Seriously. Polka Floyd is a Pink Floyd revival band from the Toledo, OH, area, whose particular schtick is that they play Pink Floyd polka-style. Not all of the time. Sometimes they play it pretty straight. Other times it's got that polka beat and polka sound. But put it all together and it's Polka Floyd and it is nothing less than very, very strong "Echoes" of Pink Floyd. I mean, as in fabulous.
My old Toledo/Bowling Green friends introduced me to Polka Floyd on a recent visit to northwest Ohio. Yeah, yeah, we went to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, where they were featuring some band called the Rolling Rocks, or something like that. Oh, wait, Rolling Stones, yeah, that's it.
But then we drove back home to Toledo and caught Polka Floyd at an Octoberfest celebration somewhere in Toledo, I couldn't say where. I wasn't driving.
We got there must in time to hear their set from "The Wall." The temperature was plummeting and it was starting to rain. Over the next two hours it probably hit 45 degrees with a half-inch of rain. It was not pretty. But Polka Floyd held our attention.
"The Wall" set opened with "In the Flesh." You know: "So ya thought ya might like to go to a show/To feel that warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow/Well, I got some bad news for you sunshine/Pink isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel/And he sent us along as a surrogate band/Tonight we'll find out where you fans really stand." Yeah, that one.
"Are there any Polacks in the audience tonight," Polka Floyd continued. "Get 'em up against the wall.... If I had my way, I'd buy you all shots."(Oh, that's not the original lyric? Well, what did you expect? This is polka.)
But the music...the music is vintage Pink Floyd. Lead guitarist Ken Haas has managed somehow to clone David Gilmour, mirroring his most famous guitar solos note for note (and I mean that in a good way), but over the top of a polka beat. It's not academic, it's not studious, it's not fawning. It captures the eloquence of Gilmour and Floyd, and if anything adds energy. You know, polka energy.
The set continued with "Another Brick in the Wall" and lots more of "The Wall." But finally they got to "Run Like Hell" and, OK, now I had to have their live CD featuring the song (Live at the Ohio Theater). It's a Pink Floyd fave, of course, with the most beautiful energetic guitar wash by Gilmour which, again, Haas replicates perfectly (again, in a good, good way). And the lyrics are delivered with tremendous energy by Haas, accordionist Eric Hite and bassist Chris Zielinski. They just flat out nail it.
One other thing they nail is the screaming and shouting on "The Wall." "Okay, okay, just a little pin-prick/There'll be no more AHHHHH!!!! but you might feel a little sick."
Later, they closed the show--well, okay, not quite--with "Echoes," the 22 minute magnus opus from side 2 of "Meddle," complete with the instrumental section consisting of outer space/animal noises, though I have to admit that part was truncated a little bit. This was all done complete straight, no polka, no tricks.
So, like I said, I bought the CD, and it has all kinds of other stuff on it. I mean, no, it does not have "Echoes," but it has "Welcome to the Machine" and a couple of Syd Barrett oldies and "Seamus" and stuff like that. And it's just absolutely uncanny how much they sound like Pink Floyd, except of course when they crank up the polka beat and the accordion.
Well, except for one thing. The vocals are delivered with energy and passion, as I said. But sometimes they don't sound that good. Haas is a mediocre singer, Hite is, well, a mediocre singer, Zielinski--well, there's a reason why Haas is the lead singer. The vocals are mostly passable, sometimes worse, sometimes better, as when there's a scream or a shout to be interjected.
But mostly their appeal is in Haas' ability to replicate Gilmour's most famous guitar parts. It is just absolutely amazing. And, sure, they're a novelty act. The bloom probably wears off the rose after while. But I've seen them once, and I've listened to their CD 6 or 8 times, and it ain't worn off yet.
So for all you folks in the Toledo or Detroit areas who happen to like Pink Floyd, Polka Floyd is very, very highly recommended. In fact, don't miss 'em.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Monday, July 29, 2013
C.J. Chenier, the High 48s and the Lowertown Roots & Blues Fest
I think they said it was the 3rd annual Lowertown Roots Music Festival at Mears Park in St. Paul. More to the point, it's part of what seems to be an endless stream of music coming from Mears Park, which is a fine little venue. It's just 1 single square city block, and it's hemmed it by trees and water features, so the open area in the center in front of the bandshell is pretty small. Intimate would be another word for it, even though it's outdoors.
There was plenty of room Saturday July 27, however, for the hardy souls who braved the wet 60 degree weather to see C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band close the show following terrific sets by the High 48s and Randy Sabien's Violin Roots Ensemble (as they were advertised) or Randy Sabien and the Fiddlehead Band (as they introduced themselves from the stage). Nordic Angst and Paul Dahlin Spelmanslag also performed.
Event organizers provided a few rows of seating directly in front of the stage, with ample room behind that for folks who brought their own seating or who preferred to stand or to dance. And if you wanna dance, it doesn't get much better than C.J. and his Red Hots. They call it zydeco but rock 'n roll would be as good a description--rootsy, '50s and early '60s style rock 'n roll, before it got all artsy and poetic and all of that. It was just good visceral music in those days, and that's what Chenier and friends are playing now. I don't think I've seen a clutch of dancers who looked like they were having more fun than these folks did on Saturday night.
Still, for my taste, give me the High 48s and their traditional bluegrass. I'd never seen them but as 1 bluegrass fan sitting nearby said, "They're way better than Monroe Crossing." The 1st thing that jumped out at me was the creative, powerful and impeccably executed banjo picking of Anthony Ihrig. And the last thing was a total kick-out-the-jams fiddle solo by Eric Christopher on the chestnut "Orange Blossom Special."
Now, I'm not really a total fan of guys singing through their noses and that's what you get with traditional bluegrass but I was willing to overlook it a bit here because these guys are just so freaking good and tight as an instrumental ensemble, and they played 3 or 4 instrumentals including Ihrig's terrific "Over the Clover."
Very highly recommended.
The event is co-sponsored by the McNally & Smith Music School where Randy Sabien teaches violin or fiddle or both. His ensemble consisted of guitar, bass, drums and 3-count 'em--3 fiddles. I was told that the other 2 fiddles (alongside Sabien) were his students. They played at a professional level if you asked me. I'd call their style sort of a light country-rock with a hint of jazz. Very pleasant. I would hope to see them again sometime.
Nordic Angst, on the other hand, was a bit dull. They do traditional Scandanavian (Norwegian, mostly) folk tunes with a bit of 21st century attitude including some nice electric guitar work. But they talked at way too great a length about where the songs came from and what they meant. Just play the freakin' tune!
My wife and I hung in for 6-and-a-half hours despite the cold, rainy weather. The music and the venue proved good enough to overcome and to provide an overall positive feeling the next morning.
There was plenty of room Saturday July 27, however, for the hardy souls who braved the wet 60 degree weather to see C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band close the show following terrific sets by the High 48s and Randy Sabien's Violin Roots Ensemble (as they were advertised) or Randy Sabien and the Fiddlehead Band (as they introduced themselves from the stage). Nordic Angst and Paul Dahlin Spelmanslag also performed.
Event organizers provided a few rows of seating directly in front of the stage, with ample room behind that for folks who brought their own seating or who preferred to stand or to dance. And if you wanna dance, it doesn't get much better than C.J. and his Red Hots. They call it zydeco but rock 'n roll would be as good a description--rootsy, '50s and early '60s style rock 'n roll, before it got all artsy and poetic and all of that. It was just good visceral music in those days, and that's what Chenier and friends are playing now. I don't think I've seen a clutch of dancers who looked like they were having more fun than these folks did on Saturday night.
Still, for my taste, give me the High 48s and their traditional bluegrass. I'd never seen them but as 1 bluegrass fan sitting nearby said, "They're way better than Monroe Crossing." The 1st thing that jumped out at me was the creative, powerful and impeccably executed banjo picking of Anthony Ihrig. And the last thing was a total kick-out-the-jams fiddle solo by Eric Christopher on the chestnut "Orange Blossom Special."
Now, I'm not really a total fan of guys singing through their noses and that's what you get with traditional bluegrass but I was willing to overlook it a bit here because these guys are just so freaking good and tight as an instrumental ensemble, and they played 3 or 4 instrumentals including Ihrig's terrific "Over the Clover."
Very highly recommended.
The event is co-sponsored by the McNally & Smith Music School where Randy Sabien teaches violin or fiddle or both. His ensemble consisted of guitar, bass, drums and 3-count 'em--3 fiddles. I was told that the other 2 fiddles (alongside Sabien) were his students. They played at a professional level if you asked me. I'd call their style sort of a light country-rock with a hint of jazz. Very pleasant. I would hope to see them again sometime.
Nordic Angst, on the other hand, was a bit dull. They do traditional Scandanavian (Norwegian, mostly) folk tunes with a bit of 21st century attitude including some nice electric guitar work. But they talked at way too great a length about where the songs came from and what they meant. Just play the freakin' tune!
My wife and I hung in for 6-and-a-half hours despite the cold, rainy weather. The music and the venue proved good enough to overcome and to provide an overall positive feeling the next morning.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Best Rock Songs of "the 1960s"
When people talk about the 1960s--especially when they're talking about music or politics--they really mean the period from 1963 or 1964 to sometime in the early 1970s.
The "conceptual 1960s," you might say, seems to call on rock 'n roll, hippies, anti-war sentiment, free love and stuff like that. All in all, the 1960s are not recalled fondly by many, and the negatives are the various protest movements, primarily, though civil rights protests are remembered somewhat fondly. The real pre-cursor or prototype of the anti-war protests was the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964-1965. This occurred about the time the anti-war movement was gathering, though it is true that the anti-war movement did not achieve critical mass until the Tet Offensive of 1968.
One other way to think about the 1960s, however, was that the first of the decade's horribly tragic events--the assassination of JFK, the snuffing out of Camelot--occurred on November 22, 1963. It was less than 3 months later--on February 9, 1964--that the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Musically, this can be seen as a clear beginning of the "conceptual 1960s."
Then in 1971 Hunter Thompson wrote of the youth movement, "There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.… And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…
"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
So the "conceptual 1960s" had ended, to an unusually perceptive eye--"the right kind of eyes"--by 1971. For most of us, the realization of this truth did not come until a little later, but just because we hadn't seen it doesn't mean the wave hadn't broken.
There you have it--"the 1960s," psychologically, were 1964 to 1971. So here are the greatest rock 'n roll songs of the period 1964 to 1971. You'll see that I lean heavily to songs from 1970 and 1971. this was the short-lived golden age of rock 'n roll.
1. Desolation Row--Bob Dylan (1965). What an amazing kaleidoscope of images, right from postcards of the hanging, "the circus is in town" and a beauty parlor filled with sailors to the Titanic sailing and lovely mermaids flowing. Then there's "the riot squad they're restless/they need somewhere to go" and "at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew/come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do" and "when you asked me how I was doing/was that some kind of joke?" Eleven minutes of, well, desolation. Fellini-esque, they said, or influenced by Alan Ginsburg, which Dylan sort of confirmed, saying that "Desolation Row" came from "that New York type period, when all the songs were city songs. (Ginsburg's) poetry is city poetry. Sounds like the city." Al Kooper, who played electric guitar on early takes of "Desolation Row," but not the Highway 61 version, said that "Desolation Row" was Eighth Avenue in Manhattan with its "whore houses, sleazy bars and porno supermarkets." Who, exactly, is the blind commissioner or Cinderella or Ophelia or Dr. Filth or the Phantom of the Opera? I have not even seen anybody willing to hazard a guess.
It has also been reported that the song may refer to the lynching of 3 black men in Duluth, MN, Dylan's birthplace, in 1920. The 3 were employed by a circus that had come to Duluth, and they sold postcards of the 3 bodies hanging from a light pole.
The Highway 61 version was recorded August 4, 1965, with country/folk wizard Charlie McCoy on acoustic lead guitar. An earlier version (July 29) with Kooper on guitar was released on a 2005 collection, The Bootleg Series Volume 7. It's played at a mid-tempo so that there's plenty of space to articulate and for listeners to clearly hear and comprehend the lyrics. McCoy's fills keep the music interesting without getting in the way. The vocal is understated, laconic. When 1 discovers in the final verse that the singer, too, is trapped on "Desolation Row," that seems reasonable. He's not just an on-looker, he's part of the "circus" that he describes.
