I happen to think SICP is a pretty good start for the reason you mention, the simplicity of syntax, in my experience it only gets hairy in the end when you start implement OOP on top of it.

Another good easy to learn as a first language in my experience is Rebol because it allows you to do stuff you ( meaning a person who uses a computer) might want to do quickly (send emails, scrape websites)

Of course another benefit of SICP is that it is written by people who are probably better writers about languages than most of the programmers hired to write programming books and articles.