams of the people who wanted to buy a bread bin full of wooden pegs that was made by the man who wrote and performed Dark Globe have been answered, as the Cambridge Evening News reports:
Pink Floyd fans who dream of owning Syd Barrett's plastic Christmas tree will flock from around the world to bid at a Cambridge auction next week. The star – who died of pancreatic cancer in July aged 60 – left a range of bizarre items in his St Margaret's Square, Coleridge, home that will go under the hammer at Cheffins. Lisa Freeman-Bassett, of Cheffins, revealed the auction was already stirring up excitement. She said: "There is world-wide interest- we've had people from Australia phoning up to book tickets. "There is a huge range of items and a range of starting prices. We couldn't possibly say how high they will go."
Among these items are paintings that Syd Barrett painted, chairs that Syd Barrett sat in, notebooks filled with jottings about the weather that Syd Barrett wrote, and Syd Barrett's bike. Syd Barrett's bike is expected to sell for a lot of money because he wrote a song called Bike, and the auction would have probably made a lot more money if Syd Barrett also owned some golden hair, an octopus, a baby and some lemonade. Or if Syd Barrett wrote a song called Look At My Tatty Cushion.
But if you don't succeed in buying any of Syd Barrett's mundane household items, there's always the Christmas day download EP of David Gilmour-performed Syd Barrett songs for you to get your hands on. The downloads available include two versions of Arnold Layne – one featuring vocals by David Bowie – and an acoustic version of Dark Globe.
Yeah, you're better off holding out for the bread bin.
Read more:
Sale of Syd's stuff stirs up worldwide wonder – Cambridge Evening News