2. Echoes--Pink Floyd (1971). David Gilmour's guitar work on The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall may be considered to be prototypical of his work and representative of his best work, but to me "Echoes" is his greatest work and most representative. If somebody hasn't heard Gilmour's or Pink Floyd's work and wanted to know what his guitar sounds like, this would be the example as far as I'm concerned: Beautiful, silky, languid, single-note guitar leads, that's what Gilmour contributed to the genre of rock 'n roll guitar. And let's be honest. As much as Roger Waters contributed to Pink Floyd's success and to its sound and to its legacy with his lyrics and thematic concepts, it is indeed Gilmour's guitar that makes Pink Floyd Pink Floyd.
"Echoes" is somewhat unusual in Pink Floyd's work because there's an optimistic tone. Something positive is going to come of this human striving. Much of their work dwells more on the dark side.
It's a song about a girl who "used to dress so fine" but "Now you don't seem so proud/About having to be scrounging for your next meal.... Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street/But now you're gonna have to get used to it...." And then the famous chorus: "How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone."
But this song, unlike "Desolation Row," it's also about the music, the sensational music. Here, the music gets very much in the way, boldly, spectacularly. Al Kooper, a young and not particularly well-established guitarist, was invited to the session by producer Tom Wilson. However, it was only with Wilson out of the room that Kooper snuck over to the organ and played his now-famous organ filigree. When the track was played back, Wilson objected to the organ part saying Kooper was "not an organ player." Dylan, on the other hand, insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix.
Despite the song's 6 minute length--and the fact that many radio stations therefore would not play the song--it went to #2 on the Billboard charts. Rolling Stone has twice (2004, 2011) put the song at #1 on its list of the top 500 songs of all-time.
The "conceptual 1960s," you might say, seems to call on rock 'n roll, hippies, anti-war sentiment, free love and stuff like that. All in all, the 1960s are not recalled fondly by many, and the negatives are the various protest movements, primarily, though civil rights protests are remembered somewhat fondly. The real pre-cursor or prototype of the anti-war protests was the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964-1965. This occurred about the time the anti-war movement was gathering, though it is true that the anti-war movement did not achieve critical mass until the Tet Offensive of 1968.
One other way to think about the 1960s, however, was that the first of the decade's horribly tragic events--the assassination of JFK, the snuffing out of Camelot--occurred on November 22, 1963. It was less than 3 months later--on February 9, 1964--that the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Musically, this can be seen as a clear beginning of the "conceptual 1960s."
Then in 1971 Hunter Thompson wrote of the youth movement, "There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.… And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…
"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
So the "conceptual 1960s" had ended, to an unusually perceptive eye--"the right kind of eyes"--by 1971. For most of us, the realization of this truth did not come until a little later, but just because we hadn't seen it doesn't mean the wave hadn't broken.
There you have it--"the 1960s," psychologically, were 1964 to 1971. So here are the greatest rock 'n roll songs of the period 1964 to 1971. You'll see that I lean heavily to songs from 1970 and 1971. this was the short-lived golden age of rock 'n roll.
1. Desolation Row--Bob Dylan (1965). What an amazing kaleidoscope of images, right from postcards of the hanging, "the circus is in town" and a beauty parlor filled with sailors to the Titanic sailing and lovely mermaids flowing. Then there's "the riot squad they're restless/they need somewhere to go" and "at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew/come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do" and "when you asked me how I was doing/was that some kind of joke?" Eleven minutes of, well, desolation. Fellini-esque, they said, or influenced by Alan Ginsburg, which Dylan sort of confirmed, saying that "Desolation Row" came from "that New York type period, when all the songs were city songs. (Ginsburg's) poetry is city poetry. Sounds like the city." Al Kooper, who played electric guitar on early takes of "Desolation Row," but not the Highway 61 version, said that "Desolation Row" was Eighth Avenue in Manhattan with its "whore houses, sleazy bars and porno supermarkets." Who, exactly, is the blind commissioner or Cinderella or Ophelia or Dr. Filth or the Phantom of the Opera? I have not even seen anybody willing to hazard a guess.
It has also been reported that the song may refer to the lynching of 3 black men in Duluth, MN, Dylan's birthplace, in 1920. The 3 were employed by a circus that had come to Duluth, and they sold postcards of the 3 bodies hanging from a light pole.
The Highway 61 version was recorded August 4, 1965, with country/folk wizard Charlie McCoy on acoustic lead guitar. An earlier version (July 29) with Kooper on guitar was released on a 2005 collection, The Bootleg Series Volume 7. It's played at a mid-tempo so that there's plenty of space to articulate and for listeners to clearly hear and comprehend the lyrics. McCoy's fills keep the music interesting without getting in the way. The vocal is understated, laconic. When 1 discovers in the final verse that the singer, too, is trapped on "Desolation Row," that seems reasonable. He's not just an on-looker, he's part of the "circus" that he describes.
2. Echoes--Pink Floyd (1971). David Gilmour's guitar work on The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall may be considered to be prototypical of his work and representative of his best work, but to me "Echoes" is his greatest work and most representative. If somebody hasn't heard Gilmour's or Pink Floyd's work and wanted to know what his guitar sounds like, this would be the example as far as I'm concerned: Beautiful, silky, languid, single-note guitar leads, that's what Gilmour contributed to the genre of rock 'n roll guitar. And let's be honest. As much as Roger Waters contributed to Pink Floyd's success and to its sound and to its legacy with his lyrics and thematic concepts, it is indeed Gilmour's guitar that makes Pink Floyd Pink Floyd.
"Echoes" is somewhat unusual in Pink Floyd's work because there's an optimistic tone. Something positive is going to come of this human striving. Much of their work dwells more on the dark side.
3. Good Vibrations--Beach Boys (1966). Some say it was the Stones, but the fact is that the Beatles' real doppelganger is Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Like the Beatles, they grew up and were introduced to pop fans as white rock 'n roll, borrowing black forms but playing them in ways that were quite unmistakably their own. Each had the wit and wisdom, however, to branch out after popularity had been achieved. The Beatles' evolution from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to Sgt. Pepper's is well known. The Beach Boys travels from "Surfin' U.S.A.," which cleverly superimposed the white California teen world on to Chuck Berry's rock 'n roll forms and style, to "Good Vibrations" is perhaps being forgotten. Both are of course regarded has hopelessly light weight now in the 21st century. But when you consider where rock 'n roll was in 1962, before the appearance of either, the Beach Boys deserve almost the same credit as the Beatles for turning it from a dying fad into a genre that has dominated pop music for 50 years.
"Good Vibrations" is the crowning achievement of the band's 2nd period, their progressive, experimental period. Aside from the quirky theremin (OK, there was also a cello), it uses the same materials as the band's earlier material--that is to say, 4 or 5 great singing voices--to build an incredible sound and an incredible song. Surprisingly, it was only their 3rd #1 hit. (It was their 13th top 10 hit, and their last for a decade.) But aside from simply being a great song in its own right, it also showed that whatever the Beatles could do, Brian Wilson could do. Well, of course, except that Wilson and the Beach Boys couldn't do it again (pardon the pun).
4. What's Going On?--Marvin Gaye (1971). The most unlikely and the most eloquent of the protest music of the period. It didn't sound like protest music and it wasn't strident and bossy and arrogant like most white boy rock 'n roll. But my goodness: "Mother, mother/There's to many of your crying/Brother, brother, brother/There's far too many of you dying/You know, we've got to find a way/To bring some lovin' here today.... Father, father/We don't need to escalate/You see, war is not the answer/For only love can conquer hate/You know, we've got to find a way/To bring some lovin' here today." But of course father, father eventually shot his son, Marvin Gaye, dead, so maybe love don't conquer hate after all. I don't know.
5. Like A Rolling Stone--Bob Dylan (1965). Bookends. "Like A Rolling Stone" opens Highway 61, "Desolation Row" closes it. The 2 greatest songs from 1 of rock 'n roll's greatest artists. No wonder Highway 61 rates as the greatest rock 'n roll LP of all-time. Wikipedia says the song "transformed Dylan's career and is today considered one of the most influential compositions in post-war popular music and has since its release been both a music industry and a popular culture milestone....""Good Vibrations" is the crowning achievement of the band's 2nd period, their progressive, experimental period. Aside from the quirky theremin (OK, there was also a cello), it uses the same materials as the band's earlier material--that is to say, 4 or 5 great singing voices--to build an incredible sound and an incredible song. Surprisingly, it was only their 3rd #1 hit. (It was their 13th top 10 hit, and their last for a decade.) But aside from simply being a great song in its own right, it also showed that whatever the Beatles could do, Brian Wilson could do. Well, of course, except that Wilson and the Beach Boys couldn't do it again (pardon the pun).
4. What's Going On?--Marvin Gaye (1971). The most unlikely and the most eloquent of the protest music of the period. It didn't sound like protest music and it wasn't strident and bossy and arrogant like most white boy rock 'n roll. But my goodness: "Mother, mother/There's to many of your crying/Brother, brother, brother/There's far too many of you dying/You know, we've got to find a way/To bring some lovin' here today.... Father, father/We don't need to escalate/You see, war is not the answer/For only love can conquer hate/You know, we've got to find a way/To bring some lovin' here today." But of course father, father eventually shot his son, Marvin Gaye, dead, so maybe love don't conquer hate after all. I don't know.
It's a song about a girl who "used to dress so fine" but "Now you don't seem so proud/About having to be scrounging for your next meal.... Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street/But now you're gonna have to get used to it...." And then the famous chorus: "How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone."
But this song, unlike "Desolation Row," it's also about the music, the sensational music. Here, the music gets very much in the way, boldly, spectacularly. Al Kooper, a young and not particularly well-established guitarist, was invited to the session by producer Tom Wilson. However, it was only with Wilson out of the room that Kooper snuck over to the organ and played his now-famous organ filigree. When the track was played back, Wilson objected to the organ part saying Kooper was "not an organ player." Dylan, on the other hand, insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix.
Despite the song's 6 minute length--and the fact that many radio stations therefore would not play the song--it went to #2 on the Billboard charts. Rolling Stone has twice (2004, 2011) put the song at #1 on its list of the top 500 songs of all-time.
6. A Day in the Life--The Beatles (1967).
And then there's the recurring line, "I'd love to turn you on." So, yes, it's a drug song. Then there's the trippy orchestral crescendo between the 2 big sections of the song, and the final piano chord that is allowed to resonate for over 40 seconds before fading away. All taken as the Beatles' effort to appeal to stoned listeners which, of course, it did. Wikipedia calls it "one of the most famous final chords in music history."
Sgt. Pepper's is generally regarded as the Beatles' greatest album. But for "A Day in the Life," however, it wouldn't even be in the conversation.
And then there's the recurring line, "I'd love to turn you on." So, yes, it's a drug song. Then there's the trippy orchestral crescendo between the 2 big sections of the song, and the final piano chord that is allowed to resonate for over 40 seconds before fading away. All taken as the Beatles' effort to appeal to stoned listeners which, of course, it did. Wikipedia calls it "one of the most famous final chords in music history."
Sgt. Pepper's is generally regarded as the Beatles' greatest album. But for "A Day in the Life," however, it wouldn't even be in the conversation.
7.
California Dreamin’--The
Mamas and the Papas (1965). The Mamas and the Papas' 1st LP was titled If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, and it was a more apt title than folks could possibly understand today. Because the sound of "California Dreamin,'" at the time, was unheard of. The 4 strong voices with a super-live, forward mix, just leaped out of transistor radios and grabbed listeners by the throat. And then there were the "eyes," to whom the group appealed mainly with the alluring looks of Michelle Phillips but the overall hippie-fied look of all 4 singers. And of course California was at its peak of hip. Young people all over America were California Dreamin' at the time. It was where dreams came true. The whole package is exhibit #1 for the genius (tragic genius) of Papa John Phillips, who concocted the whole enterprise but then couldn't keep it going due to a variety of factors including his own drug addiction. But that's just 1 more way that he represented while also transcending the era.
8 (tie). Brown-Eyed Girl--Van Morrison (1967).
8 (tie). Moondance--Van Morrison (1970). What a curse, to have recorded his greatest song so early in his career. But let's be honest, Van Morrison, as great as he has been and has continued to be, has never quite matched "Brown-Eyed Girl." Anybody who has ever dated a brown-eyed girl has been sucked into this song and it will give a little thrill every time you hear it until the day you die. In an era that somewhat eschewed the love song, this one is as pure a love song as the era has to offer.
