Pink Floyd has always had a troubled record in the "greatest hits" department and the original collection is no exception. Relics suffers from two problems: (1) the "hits" aren't really much of hits outside of the opening single, "Arnold Layne" and (2) anyone getting this album to pick up some missing tracks (relics?) will find only half of the album to be of any interest, the rest are picked off the first three albums. On top of all of this, it still leaves out a myriad of songs that were relegated to singles. Admittedly, most of those songs aren't very good, but then again there's plenty of issues with what was included here.
Relics attempts to bridge two very different eras of the band (the Syd Barrett years and the "wanderings" that followed prior to the release of Meddle later in the year). Therefore, the whole experience is a bit jarring.
Even in later years, the quest to make an authoritative greatest hits package remains elusive, with collections like A Foot in the Door being too tepid, aimed at novice listeners, and Echoes pleasing no one with its sequencing and song selection. What the world needs is a true relics collection that finally scoops up all of the odds and ends of the pre-Dark Side of the Moon era. How a song like "Bike" ends up on a zillion different compilations, yet early single "Apples and Oranges" gets nothing is truly a strangeness of the Pink Floyd catalog.
Here's the band on....American Bandstand!
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