The new Syd Barrett doc "Have You Got It Yet?" now playing at the Quad Cinema here in NYC is quite good but very sad if not downright tragic and brought tears to my eyes (and I do not cry very easily). Syd's music, both with Pink Floyd and his own solo albums, and his enormously expressive guitar-playing had a profound effect on me, and I never much liked Pink Floyd after he cracked up and left. Some years ago I got a letter from a UK recording engineer (also named Gary Lucas, funnily enough) who'd recorded one of the 6 or so ill-fated Syd Barrett's Stars gigs in Cambridge in 1972. Many years had passed since and EMI, looking for more Syd material to release, contacted Lucas as they heard he'd recorded one of those Cambridge shows, which featured Twink (John Alder) from The Pretty Things and Pink Fairies on drums. They sent a limo to Lucas's home in Cambridge to pick him up with his tape, which he hadn't listened to since recording the gig. They went into a boardroom at EMI, and put on the tape—and after sitting through what was described to me as an extremely shambolic and discordant gig, the head of EMI A&R announced to the room: "THIS TAPE CAN NEVER COME OUT. IT WILL ONLY SERVE TO TARNISH THE LEGACY OF A LEGEND". Anyway, in 1986 or so Rolo McGinty of the Woodentops and I went into Elephant Studios in the Docklands part of East London and recorded this tribute to Syd with ace engineer Harold Burgon. For best audio fidelity listen to our version on my SoundCloud page.