Except that "Moondance" would be a very close second in every respect. What a beautiful languid melody, gently rising and falling. And on the chorus--"And all the night's magic seems to whisper and hush/And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush/Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love...."--just the slightest increase of intensity is just thrilling, it's magic.
15 (tie). A Whiter Shade of Pale--Procol Harum (1967).
15 (tie). Light My Fire--The Doors (1967). Two incredible keyboard-based records from the same year. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was one of those songs, like "California Dreamin,'" that caused people to sit up and say, Who the hell is that? What the hell is that? It sounded like Percy Sledge, but the big organ sound was playing a Bach melody and then there was this: "We skipped the light fandango/Turned cartwheels cross the floor/I was feeling kinda seasick/But the crowd called out for more/The room was humming harder/As the ceiling flew away/When we called outfor another drink/The waiter brought a tray...." And I don't know about you, I have no idea what in the hell it is about, but it stuck in my imagination from then until now.
"Girl we couldn't get much higher." Take that, Ed Sullivan. The Doors, or more properly, Jim Morrison was the bad boy among bad boys, making Mick Jagger, for example, look like a choir boy. But he and his band entered the rock music scene in 1967 with a big bang called "Light My Fire," an irresistible little ditty about, well, you know, even before you heard that big long beautiful keyboard solo by Ray Manzarek. Their sound was absolutely unique and "Light My Fire" remains to this day their 1st and greatest song.
16. All My Loving--The Beatles (1964). It's a pretty simple, straight-ahead pop-rock song with a great little guitar solo and (mostly) a typical soaring, enthusiastic Paul McCartney vocal.
e, not all of their best music is from 1967.
17 (tie). 1983--Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968). 1
17 (tie). All Along the Watchtower--Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968). "1983" is a long slow psychedelic blues about living underwater after the nuclear holocaust. It's hard to rate "1983" ahead of "All Along the Watchtower," both from one of the best rock albums ever, Electric Ladyland, but there it is. "Watchtower" is of course Hendrix' cover of Bob Dylan, a version that helped make the legend of both artists.
18. Closing My Eyes--Fleetwood Mac (1969). So much more of early rock 'n roll--and especially British rock 'n roll--is borrowed directly from black American music than most today could possible be aware of. And the greatest interpreter of black American music among the 1st and 2nd British invasion is also largely forgotten today. That would be Peter Green, founder and leader of what was at the time called Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. The Fleetwood Mac that people today are generally familiar with came much later. Then Play On is Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac's masterpiece though the LP was released under the name Fleetwood Mac only. It was Peter Green's last Fleetwood Mac LP and it is the British blues at its very finest--not merely derivative, as most British blues previous to this was--but original, unique...but still bluesy. In fact, if you're in need of a downer, this is your LP and "Closing My Eyes" is your song.
"Now its the same as before/And I'm alone again/With no sorrow for myself/And I'm blaming no one else/And closing my eyes/And seeing you standing there.... No use to try anymore as before/Someday I'll die/Maybe then I'll be with you." All sung to a slow dirge of a tune, as it should be.
19. Wouldn’t It Be Nice--Beach Boys (1966). The last single before "Good Vibrations" (#3 above), this has the same theme as the even more brilliant "When I Grow Up" (#8 above). "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older/And we didn't have to wait so long/And wouldn't it be nice to live together/In the kind of world where we belong/You know it's gonna make it that much better/When we can say good night and sleep together." All sung in a stunningly beautiful but uptempo vocal melody.
20. Mercy, Mercy Me--Marvin Gaye (1971). "What's Going On" with the ecology?
21. Nothing Is Easy--Jethro Tull (1969). Tull's greatest song, though Aqualung remains their overall top achievement. Still, this is heavy, heavy, heavy despite the fact that the flute is the chief melody instrument. How'd they do that?
22. I Am A Rock--Simon and Garfunkel (1966). Like Gordo, Paul Simon has his detractors. But Simon so perfectly captured the more contemplative side of the '60s not by rearranging folk music (like Gordo and John Phillips) but by creating it (like Dylan). It's hard to say that "I Am A Rock" is even his greatest creation but he certainly deserves to be found somewhere in the top 25.
23. Subterranean Homesick Blues--Bob Dylan (1965). A 3rd tune from the best year that any rock artist has ever had--Dylan in 1965, with Bringin' It All Back Home and Highway 61. This was a total breakthrough--his 1st top 40 hit (#39), one of his 1st "electric" songs, and also known for the then innovative "music video." Then there's the rapid-fire lyrics just brimming with alienation ("Twenty years of schoolin'/And they put you on the day shift") and what have now become familiar aphorisms among baby boomers ("You don't need a weatherman/To know which way the wind blows..." "The pump don't work/'Cause the vandals took the handles."
24. I’m Going To Say It Now--Phil Ochs (1965). Ochs belongs right up there with Dylan and Simon as social satirists, but in Ochs case that was everything he had to offer. And when the anti-establishment ethos died away he couldn't adjust, so he hanged himself. But he left a tremendous legacy of protest music behind. I happen to like this one the best though there are many to choose from. It's about his experience of going away to college....
"I know I'm just a student, sir, and I only want to learn/But it's hard to read through the rising smoke of the books that you'd like to burn/So I'm gonna make a promise and I'm gonna make a vow/That when I got something to say, sir/I'm gonna say it now.... Oh, you've given me a number and taken off my name/To get around this campus, why, you almost need a plane/And you're supporting Chiang Kai-Shek while I'm supporting Mao/So when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now."
I don't need to tell you that Ochs' music was banned from the radio, and that's one reason why his legacy is nearly lost.
25. Crossroads--Don McLean (1971). Best known for "American Pie," but there were some immensely more personal and emotional songs on the album--"Vincent," for one. But even more than that was "Crossroads:" "You know I've heard about people like me/But I never made the connection/They walk one road to set them free/Then find they've gone the wrong direction...." His performances in this day were so moving that the Roberta Flack hit, "Killing Me Softly With His Song," was written about Don McLean, of all people.
26. Oh No--Frank Zappa (1971). This is another of Frank's putdowns of the hippie philosophy of the time--"All you need is love" and all of that. This is in fact Frank's "Positively Fourth Street."
"Oh, no, I don't believe it/You say that you think you know the meaning of love/You say love is all we need/You say with your love you can change/All of the fools, all of the hate/I think you're probably out to lunch...All your love/Will it save me/All your love/Will it save the world/From what we can't understand?"
27. Sixteen Miles (to Seven Lakes)--Gordon Lightfoot (1966). People who say that Gordo is a lightweight might hear this song as just more evidence for their point of view. But what I hear is a purer expression of the folk boom, sung by one of the loveliest voices this side of Judy Collins. There's not a lot of folk music/folk boom/folk mania on this list, but whatever you call it, "Sixteen Miles" is one of the best examples of its prototypical personna of the lonely loser, a personna that had a powerful impact on the growth of youth culture of the day.
8 (tie). Brown-Eyed Girl--Van Morrison (1967).
8 (tie). Moondance--Van Morrison (1970). What a curse, to have recorded his greatest song so early in his career. But let's be honest, Van Morrison, as great as he has been and has continued to be, has never quite matched "Brown-Eyed Girl." Anybody who has ever dated a brown-eyed girl has been sucked into this song and it will give a little thrill every time you hear it until the day you die. In an era that somewhat eschewed the love song, this one is as pure a love song as the era has to offer.
Except that "Moondance" would be a very close second in every respect. What a beautiful languid melody, gently rising and falling. And on the chorus--"And all the night's magic seems to whisper and hush/And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush/Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love...."--just the slightest increase of intensity is just thrilling, it's magic.
9. When I Grow Up (to Be a Man)--Beach Boys (1964). If "Good Vibrations" was the culmination of the Beach Boys 2nd, more progressive period, then this was the culmination of the 1st period. in which the Beach Boys were synonymous with teenage concerns. But while this song is clearly from an adolescent point of view, it certainly has to be seen as a remarkably self-conscious assessment of adolescence--not just hey, let's party, but hey, when am I going to be in charge of my own life and what will that feel like? Musically, too, the song is much more than a Chuck Berry clone and can be seen as transitional to the band's more mature period, though the full transition was 2 years off and short-lived.
"Will I dig the same things that turn me on as a kid/Will I look back and say that I wish I hadn't done what I did... Will my kids be proud or think their old man's really a square/When they're out havin' fun, yeah, will I still wanna have my share/Will I love my wife for the rest of my life/When I grow up to be a man."
10. Penny Lane--The Beatles (1967). Recorded in the Sgt. Pepper's sessions, "Penny Lane" was however released as the B-side of "Strawberry Fields Forever" in early 1967 and was later included on the LP Magical Mystery Tour. Penny Lane is a street and a neighborhood near John Lennon's childhood home in Liverpool, and the song is a series of vignettes, a kaleidoscope of people going about perfectly mundane day-to-day activities, though the images are surreal and contradictory. It's a beautiful summer day "beneath the blue suburban skies" one minute, then the next a "fireman rushes in from the pouring rain/Very strange." Sort of "A Day in the Life," as it were, but in this case one that leaves a peppy, positive and uplifting impression. The song is remembered also for the piccolo trumpet solo by David Mason (not that Dave Mason).
11. Sit Down, Young Stranger--Gordon Lightfoot (1970). This and "Minstrel of the Dawn" put Gordo among the most eloquent of the folkies--right up there with Dylan and Simon and Joni Mitchell--at expressing the doubt and disillusion that young folks were feeling at the time. "I'm standin' in the doorway, my head bowed in my hands/Not knowin' where to sit, not knowin' where I stand/My father looms above me, for him there is no rest/My mother's arms enfold me and hold me to her breast/They say you been out wanderin,' they say you've travelled far/Sit down, young stranger, and tell us who you are.... Now will you try and tell us that you been too long in school/That knowledge is not needed, that power does not rule/That war is not the answer, that young men should not die/Sit down, young stranger, I wait for your reply...,."
The really stunning thing is the simple recognition that the singer is a "stranger" to none other than his own mother and father… and himself.
12. Layla--Eric Clapton (1970). One of the most emotional songs and LPs ever, that was "Layla" and Layla. But even a drug-addled "god" could see that he needed Duane Allman to help him carry out his vision, and what incredibly beautiful music the 2 made together. "Layla" was in 2 parts, Clapton's anguished vocal driving the 1st part, but then the long guitar duet just floats into a dreamlike state that makes everything all right.
13. In the Court of the Crimson King--King Crimson (1970). This was the heaviest thing I had ever heard at the time, and it was so much heavier than anything that came before, there's never been a song that made such a quantum leap in heaviness, ever. My god.
14. Love Minus Zero/No Limit--Bob Dylan (1965). One of Bob's pretty love songs, maybe the prettiest loviest of them all, utterly free of cynicism. This song is as much covered as almost any Dylan song, most notably by Joan Baez in a truly beautiful version."Will I dig the same things that turn me on as a kid/Will I look back and say that I wish I hadn't done what I did... Will my kids be proud or think their old man's really a square/When they're out havin' fun, yeah, will I still wanna have my share/Will I love my wife for the rest of my life/When I grow up to be a man."
10. Penny Lane--The Beatles (1967). Recorded in the Sgt. Pepper's sessions, "Penny Lane" was however released as the B-side of "Strawberry Fields Forever" in early 1967 and was later included on the LP Magical Mystery Tour. Penny Lane is a street and a neighborhood near John Lennon's childhood home in Liverpool, and the song is a series of vignettes, a kaleidoscope of people going about perfectly mundane day-to-day activities, though the images are surreal and contradictory. It's a beautiful summer day "beneath the blue suburban skies" one minute, then the next a "fireman rushes in from the pouring rain/Very strange." Sort of "A Day in the Life," as it were, but in this case one that leaves a peppy, positive and uplifting impression. The song is remembered also for the piccolo trumpet solo by David Mason (not that Dave Mason).
11. Sit Down, Young Stranger--Gordon Lightfoot (1970). This and "Minstrel of the Dawn" put Gordo among the most eloquent of the folkies--right up there with Dylan and Simon and Joni Mitchell--at expressing the doubt and disillusion that young folks were feeling at the time. "I'm standin' in the doorway, my head bowed in my hands/Not knowin' where to sit, not knowin' where I stand/My father looms above me, for him there is no rest/My mother's arms enfold me and hold me to her breast/They say you been out wanderin,' they say you've travelled far/Sit down, young stranger, and tell us who you are.... Now will you try and tell us that you been too long in school/That knowledge is not needed, that power does not rule/That war is not the answer, that young men should not die/Sit down, young stranger, I wait for your reply...,."
The really stunning thing is the simple recognition that the singer is a "stranger" to none other than his own mother and father… and himself.
12. Layla--Eric Clapton (1970). One of the most emotional songs and LPs ever, that was "Layla" and Layla. But even a drug-addled "god" could see that he needed Duane Allman to help him carry out his vision, and what incredibly beautiful music the 2 made together. "Layla" was in 2 parts, Clapton's anguished vocal driving the 1st part, but then the long guitar duet just floats into a dreamlike state that makes everything all right.
13. In the Court of the Crimson King--King Crimson (1970). This was the heaviest thing I had ever heard at the time, and it was so much heavier than anything that came before, there's never been a song that made such a quantum leap in heaviness, ever. My god.
15 (tie). A Whiter Shade of Pale--Procol Harum (1967).
15 (tie). Light My Fire--The Doors (1967). Two incredible keyboard-based records from the same year. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was one of those songs, like "California Dreamin,'" that caused people to sit up and say, Who the hell is that? What the hell is that? It sounded like Percy Sledge, but the big organ sound was playing a Bach melody and then there was this: "We skipped the light fandango/Turned cartwheels cross the floor/I was feeling kinda seasick/But the crowd called out for more/The room was humming harder/As the ceiling flew away/When we called outfor another drink/The waiter brought a tray...." And I don't know about you, I have no idea what in the hell it is about, but it stuck in my imagination from then until now.
"Girl we couldn't get much higher." Take that, Ed Sullivan. The Doors, or more properly, Jim Morrison was the bad boy among bad boys, making Mick Jagger, for example, look like a choir boy. But he and his band entered the rock music scene in 1967 with a big bang called "Light My Fire," an irresistible little ditty about, well, you know, even before you heard that big long beautiful keyboard solo by Ray Manzarek. Their sound was absolutely unique and "Light My Fire" remains to this day their 1st and greatest song.
16. All My Loving--The Beatles (1964). It's a pretty simple, straight-ahead pop-rock song with a great little guitar solo and (mostly) a typical soaring, enthusiastic Paul McCartney vocal.
e, not all of their best music is from 1967.
17 (tie). 1983--Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968). 1
17 (tie). All Along the Watchtower--Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968). "1983" is a long slow psychedelic blues about living underwater after the nuclear holocaust. It's hard to rate "1983" ahead of "All Along the Watchtower," both from one of the best rock albums ever, Electric Ladyland, but there it is. "Watchtower" is of course Hendrix' cover of Bob Dylan, a version that helped make the legend of both artists.
18. Closing My Eyes--Fleetwood Mac (1969). So much more of early rock 'n roll--and especially British rock 'n roll--is borrowed directly from black American music than most today could possible be aware of. And the greatest interpreter of black American music among the 1st and 2nd British invasion is also largely forgotten today. That would be Peter Green, founder and leader of what was at the time called Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. The Fleetwood Mac that people today are generally familiar with came much later. Then Play On is Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac's masterpiece though the LP was released under the name Fleetwood Mac only. It was Peter Green's last Fleetwood Mac LP and it is the British blues at its very finest--not merely derivative, as most British blues previous to this was--but original, unique...but still bluesy. In fact, if you're in need of a downer, this is your LP and "Closing My Eyes" is your song.
"Now its the same as before/And I'm alone again/With no sorrow for myself/And I'm blaming no one else/And closing my eyes/And seeing you standing there.... No use to try anymore as before/Someday I'll die/Maybe then I'll be with you." All sung to a slow dirge of a tune, as it should be.
20. Mercy, Mercy Me--Marvin Gaye (1971). "What's Going On" with the ecology?
21. Nothing Is Easy--Jethro Tull (1969). Tull's greatest song, though Aqualung remains their overall top achievement. Still, this is heavy, heavy, heavy despite the fact that the flute is the chief melody instrument. How'd they do that?
22. I Am A Rock--Simon and Garfunkel (1966). Like Gordo, Paul Simon has his detractors. But Simon so perfectly captured the more contemplative side of the '60s not by rearranging folk music (like Gordo and John Phillips) but by creating it (like Dylan). It's hard to say that "I Am A Rock" is even his greatest creation but he certainly deserves to be found somewhere in the top 25.
23. Subterranean Homesick Blues--Bob Dylan (1965). A 3rd tune from the best year that any rock artist has ever had--Dylan in 1965, with Bringin' It All Back Home and Highway 61. This was a total breakthrough--his 1st top 40 hit (#39), one of his 1st "electric" songs, and also known for the then innovative "music video." Then there's the rapid-fire lyrics just brimming with alienation ("Twenty years of schoolin'/And they put you on the day shift") and what have now become familiar aphorisms among baby boomers ("You don't need a weatherman/To know which way the wind blows..." "The pump don't work/'Cause the vandals took the handles."
24. I’m Going To Say It Now--Phil Ochs (1965). Ochs belongs right up there with Dylan and Simon as social satirists, but in Ochs case that was everything he had to offer. And when the anti-establishment ethos died away he couldn't adjust, so he hanged himself. But he left a tremendous legacy of protest music behind. I happen to like this one the best though there are many to choose from. It's about his experience of going away to college....
"I know I'm just a student, sir, and I only want to learn/But it's hard to read through the rising smoke of the books that you'd like to burn/So I'm gonna make a promise and I'm gonna make a vow/That when I got something to say, sir/I'm gonna say it now.... Oh, you've given me a number and taken off my name/To get around this campus, why, you almost need a plane/And you're supporting Chiang Kai-Shek while I'm supporting Mao/So when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now."
I don't need to tell you that Ochs' music was banned from the radio, and that's one reason why his legacy is nearly lost.
25. Crossroads--Don McLean (1971). Best known for "American Pie," but there were some immensely more personal and emotional songs on the album--"Vincent," for one. But even more than that was "Crossroads:" "You know I've heard about people like me/But I never made the connection/They walk one road to set them free/Then find they've gone the wrong direction...." His performances in this day were so moving that the Roberta Flack hit, "Killing Me Softly With His Song," was written about Don McLean, of all people.
26. Oh No--Frank Zappa (1971). This is another of Frank's putdowns of the hippie philosophy of the time--"All you need is love" and all of that. This is in fact Frank's "Positively Fourth Street."
"Oh, no, I don't believe it/You say that you think you know the meaning of love/You say love is all we need/You say with your love you can change/All of the fools, all of the hate/I think you're probably out to lunch...All your love/Will it save me/All your love/Will it save the world/From what we can't understand?"
27. Sixteen Miles (to Seven Lakes)--Gordon Lightfoot (1966). People who say that Gordo is a lightweight might hear this song as just more evidence for their point of view. But what I hear is a purer expression of the folk boom, sung by one of the loveliest voices this side of Judy Collins. There's not a lot of folk music/folk boom/folk mania on this list, but whatever you call it, "Sixteen Miles" is one of the best examples of its prototypical personna of the lonely loser, a personna that had a powerful impact on the growth of youth culture of the day.
28. It Takes A Lot to
Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry--Bob Dylan (1965). 1st, what a great title for a song, especially 1 in which those specific words never actually appear. Just a straightforward folk-rock song, almost a defining song for the genre. I mean, what would Gram Parsons have done if this song hadn't existed?
29. Sad Eyed Lady of the
Lowlands--Joan Baez (1968). Another Dylan cover. It's hard to say this is better than Bob's but here it is. It's the highlight of a largely unsuccessful LP of all Dylan covers, a concept that sounds like "can't miss." And surely there's some other winners there--"Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word." But frankly Joanie always seems to me to lack passion. She's a technician. Somehow she transcends that here.
30. World in Changes--Dave Mason (1970). Mason played in Traffic with Stevie Winwood, he was a true heavyweight, though largely forgotten today. This one just soars, thanks particularly to a spectacular organ solo, I think it's by Leon Russell.
31. I Will--The Beatles (1968). OK, a warning. I'm not just a Beatles guy, I'm a McCartney guy. Among my top 10 Beatles songs, 6 were written by McCartney, 2 by Lennon, and just 2 were true Lennon-McCartney collaborations. This 1 is a pretty, laid-back love song that proved a quarter-century later to be particularly well-suited to the voice of Alison Krauss.
30. World in Changes--Dave Mason (1970). Mason played in Traffic with Stevie Winwood, he was a true heavyweight, though largely forgotten today. This one just soars, thanks particularly to a spectacular organ solo, I think it's by Leon Russell.
31. I Will--The Beatles (1968). OK, a warning. I'm not just a Beatles guy, I'm a McCartney guy. Among my top 10 Beatles songs, 6 were written by McCartney, 2 by Lennon, and just 2 were true Lennon-McCartney collaborations. This 1 is a pretty, laid-back love song that proved a quarter-century later to be particularly well-suited to the voice of Alison Krauss.
32 (tie). The Times They Are
A-Changin’--Bob Dylan (1964).
32 (tie). I Want to Hold Your Hand--The Beatles (1964). 2 of the most influential songs of the decade.
33. When the Levee Breaks--Led Zeppelin (1971). I don't know how many people would pick this as Led Zeppelin's greatest tune, I mean, there's a lot to choose from. But for me, this is it. Not quite as over the top as some but still heavy, intense, Led, Page and Plant.
34. I Can’t Help Myself--The Four Tops (1965). In 1965 my parents took my sister and me to the east coast--New York and Washington, D.C. What I learned on that trip was that there in the midwest we were missing out on a thrilling body of black music. "I Can't Help Myself" was #1 nationally at the time, but wasn't played on the radio in Minnesota. What else were we missing out on?
32 (tie). I Want to Hold Your Hand--The Beatles (1964). 2 of the most influential songs of the decade.
33. When the Levee Breaks--Led Zeppelin (1971). I don't know how many people would pick this as Led Zeppelin's greatest tune, I mean, there's a lot to choose from. But for me, this is it. Not quite as over the top as some but still heavy, intense, Led, Page and Plant.
34. I Can’t Help Myself--The Four Tops (1965). In 1965 my parents took my sister and me to the east coast--New York and Washington, D.C. What I learned on that trip was that there in the midwest we were missing out on a thrilling body of black music. "I Can't Help Myself" was #1 nationally at the time, but wasn't played on the radio in Minnesota. What else were we missing out on?
35. Trouble Every Day--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1966). Some of the most powerful (and most powerfully pissed off) protest music of the decade. The disgust with what was goin' on was palpable. The music is primitive, but no more so than, say, the Butterfield Blues Band. But its intensity was unquestioned. "Eve of Destruction" was about as intense as protest music got in those days--and it may not be fashionable to say, but "Eve of Destruction" was pretty intense; I think Barry McGuire meant it--but it had nothin' on this. In fact, I had never heard anything as absolutely pissed off as this.
36. Catch the Wind--Donovan (1965). Like Dylan, Donovan started out as a pretty pure folkie, recreating the sounds of an earlier time, but he quickly branched out into more contemporary sounds that people called folk-rock. This was his 1st and best work. That's not to say his folkie period was better than his rocked up period, but this is just a beautiful song expressing a real credible emotion.
38 (tie). When the Ship Comes In--Bob Dylan (1964).
38 (tie). Absolutely Sweet Marie--Bob Dylan (1966).
38 (tie). Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine--Bob Dylan (1966). Apparently "When the Ship Comes In" is meant to refer to Bob's ship but it sure feels bigger, like the ship is comin' in for everybody, for the counter-culture, for the young, for the new age. The times they are a-changin' and when the ship comes in they'll really change. That's what I heard. "Sweet Marie" is another spirited but lighter rock love song with the famous line, "I'm sitting here beating on my trumpet... And where are you tonight, sweet Marie." Meanwhile, if Bob was unhappy about this particular breakup, he didn't quite capture that in the rollicking rocker, "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine."
39. Repent Walpurgis--Procol Harum (1965). A dark beautiful dirge of an instrumental.
40 (tie). Did She Mention May Name?--Gordon Lightfoot (1968).
40 (tie). Minstrel of the Dawn--Gordon Lightfoot (1970).
40 (tie). Go My Way--Gordon Lightfoot (1971).
40 (tie). Cabaret--Gordon Lightfoot (1971).
41. I've Just Seen A Face--The Beatles (1966). This was a breakneck-paced love song with a strong country or bluegrass lilt to it, so that many of the early covers of it were in fact by country and bluegrass bands. Another great, enthusiastic vocal by Paul.
42. Like Crying--Fleetwood Mac (1969). Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, that is.
43. Sloop John B.--The Beach Boys (1966). A reworking of a classic folk tune into a hymn, an anthem, with the most beautiful angelic singing you've ever heard.
44. Dead Flowers--The Rolling Stones (1971). I've said I was a Beatles guy, not a Stones guy. Still, how can "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Street Fightin' Man" and "Satisfaction" and...and...all be missing from the top 50? Well, I liked a lot of their songs, but not quite that much. But this one, to me, had the emotion and nuance that was missing from too much of their music.
45. Lookin' Out My Back Door--Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970). By contrast with the Stones, I loved Creedence, and yet their top song only comes in at #45? Wow. But I said this was the golden age.
46. Outside of a Small Circle of Friends--Phil Ochs (1967). Another by the great protest singer, this one was about the Kitty Genovese murder which any number of witnesses managed to ignore and avoid providing help to the victim because, well, "I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody/Outside of a small circle of friends."
47 (tie). Who Are the Brain Police--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1966).
47 (tie). Let's Make the Water Turn Black--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1968). Two more from the master. These initial version were chock full of sound effects. It was only later as Frank recorded new versions that the melodies started to stand out. These are just absolutely awesome melodies, that's the bottom line. The social satire is almost gravy, if you can believe that.
48. Tupelo Honey--Van Morrison (1971).
49 (tie). Oh Well--Fleetwood Mac (1969).
49 (tie). The Green Manalishi--Fleetwood Mac (1970).
50. Your Song--Elton John (1970). Elton John wore out his welcome pretty quick, kind like an early version of Mumford and Sons. But this was a nice little emotional piece that really worked.
51. Just Like A Woman--Bob Dylan (1966). At one time this might have been #8 or $10 but, personally, this is one song that I've simply heard too many times. Srill, objectively, I know it's a great song and it's gotta be in the top 50.
52. Golden Slumbers--The Beatles (1969).
53 (tie). One Way Sunday--Mark-Almond (1970).
53 (tie). Song for You--Mark-Almond (1970). And awesome, forgotten band.
54. Don't Worry Baby--The Beach Boys (1964).
55. Hang on to a Dream--Tim Hardin (1969).
56. Get Together--The Youngbloods (1969).
57. A Long, Long Time--Linda Ronstadt (1970).
58. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue--Bob Dylan (1965).
59. The Witch's Promise--Jethro Tull (1970).
60. Today--New Christy Minstrels (1964).
61. Canadian Railroad Trilogy--Gordon Lightfoot (1967).
62. The Circle Game--Joni Mitchell (1970).
63. Pilgrim's Progress--Procol Harum (1969).
64. Hungry Freaks, Daddy--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1966).
65. I Fought the Law--Bobby Fuller Four (1966).
66. Sounds of Silence--Simon and Garfunkel (1966).
67 (tie). Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands--Bob Dylan (1966).
67 (tie). The Chimes of Freedom--Bob Dylan (1964).
67 (tie). Positively Fourth Street--Bob Dylan (1965).
68 (tie). Fun Fun Fun--The Beach Boys (1964).
68 (tie). California Girls--The Beach Boys (1965).
69. Something in the Air--Thunderclap Newman (1969).
70 (tie). Dr. Robert--The Beatles (1966).
70 (tie). Yesterday--The Beatles (1965).
70 (tie). The Night Before--The Beatles (1965).
71 (tie). Whippin' Post--The Allman Brothers (1969).
71 (tie). In Memory of Elizabeth Reed--The Allman Brothers (1971).
72. I Heard It Through the Grapevine--Marvin Gaye (1968).
73. Epitaph--King Crimson (1970).
74. I Ain't Marchin' Anymore--Phil Ochs (1965).
75 (tie). I Looked Away--Derek and the Dominoes (1970).
75 (tie). Bell Bottom Blues--Derek and the Dominoes (1970).
76. Because--Dave Clark 5 (1964).
77. America Drinks and Goes Home--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1967).
78. Burning of the Midnight Lamp--Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968).
79. Sweet Baby James--James Taylor (1970).
80. You'll Never See My Face Again--The BeeGees (1968).
81. Turn! Turn! Turn!--The Byrds (1965).
82. Ride the Wind--The Youngbloods (1971).
83. That's the Bag I'm In--H.P. Lovecraft (1968).
84. Your Mother Should Know--The Beatles (1967).
85. Battle of Evermore--Led Zeppelin (1970).
86 (tie). Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues--Bob Dylan (1965).
86 (tie). Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues--Judy Collins (1966).
87. High Flyin' Bird--Richie Havens (1967).
88. If You Would Just Drop By--Arlo Guthrie (1970).
89 (tie). Tears of Rage--The Band (1968).
89 (tie). Whisperin' Pines--The Band (1969).
90. God Only Knows--The Beach Boys (1966).
91. Inner City Blues--Marvin Gaye (1971).
92. You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling--The Righteous Brothers (1965).
93. Fixing A Hole--The Beatles (1967).
94. The Letter--The Box Tops (1967).
95. Baba O'Riley--The Who (1971).
96. Kind of a Drag--The Buckinghams (1967).
97. Rich Man's Spiritual--Gordon Lightfoot (1966).
98. Everybody's Talkin'--Harry Nillson (1969).
99. Elusive Butterfly--Bob Lind (1966).
100 (tie). To Sir, With Love--Lulu (1967).
100 (tie). (Theme from) Valley of the Dolls--Dionne Warwick (1968).
Best Artists of "the 1960s" (1964-1971)
1. Bob Dylan
2. The Beatles
3. The Beach Boys
4. Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac
5. Gordon Lightfoot
6. Jimi Hendrix
7. Eric Clapton
8. Van Morrison
9. Frank Zappa
10. The Doors
11. Phil Ochs
12. Paul Simon
13. Jethro Tull
14. Led Zeppelin
15. Pink Floyd
16. Marvin Gaye
17. Creedence Clearwater Revival
18. King Crimson
19. Procol Harum
20. Donovan
21. The Rolling Stones
22. Allman Brothers Band
23. Mark-Almond
24. The Mamas and the Papas
25. The Band
26. The Byrds
27. Judy Collins
28. Don McLean
29. The Youngbloods
30. Joni Mitchell
31. The Who
32. James Taylor
33. H.P. Lovecraft
34. Richie Havens
35. Tim Hardin
36. Arlo Guthrie
37. Dave Clark Five
38. Dave Mason
39. The Box Tops
40. Harry Nillson
47 (tie). Let's Make the Water Turn Black--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1968). Two more from the master. These initial version were chock full of sound effects. It was only later as Frank recorded new versions that the melodies started to stand out. These are just absolutely awesome melodies, that's the bottom line. The social satire is almost gravy, if you can believe that.
48. Tupelo Honey--Van Morrison (1971).
49 (tie). Oh Well--Fleetwood Mac (1969).
49 (tie). The Green Manalishi--Fleetwood Mac (1970).
50. Your Song--Elton John (1970). Elton John wore out his welcome pretty quick, kind like an early version of Mumford and Sons. But this was a nice little emotional piece that really worked.
51. Just Like A Woman--Bob Dylan (1966). At one time this might have been #8 or $10 but, personally, this is one song that I've simply heard too many times. Srill, objectively, I know it's a great song and it's gotta be in the top 50.
52. Golden Slumbers--The Beatles (1969).
53 (tie). One Way Sunday--Mark-Almond (1970).
53 (tie). Song for You--Mark-Almond (1970). And awesome, forgotten band.
54. Don't Worry Baby--The Beach Boys (1964).
55. Hang on to a Dream--Tim Hardin (1969).
56. Get Together--The Youngbloods (1969).
57. A Long, Long Time--Linda Ronstadt (1970).
58. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue--Bob Dylan (1965).
59. The Witch's Promise--Jethro Tull (1970).
60. Today--New Christy Minstrels (1964).
61. Canadian Railroad Trilogy--Gordon Lightfoot (1967).
62. The Circle Game--Joni Mitchell (1970).
63. Pilgrim's Progress--Procol Harum (1969).
64. Hungry Freaks, Daddy--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1966).
65. I Fought the Law--Bobby Fuller Four (1966).
66. Sounds of Silence--Simon and Garfunkel (1966).
67 (tie). Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands--Bob Dylan (1966).
67 (tie). The Chimes of Freedom--Bob Dylan (1964).
67 (tie). Positively Fourth Street--Bob Dylan (1965).
68 (tie). Fun Fun Fun--The Beach Boys (1964).
68 (tie). California Girls--The Beach Boys (1965).
69. Something in the Air--Thunderclap Newman (1969).
70 (tie). Dr. Robert--The Beatles (1966).
70 (tie). Yesterday--The Beatles (1965).
70 (tie). The Night Before--The Beatles (1965).
71 (tie). Whippin' Post--The Allman Brothers (1969).
71 (tie). In Memory of Elizabeth Reed--The Allman Brothers (1971).
72. I Heard It Through the Grapevine--Marvin Gaye (1968).
73. Epitaph--King Crimson (1970).
74. I Ain't Marchin' Anymore--Phil Ochs (1965).
75 (tie). I Looked Away--Derek and the Dominoes (1970).
75 (tie). Bell Bottom Blues--Derek and the Dominoes (1970).
76. Because--Dave Clark 5 (1964).
77. America Drinks and Goes Home--Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1967).
78. Burning of the Midnight Lamp--Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968).
79. Sweet Baby James--James Taylor (1970).
80. You'll Never See My Face Again--The BeeGees (1968).
81. Turn! Turn! Turn!--The Byrds (1965).
82. Ride the Wind--The Youngbloods (1971).
83. That's the Bag I'm In--H.P. Lovecraft (1968).
84. Your Mother Should Know--The Beatles (1967).
85. Battle of Evermore--Led Zeppelin (1970).
86 (tie). Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues--Bob Dylan (1965).
86 (tie). Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues--Judy Collins (1966).
87. High Flyin' Bird--Richie Havens (1967).
88. If You Would Just Drop By--Arlo Guthrie (1970).
89 (tie). Tears of Rage--The Band (1968).
89 (tie). Whisperin' Pines--The Band (1969).
90. God Only Knows--The Beach Boys (1966).
91. Inner City Blues--Marvin Gaye (1971).
92. You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling--The Righteous Brothers (1965).
93. Fixing A Hole--The Beatles (1967).
94. The Letter--The Box Tops (1967).
95. Baba O'Riley--The Who (1971).
96. Kind of a Drag--The Buckinghams (1967).
97. Rich Man's Spiritual--Gordon Lightfoot (1966).
98. Everybody's Talkin'--Harry Nillson (1969).
99. Elusive Butterfly--Bob Lind (1966).
100 (tie). To Sir, With Love--Lulu (1967).
100 (tie). (Theme from) Valley of the Dolls--Dionne Warwick (1968).
Best Artists of "the 1960s" (1964-1971)
1. Bob Dylan
2. The Beatles
3. The Beach Boys
4. Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac
5. Gordon Lightfoot
6. Jimi Hendrix
7. Eric Clapton
8. Van Morrison
9. Frank Zappa
10. The Doors
11. Phil Ochs
12. Paul Simon
13. Jethro Tull
14. Led Zeppelin
15. Pink Floyd
16. Marvin Gaye
17. Creedence Clearwater Revival
18. King Crimson
19. Procol Harum
20. Donovan
21. The Rolling Stones
22. Allman Brothers Band
23. Mark-Almond
24. The Mamas and the Papas
25. The Band
26. The Byrds
27. Judy Collins
28. Don McLean
29. The Youngbloods
30. Joni Mitchell
31. The Who
32. James Taylor
33. H.P. Lovecraft
34. Richie Havens
35. Tim Hardin
36. Arlo Guthrie
37. Dave Clark Five
38. Dave Mason
39. The Box Tops
40. Harry Nillson
Monday, July 8, 2013
The Best of Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd's Best LPs
Pink Floyd had on one level a pretty straightforward rise (1968-1970), peak (1971-1979) and decline (1980 and after). But each period had its counter-indications.
Pink Floyd's best LPs would pretty much have to be The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon. In fact, it's kind of surprising how narrow Pink Floyd's legacy really is. I mean, I've got 'em #5 on my list of all-time artists, but that kind of standing is really based on those 2 records. 8 of the top 10 songs are from the top 2 records. Both of course come from the so-called peak period of the 1970s, but there was lots of music in between those 2 records, for example, that falls short of classic status. Some people even prefer music from the earlier period to that of the interregnum between the 2 blockbusters. (Relatively few on the other hand prefer anything from the latter period, but in fairness there are a few of those.)
The Classics
The classics are just those 2 records mentioned above plus Meddle, or more properly, plus "Echoes," the 23-minute excursion that occupies all of side of that record.
1. The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). One of the most popular pop records of all-time, The Dark Side of the Moon was #1 on the Billboard LP charts, though for only 1 week, but it then remained on the LP chart for a record 741 weeks from 1973 through 1988. It has sold 50 million copies worldwide. The album's themes would of course be typical of Pink Floyd as this album is really the one that more than anything established the band's image and legacy in rock music. Those themes primarily are mental illness and greed and miscommunication.
Musically the LP is a bit more of a stand-alone. Yes, the band had always dabbled in sound effects and soundscapes but here that takes on a more literal approach with alarm clocks, cash registers and coins clanking, and the like. It also features less of David Gilmour's soaring electric guitar than we might expect. On "Us and Them," the solos are taken by saxophonist Dick Parry.
The Dark Side of the Moon has of course been criticized as being basically just 5 songs and a whole lot of noodling. The 5 main songs are "Us and Them," "Brain Damage," "Money,""Breathe" and "Time," though it is also true that the song "The Great Gig in the Sky," while there are no lyrics, features one of the album's most popular moments, that being an incredible wordless vocal by Clare Torey. "Us and Them" is the true centerpiece of the LP, but oddly enough the 3 truly great songs--"Money," "Us and Them" and "Brain Damage" are all placed back to back to back at the start of side 2 of the vinyl album. These 3 songs are surely among the band's top 10 songs.
"Money" starts out with the famous cash register sounds and goes on to lampoon wealth and greed in a mid-tempo rock form built around a short guitar-bass riff.
"Us and Them" has to be Pink Floyd's most eloquent social commentary. It's about dichotomies. "Us and them," "Me and you," the haves and the have-nots. "God only knows it's not what we would choose to do." And "Forward, he cried, from the rear/And the front rank died." And "Down and out/It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about/With, without/And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about." This is a slow anthemic piece with massed vocal and instrumental accompaniment.
"Brain Damage" is of course about mental illness, both the real kind as suffered by Syd Barrett, but also the lunacy that passes for every day life. "The lunatic is in my hall.../The papers hold their folded faces to the floor/And every day, the paper boy brings more.... The lunatic is in my head...." This is another slow ballad with massed background vocals providing the characteristic sound.
And considering, of course, that "the dark side of the moon" is most often used as a euphemism for mental illness, it is surely madness that in the end is the primary theme that people have taken away from the record, though I would personally say, again, that "Us and Them" is a more eloquent song on every level.
2. The Wall (1979). The Wall explores the theme of mental illness/madness in greater depth and single-mindedness, and it is of course the darkest of Pink Floyd's work. As you probably know if you're reading this blog, it's the story of rock 'n roller Pink, who is probably a paranoid schizophrenic and loosely based on Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's founder and a certifiable madman. He is also part Roger Waters, whose father Eric Fletcher Waters was killed in WWII. Pink's father is shown dying in WWII and his madness and alienation are attributed by reference to the loss of his father.
The LP follows Pink from his youth to his descent into total madness. As a youth he is traumatized by the bombing of London and his father's death in WWII, by a domineering mother and by the abusive tendencies of English school teachers ("All in all it's just another brick in the wall.")
Later he becomes a rock musician and the lifestyle and drugs just feed his isolation and paranoia.
The 2 centerpieces of the LP are "Comfortably Numb" and "Hey You." In the former, Pink is out of it and needs to get his act together to play a rock concert. In the film we see that it is a Dr. Feelgood who is speaking some of the words to the song: "Hello/Is there anybody in there?/Just nod if you can hear me/Is there anyone home?" Pink replies: "When I was a child, I had a fever/My hands felt just like two balloons/Now I've got that feeling once again/I can't explain, you would not understand/This is not how I am."
Later he says, "When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse/Out of the corner of my eye/I turned to look but it was gone/I cannot put my finger on it now/The child is grown, the dream is gone/And I have become comfortably numb."
Then there's "Hey you with your ear against the wall/Waiting for someone to call out/Will you touch me/Hey you would you help me to carry the stone/Open your heart, I'm coming home.... But it was all a fantasy/The wall was too high as you can see/No matter how he tried, he could not break free/And the worms ate into his brain."
It all leads to a climactic, Kafkaesque trial in which, well, "The prisoner who now stands before you/Was caught red-handed showing feelings." His mother is first to testify for the prosecution, singing, "I always said he'd come to no good." His wife testifies, "You little shit, you're in it now/I hope they throw away the key/You should have talked to me more often than you did/But no, you had to go your own way/Have you broken any homes up lately."
Later the judge sings, "The evidence before the court is incontrovertible/There's no need for the jury to retire/In all my years of judging I have never heard before of someone more deserving/Of the full penalty of law/The way you made them suffer/Your exquisite wife and mother/Fills me with an urge to defecate.... I sentence you to be exposed before your peers/Tear down the wall."
3. Meddle (1971). Meddle rates here for 1 reason only, and that is "Echoes"the 23-minute track that occupies all of side 2 of the original vinyl disc. Other than this, side 1 contains a series of songs with widely varying sounds and styles, as was typical of Floyd up to this time. "One of These Days" is a hard-driving instrumental (other than 2 lines of spoken lyrics at the end, "One of these days/I'm going to cut you into little pieces." "San Tropez" is a light rocker. "A Pillow of Winds" is a lighter rocker. Seamus" is a blues about an old hound dog.
"Fearless" is also a light, acoustic rocker about English soccer. Midway through the song we hear fans of an English soccer team singing "You'll Never Walk Alone," their team's anthem. following by the final verse, "Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd, smiling/Merciless, the magistrate turns round, frowning/And who's the fool who wear's the crown/Go down in your own way/And as you rise above the fear lines in his frown/You look down/On the faces in the crowd." It was considered a "hit" in England though it was never released as a single.
Still, the standing of Meddle as an album is based entirely on the obvious appeal of "Echoes."
The Supporting Evidence
By this I mean, the evidence that further supports the notion that Pink Floyd is the #5 rock artist of all-time. Not that these records are sufficient to make such an argument, but that they support the argument and the career arc that also contains the 3 classics.
4. Wish You Were Here (1975). Wish You Were Here rates this highly for 1 and only 1 reason and that is the long, 9-part (in 2 long segments) song, "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond," which would seem to be yet another--and undoubtedly the most eloquent--tribute to Syd Barrett. Ditto, the title track is also about Syd Barrett and his mental breakdown.
On the other hand, there are some other notable tunes here, most of which recount that band's experiences and impressions of the music industry--"Have A Cigar"("Which one's Pink?") and "Welcome to the Machine"("What did you dream?/It's all right, we told you what to dream"). "Have A Cigar" was sung by Roy Harper after the band was dissatisfied with takes sung by Roger Waters, David Gilmour and then both in a duet.
But though the album takes its name from another song, "Shine On" is the centerpiece. The album opens with the song's 1st 13:30 and Parts I through V, and closes with another 12:29 and Parts VI-IX. Parts I-III are all instrumental introductions featuring Gilmour's guitar. Roger Waters finally sings in Part IV, while Part Vf eatures a saxophone solo, 1st on baritone, then tenor, by Dick Parry.
Part VI features a lap steel guitar solo by Gilmour, Part VII the rest of the vocals and lyrics, while Parts VIII and IX are dominated by Richard Wright's keyboards. Part IX is described as a funeral march for Syd, though he was still living at the time of this recording. In fact, Syd visited the studio unexpectedly and unannounced (the band did not recognize who he was for a good 45 minutes after his arrival) on the very day that the vocals for this song were being recorded.
"Remember when you were young/You shone like the sun/Shine on, you crazy diamond/Now there's a look in your eye/Like black holes in the sky/Shine on, you crazy diamond.... You reached for the secret too soon/You cried for the moon/Shine on...."
5. Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-1981. The complete The Wall plus a couple of bonus tracks.
6. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1968). Now we've moved outside of the classic or the peak period of the 1970s, and in fact everything about The Piper sounds crude today--the songwriting, the singing, the production, and David Gilmour does not appear on the record. Yet there is something about this record--maybe it's simply the fact that Syd Barrett wrote and sang most of it, which makes it such a curiosity. But more than that, the writing and singing--based on everything we know about Barrett--is remarkable for its, well, its normalcy, its accessibility...and, well, also for its idiosyncracies, its genius. The original Pink Floyd didn't sound like anybody else and, of course, the band never would sound like anybody else. And while the later Pink Floyd abandoned much of what Syd was doing at this time, everything that came to define Pink Floyd was right here in Syd's original vision.
There were the 2 long instrumentals filled with sound effects--"Astonomy Domine" an "Interstellar Overdrive." There also were Syd's little story-songs, especially "See Emily Play" but also "Bike" and "Scarecrow" and the like. There was a strong reliance on reverb and echo on the LP, which was somewhat new at the time but would become standard procedure both for Pink Floyd and for many other rock artists during this period.
Syd also was taking lots of LSD during this period, making the recording sessions pretty unmanageable, but with the help of Beatles' engineer Norman Smith, a full-fledged LP was produced and it is generally regarded as 1 of the great "psychedelic" records of the late 1960s-early 1970s "psychedelic" era.
7. Ummagumma (1969). We remain outside of Pink Floyd's classic period with this and the next selection as well. Band members have in fact long disparaged both works, but Ummagumma is a terrific snapshot of the band after the departure of Syd Barrett. His short accessible though idiosyncratic songs had been abandoned, but his long instrumental/sound effects rambles had become a staple for the band, both live and in the studio. And so, Disc 1 was a live disc of four of the band's instrumental rambles--"Astronomy Domine," "Careful With That Axe, Eugene," "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and "A Saucerful of Secrets."
Disc 2 was initially conceived as 2 full discs, 1 side each which would be a solo work by 1 of the band members. In fact, each of the band members produced a track (or 2 in Waters' case), but their total length ended up filling 1 disc, not 2. Richard Wright described his "Sisyphus" as "real music" at the time but later he called it "pretentious." Waters' 2 contributions are largely sound effects. Gilmour later said he just "bullshitted" his was through the bluesy "The Narrow Way," while Nick Mason's contribution is a 9-minute drum solo plus his wife Lindy on the flute.
8. Atom Heart Mother (1970). This record is of a piece with the band's work between Syd and the breakthrough LP The Dark Side of the Moon. It is half lengthy instrumental works and half songs written and sung by the individual band members more as solo works than as real band creations. The big distinguishing factor with Atom Heart Mother, however, is the use of a symphony orchestra on the title track, which is in 6 parts that occupy all of side 1 of the vinyl disc. In fact, after the band had finished recording the suite, they decided it needed something more, and asked Ron Geesin to compose an orchestral accompaniment. The way things worked out, the orchestra ended up being in the lead with the rock instruments in the background except for some Gilmour guitar work.
Actually, a 2nd distinguishing characteristic would be that the songs on side 2 ("If" by Waters, "Summer '68" by Wright and "Fat Old Sun" by Gilmour) are quite listenable. In this sense they foreshadow their similar efforts on side 1 of Meddle, but distinguish from some of the earlier "songs" including many of Syd Barrett's.
9. Radio KAOS--Roger Waters (1987).
10. David Gilmour (1978).
The 7 Pink Floyd records listed above pretty much exhausts their good and great work. Everything else under the name Pink Floyd is deeply flawed, though not without their moments and their rewards. A theme that appears in Pink Floyd's music also appears in their biographies and in their history as a band--that is, the impact of unique and sometimes quirky (and more) personalities. The inability of the 5 band members over the years to communicate and to work together is legendary, and the band's output does not do complete justice to their brilliance as artists for that reason. But their brilliance, I guess you could say their potential (to some extent unrealized), is also seen in selected solo works.
Waters and Gilmour, of course, recorded a number of virtually "solo" performances in the band's early years with fairly satisfactory results. I mean, both were immature as artists at that time and so their output (this is from the years 1969-1972) is a bit crude. But Gilmour and Radio KAOS captures the band's 2 leading lights near their peaks (their peaks of course came on Pink Floyd records).
In Gilmour's case, the instrumentals "Mihalis" and "Short and Sweet" stand out. The latter sounds like a precursor to "Run Like Hell," which later became a part of the Pink Floyd LP The Wall. For Waters, the 2 songs that open the 2 sides of the vinyl record, "Radio Waves" and "Sunset Strip," are straightforward pop-rock tunes. All 4 of these tunes may be considered to be significant within the broader Pink Floyd legacy.
11. The Final Cut (1983). The Final Cut was written and produced and sung by Waters as a sequel to The Wall, with the rest of the band members used more or less as session men. In fact the band's peak period is characterized by the fairly abrupt disappearance of writing and singing credits for band members other than Waters. In fact Richard Wright was thrown out of the band between Animals and The Wall.
Waters himself officially left Pink Floyd in 1985 and the name belongs, now, to Gilmour and Mason, and you may note that on the official Pink Floyd Web site neither The Wall nor The Final Cut is included. Waters eventually came to dominate the band, and the other band members came to dislike Waters so much that his signature work has been disowned.
There is of course no way that The Wall will be forgotten or overlooked as a part of the Pink Floyd legacy. The Final Cut, on the other hand, is fading from memory. The album went to #1 on the U.S. album charts but also went just 2X platinum compared to The Wall's 23X platinum and The Dark Side's 15X platinum. A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the 1st Pink Floyd record without Waters, went 4X platinum. Still, The Final Cut has at least 2 classic songs on it: the title track and "The Fletcher Memorial Home."
"The Final Cut" sounds for all the world like it belongs on The Wall. Its lyrics conjure images from the movie--approaching Pink's hotel room and viewing it through the fish-eye lens of the door hole, Pink phoning his wife and a man answering, Pink contemplating suicide: "I held the blade in trembling hands/Prepared to make it but/Just then the phone rang/I never had the nerve to make the final cut." It is as powerful a statement in its own right as is The Wall.
"The Fletcher Memorial Home" is a place where despots are taken to grow old, safely deprived of the opportunity to do harm to the human race. There's Reagan and Thatcher, Brezhnev, Begin, Paisley, Nixon.... "Did they expect us to treat them with any respect.... Now the final solution can be applied." The Fletcher Memorial Home is of course a memorial to Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who was killed in WWII.
The rest of the LP is surprising solid including "Not Now John," which Waters persuaded Gilmour to sing.
Just Okay
12. Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987). One of just 2 releases under the Pink Floyd name after the departure of Roger Waters, this went to #3 on the American LP charts, compared to #1 for The Final Cut, but it went 4X platinum versus The Final Cut's 2X platinum and vastly outsold it. The sound was a bit monotonic but still it was unmistakably Pink Floyd. Gilmour's guitar dominated more than ever--much of the material had original been written and recorded for a Gilmour solo album, but then he decided that a new Pink Floyd record was in order. And a record dominated by Gilmore's guitar is hardly a bad thing. Just ever so slightly monotonous.
But "Learning to Fly" was vintage Pink Floyd. It worked on both a literal as well as a metaphorical level, as Gilmour was a licensed pilot and flying enthusiast. But the song also sounded like a declaration of freedom from Waters' domination and a determination to spread one's wings anew in his absence. Gilmour seemed to confirm this interpretation in interviews. The album also vastly outsold Waters' Radio KAOS, released the same year, and most Pink Floyd fans seemed to take Gilmour's side against Waters, and confirming that at a glance Gilmour's guitar and not Waters' concepts are what people take to be the heart of Pink Floyd.
13. Animals (1977). Animals is yet another of Roger Waters' concepts: A scathing critique of capitalism portraying greedy "Pigs," combative "Dogs"and the general population as complacent "Sheep." The sound is vintage Pink Floyd but none of the songs presents anything close to a memorable hook or line.
14. The Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988).
15. Pulse (1995). Both are live "greatest hits" type LPs the 1st from the 1988 Imaginary Lapse of Reason tour, the 2nd from the tour behind Division Bell.
16. Obscured by Clouds (1972). A modest little album consisting of 10 songs, several of which are noteworthy. Waters' "Free Four" was the band's 1st single to get airplay in America. Gilmour and Waters collaborated on "Wots...Uh, he Deal" and "The Gold It's In the..." The former was sung by Gilmour on record and resurrected on Gilmour's 2006 tour. It's about life: "The turning of the wheel,,,, Flash the readies/Wot's...uh, the deal/Got to make it to the next meal." In the end: "Hear me shout, come on in/What's the news, where ya been/'Cuase there's no wind left in my soul/And I've grown old." The latter was a rare uptempo tune espousing the hippie philosophy.
17. Relics (1971). A greatest hits type album, but it included 4 songs not previously released on LP. "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," the band's 1st 2 singles, both by Syd Barrett, were the reasons to buy this LP.
Not Okay
18. A Saucerful of Secrets (1968). Contains the songs "A Saucerful of Secrets" and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, but you can get those elsewhere, and everything else is pretty much throwaway. Well, Syd Barrett's "Jug-Band Blues" is an interesting curiosity because it is Syd's.
19. Amused to Death--Roger Waters (1992).
20. The Division Bell (1994). The band's 2nd and last LP without Roger Waters and its last LP overall. The album was written by Gilmour and Wright around the topic of communication and "people making choices." But there's nothing here that is at all memorable or adds to the band's legacy.
21. Soundtrack from the Film More (1969). The album contained the customary mix of songs for this era--acoustic "folk" ballads, heavy rock and avant garde instrumentals, but there is nothing of real historical or other interest.
22. About Face--David Gilmour (1994).
Pink Floyd's Best Songs
As a generalization, Pink Floyd's songs fall into 3 categories: 1) Long, rambling instrumentals, many of which include sound effects various kinds. These songs were especially prominent in the band's early days through The Dark Side of the Moon, but became less common thereafter. 2) Short, compact pop songs, many of them acoustic, "folk ballads." These too were most prominent in the early days. 3) Classic rock 'n roll songs, or in other words, everything else.
Or, looked at another way, Pink Floyd's songs were written 1) by Roger Waters and 2) by everybody else. Over the course of the band's career, the trend went from 1 and 2 to pretty much just 1. The band was successful under both models commercially, but socially--well, the band broke up rather than continue to be dominated by Waters at the end.
1. Echoes, from Meddle (1971). "Echoes" was originally performed live in April 1971 with the title "Return of the Son of Nothing," which later became the working title (later abandoned of course) of the LP. "Nothings" was originally a reference to various experiments the band had conducted toward the new LP but which had been unproductive (had produced "nothing"). Well, not entirely nothing. That "ping" sound that opens "Echoes" came out of those experiments (created by keyboardist Richard Wright) and the song was built from there. David Gilmour's guitar was the next thing to be recorded over the pings. And while Gilmour's guitar work on The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall may be considered to be prototypical of his work and representative of his best work, to me "Echoes" is his greatest work and most representative. If somebody hasn't heard Gilmour's or Pink Floyd's work and wanted to know what his guitar sounds like, this would be the example as far as I'm concerned: Beautiful, silky, languid, single-note guitar leads, that's what Gilmour contributed to the genre of rock 'n roll guitar.
And let's be honest. As much as Roger Waters contributed to Pink Floyd's success and to its sound and to its legacy with his lyrics and thematic concepts, it is indeed Gilmour's guitar that makes Pink Floyd Pink Floyd.
But as far as lyric themes are concerned, "Echoes" starts as a natural soundscape: "Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air/And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves.../Everything is green as submarine." But the true subject slowly emerges. "Echoes" ("An echo of a distant time") refers to "strangers" striving to achieve communication and understanding. "Strangers passing in the street/By chance two separate glances meet/And I am you and what I see is me/And do I take you by the hand/And lead you through the land/And help me understand the best I can." And in the final verse: "No one sings me lullabies/No one knows the wheres or whys/So I throw the windows wide/And call to you across the sky...."
"Echoes" is somewhat unusual in Pink Floyd's work because there's an optimistic tone. Something positive is going to come of this human striving. Much of their work dwells more on the dark side.
2. Comfortably Numb, from The Wall (1979). The Wall is of course the darkest of Pink Floyd's works. As you probably know if you're reading this blog, it's the story of rock 'n roller Pink, who is probably a paranoid schizophrenic and loosely based on Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's founder and a certifiable madman. He is also part Roger Waters, whose father Eric Fletcher Waters was killed in WWII. Pink's father is shown dying in WWII and his madness and alienation are attribution by reference to the loss of his father.
"Comfortably Numb" is the centerpiece of the gargantuan story of "The Wall," if there is one.
"Comfortably Numb" is also the centerpiece in that it contains Gilmour's most soaring, eloquent guitar solo on the record.
3. Us and Them, from The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). "Us and Them" is a bit unusual in that the instrumental solos are taken by Dick Parry on the saxophone. The overall tone of the song is quiet and contemplative. In fact, the music was originally written by Richard Wright for the movie Zabriskie Point. Director Michelangelo Antonioni rejected it, saying, "It's beautiful, but it's too sad." Three years later, Roger Waters added lyrics to it and the rest is history.
4. Brain Damage, from The Dark Side of the Moon. A slow ballad, this is the best of many Pink Floyd songs that explore mental illness:"The lunatic isi n my head."
5. The Final Cut, from The Final Cut (1983). The rest of the band has disowned this great record, this great song. Waters had gradually supplanted all the other band members and had come to do all of the writing and most of the singing and, more to the point, all of the dictating. That was true of The Wall and it was especially true of The Final Cut. But, seriously, there was some beautiful music there.
6. Run Like Hell, from The Wall. A great uptempo rock song based on a sequence of descending guitar chords. The songs depicts Pink's hallucination in which he is a fascist dictator who turns a concert audience into an angry mob. "You better run" from this angry mob if you're "riffraff"--a Jew, a "queer," a black, etc.
7. Money, from The Dark Side of the Moon.
8. The Great Gig in the Sky, from The Dark Side of the Moon. "Money" is a sly, ironic, cynical tribute to money: "Money, get away/Get a good job with more pay and you're OK/Money, t's a gas/Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash." It's another uptempo number, thus differentiated from the majority of Pink Floyd songs that tend to feature more deliberate rhythms. "The Great Gig" is of course one of those slow cookers, and is also typical in that it utilizes some sort of unusual sound or other--in this case a famous and fabulously expressive wordless vocal by Clare Torrey. "The Great Gig" was written by Richard Wright and was performed in concert through 1972 as an instrumental as "The Mortality Sequence" and/or "The Religion Song." At the last minute it was decided to add a girl singer "wailing orgasmically," and producer Alan Parsons suggested Torry. She did 2-and-a-half-takes, and the final version was assembled from all of the takes. The band was impressed, by their own testimony, but was so reserved that Torry left the sessions thinking that her vocals would not be used.
9. Hey You, from The Wall.
10. Goodbye Blue Sky, from The Wall.
11. Another Brick in the Wall, from The Wall. "Goodbye" occurs early in The Wall, when Pink is traumatized by the Nazi bombing of London. A little later he is traumatized by abusive school teachers ("Another Brick in the Wall"). Much later, as Pink descends into his isolation and paranoia, he pleads for help:
"Hey you, out there on your own/Sitting naked by the phone/Would you touch me/Hey you, with your ear against the wall/Waiting for someone to call out/Would you touch me/Hey you, would you help me to carry the stone/Open your heart, I'm coming home/But it was just a fantasy/The wall was too high, as you can see/No matter how he tried, he could not break free/And the worms ate into his brain."
12. Shine On, You Crazy Diamond, from Wish You Were Here (1975). This is of course the sprawling tribute to Syd Barrett, consisting of about 26 minutes and 10 "parts" in 2 segments. The 1st segment opens the record Wish You Were Here and the 2nd closes it. There are 4 different David Gilmour guitar solos as the song unfolds.
13. One of These Days, from Meddle. The song is an uptempo instrumental played over 2 double-tracked bass guitars played by Gilmour and Waters. There is a spoken (by Nick Mason) vocal at the end: "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces." The threat was aimed at a BBC DJ named Jimmy Young, whom the band disliked because of his alleged tendency to "babble on.". In live concerts, Pink Floyd had earlier strung together a series of tapes of young "babbling," edited so as to be completely non-sensical. Thus, the band had already cut Young into little pieces.
14. Mihalis, from Roger Gilmour (1978). A beautiful guitar piece.
15. The Fletcher Memorial Home, from The Final Cut. "The Fletcher Memorial Home" is a place where despots are taken to grow old, safely deprived of the opportunity to do harm to the human race. There's Reagan and Thatcher, Brezhnev, Begin, Paisley, Nixon.... "Did they expect us to treat them with any respect.... Now the final solution can be applied." The Fletcher Memorial Home is of course a memorial to Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who was killed in WWII.
16. Wots...Uh, the Deal, from Obscured by Clouds (1972). The soundtrack album consisted entirely of that rarity in Pink Floyd's catalog--the slow, acoustic ballad. But the fact is that the type was fairly common in the early days, but disappeared from the repertoire after Meddle. The best of all of these is "Wots...Uh, the Deal," from Obscured by Clouds. The song concerns, well, the cycle of life and happiness : "Heaven sent the promised land/Looks all right from where I stand/'Cause I'm the man on the outside looking in/Standing on the first step.Show me where the key is kept/Point me down the right line, because it's time...." Later: "Someone sent the promised land/So I grabbed it with both hands/Now I'm the man on the inside looking out/Hear me shout, come on in, what's the news, where you been/'Cause there's no wind left in my soul/And I've grown old."
17. Perfect Sense, from Amused to Death by Roger Waters (1992). Concerning war: "It all makes perfect sense/Expressed in dollars and cents."
18. Interstellar Overdrive, from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967).
19. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, from A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) and Ummagumma (1969). Sort of the prototypical Pink Floyd spacey/psychedelic/music plus sound effects rambles, the 1st written by Gilmour-Mason-Waters-Wright, the 2nd by Waters.
20. Mother, from The Wall.
21. The Trial, from The Wall. "Mother, did it have to be so high?" Absolutely chilling. And "The Trial." Totally Kafkaesque.
22. Fearless, from Meddle. "Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd." One of the better songs in the folksy, acoustic ballad bucket.
23. Radio Waves, from Radio KAOS by Roger Waters (1987).
24. Sunset Strip, from Radio KAOS by Roger Waters (1987). A great forgotten record.
25. Atom Heart Mother, from Atom Heart Mother (1970).
26. A Saucerful of Secrets, from A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma. 2 more of those typical Pink Floyd instrumental rambles from the early days. Well, though "Atom Heart Mother" is unique in that it includes a full orchestra and, in fact, in the final mix the orchestra became prominent and the band mixed into the background.
27. Arnold Layne, from The Best of Pink Floyd (1970) and Relics (1971).
28. See Emily Play, from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Syd's songs about the transvestite kleptomaniac and "the psychedelic schoolgirl."
29. Learning to Fly, from A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987). The 1 and only memorable song from the 2 post-Waters LPs.
30. The Gold It's in the..., from Obscured by Clouds.
31. Astronomy Domine, from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Ummagumma.
32. Wish You Were Here, from Wish You Were Here.
33. If, from Atom Heart Mother.
34. Fat Old Sun, from Atom Heart Mother.
35. Not Now John, from The Final Cut.
36. Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, from Atom Heart Mother.
37. Jug-Band Blues, from A Saucerful of Secrets.
38. Breathe, from The Dark Side of the Moon.
39. Sheep, from Animals.
40. Free Four, from Obscured by Clouds.
Pink Floyd had on one level a pretty straightforward rise (1968-1970), peak (1971-1979) and decline (1980 and after). But each period had its counter-indications.
Pink Floyd's best LPs would pretty much have to be The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon. In fact, it's kind of surprising how narrow Pink Floyd's legacy really is. I mean, I've got 'em #5 on my list of all-time artists, but that kind of standing is really based on those 2 records. 8 of the top 10 songs are from the top 2 records. Both of course come from the so-called peak period of the 1970s, but there was lots of music in between those 2 records, for example, that falls short of classic status. Some people even prefer music from the earlier period to that of the interregnum between the 2 blockbusters. (Relatively few on the other hand prefer anything from the latter period, but in fairness there are a few of those.)
The Classics
The classics are just those 2 records mentioned above plus Meddle, or more properly, plus "Echoes," the 23-minute excursion that occupies all of side of that record.
1. The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). One of the most popular pop records of all-time, The Dark Side of the Moon was #1 on the Billboard LP charts, though for only 1 week, but it then remained on the LP chart for a record 741 weeks from 1973 through 1988. It has sold 50 million copies worldwide. The album's themes would of course be typical of Pink Floyd as this album is really the one that more than anything established the band's image and legacy in rock music. Those themes primarily are mental illness and greed and miscommunication.
Musically the LP is a bit more of a stand-alone. Yes, the band had always dabbled in sound effects and soundscapes but here that takes on a more literal approach with alarm clocks, cash registers and coins clanking, and the like. It also features less of David Gilmour's soaring electric guitar than we might expect. On "Us and Them," the solos are taken by saxophonist Dick Parry.
The Dark Side of the Moon has of course been criticized as being basically just 5 songs and a whole lot of noodling. The 5 main songs are "Us and Them," "Brain Damage," "Money,""Breathe" and "Time," though it is also true that the song "The Great Gig in the Sky," while there are no lyrics, features one of the album's most popular moments, that being an incredible wordless vocal by Clare Torey. "Us and Them" is the true centerpiece of the LP, but oddly enough the 3 truly great songs--"Money," "Us and Them" and "Brain Damage" are all placed back to back to back at the start of side 2 of the vinyl album. These 3 songs are surely among the band's top 10 songs.
"Money" starts out with the famous cash register sounds and goes on to lampoon wealth and greed in a mid-tempo rock form built around a short guitar-bass riff.
"Us and Them" has to be Pink Floyd's most eloquent social commentary. It's about dichotomies. "Us and them," "Me and you," the haves and the have-nots. "God only knows it's not what we would choose to do." And "Forward, he cried, from the rear/And the front rank died." And "Down and out/It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about/With, without/And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about." This is a slow anthemic piece with massed vocal and instrumental accompaniment.
"Brain Damage" is of course about mental illness, both the real kind as suffered by Syd Barrett, but also the lunacy that passes for every day life. "The lunatic is in my hall.../The papers hold their folded faces to the floor/And every day, the paper boy brings more.... The lunatic is in my head...." This is another slow ballad with massed background vocals providing the characteristic sound.
And considering, of course, that "the dark side of the moon" is most often used as a euphemism for mental illness, it is surely madness that in the end is the primary theme that people have taken away from the record, though I would personally say, again, that "Us and Them" is a more eloquent song on every level.
2. The Wall (1979). The Wall explores the theme of mental illness/madness in greater depth and single-mindedness, and it is of course the darkest of Pink Floyd's work. As you probably know if you're reading this blog, it's the story of rock 'n roller Pink, who is probably a paranoid schizophrenic and loosely based on Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's founder and a certifiable madman. He is also part Roger Waters, whose father Eric Fletcher Waters was killed in WWII. Pink's father is shown dying in WWII and his madness and alienation are attributed by reference to the loss of his father.
The LP follows Pink from his youth to his descent into total madness. As a youth he is traumatized by the bombing of London and his father's death in WWII, by a domineering mother and by the abusive tendencies of English school teachers ("All in all it's just another brick in the wall.")
Later he becomes a rock musician and the lifestyle and drugs just feed his isolation and paranoia.
The 2 centerpieces of the LP are "Comfortably Numb" and "Hey You." In the former, Pink is out of it and needs to get his act together to play a rock concert. In the film we see that it is a Dr. Feelgood who is speaking some of the words to the song: "Hello/Is there anybody in there?/Just nod if you can hear me/Is there anyone home?" Pink replies: "When I was a child, I had a fever/My hands felt just like two balloons/Now I've got that feeling once again/I can't explain, you would not understand/This is not how I am."
Later he says, "When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse/Out of the corner of my eye/I turned to look but it was gone/I cannot put my finger on it now/The child is grown, the dream is gone/And I have become comfortably numb."
Then there's "Hey you with your ear against the wall/Waiting for someone to call out/Will you touch me/Hey you would you help me to carry the stone/Open your heart, I'm coming home.... But it was all a fantasy/The wall was too high as you can see/No matter how he tried, he could not break free/And the worms ate into his brain."
Later the judge sings, "The evidence before the court is incontrovertible/There's no need for the jury to retire/In all my years of judging I have never heard before of someone more deserving/Of the full penalty of law/The way you made them suffer/Your exquisite wife and mother/Fills me with an urge to defecate.... I sentence you to be exposed before your peers/Tear down the wall."
3. Meddle (1971). Meddle rates here for 1 reason only, and that is "Echoes"the 23-minute track that occupies all of side 2 of the original vinyl disc. Other than this, side 1 contains a series of songs with widely varying sounds and styles, as was typical of Floyd up to this time. "One of These Days" is a hard-driving instrumental (other than 2 lines of spoken lyrics at the end, "One of these days/I'm going to cut you into little pieces." "San Tropez" is a light rocker. "A Pillow of Winds" is a lighter rocker. Seamus" is a blues about an old hound dog.
"Fearless" is also a light, acoustic rocker about English soccer. Midway through the song we hear fans of an English soccer team singing "You'll Never Walk Alone," their team's anthem. following by the final verse, "Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd, smiling/Merciless, the magistrate turns round, frowning/And who's the fool who wear's the crown/Go down in your own way/And as you rise above the fear lines in his frown/You look down/On the faces in the crowd." It was considered a "hit" in England though it was never released as a single.
Still, the standing of Meddle as an album is based entirely on the obvious appeal of "Echoes."
The Supporting Evidence
By this I mean, the evidence that further supports the notion that Pink Floyd is the #5 rock artist of all-time. Not that these records are sufficient to make such an argument, but that they support the argument and the career arc that also contains the 3 classics.
4. Wish You Were Here (1975). Wish You Were Here rates this highly for 1 and only 1 reason and that is the long, 9-part (in 2 long segments) song, "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond," which would seem to be yet another--and undoubtedly the most eloquent--tribute to Syd Barrett. Ditto, the title track is also about Syd Barrett and his mental breakdown.
On the other hand, there are some other notable tunes here, most of which recount that band's experiences and impressions of the music industry--"Have A Cigar"("Which one's Pink?") and "Welcome to the Machine"("What did you dream?/It's all right, we told you what to dream"). "Have A Cigar" was sung by Roy Harper after the band was dissatisfied with takes sung by Roger Waters, David Gilmour and then both in a duet.
But though the album takes its name from another song, "Shine On" is the centerpiece. The album opens with the song's 1st 13:30 and Parts I through V, and closes with another 12:29 and Parts VI-IX. Parts I-III are all instrumental introductions featuring Gilmour's guitar. Roger Waters finally sings in Part IV, while Part Vf eatures a saxophone solo, 1st on baritone, then tenor, by Dick Parry.
Part VI features a lap steel guitar solo by Gilmour, Part VII the rest of the vocals and lyrics, while Parts VIII and IX are dominated by Richard Wright's keyboards. Part IX is described as a funeral march for Syd, though he was still living at the time of this recording. In fact, Syd visited the studio unexpectedly and unannounced (the band did not recognize who he was for a good 45 minutes after his arrival) on the very day that the vocals for this song were being recorded.
"Remember when you were young/You shone like the sun/Shine on, you crazy diamond/Now there's a look in your eye/Like black holes in the sky/Shine on, you crazy diamond.... You reached for the secret too soon/You cried for the moon/Shine on...."
5. Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-1981. The complete The Wall plus a couple of bonus tracks.
6. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1968). Now we've moved outside of the classic or the peak period of the 1970s, and in fact everything about The Piper sounds crude today--the songwriting, the singing, the production, and David Gilmour does not appear on the record. Yet there is something about this record--maybe it's simply the fact that Syd Barrett wrote and sang most of it, which makes it such a curiosity. But more than that, the writing and singing--based on everything we know about Barrett--is remarkable for its, well, its normalcy, its accessibility...and, well, also for its idiosyncracies, its genius. The original Pink Floyd didn't sound like anybody else and, of course, the band never would sound like anybody else. And while the later Pink Floyd abandoned much of what Syd was doing at this time, everything that came to define Pink Floyd was right here in Syd's original vision.
There were the 2 long instrumentals filled with sound effects--"Astonomy Domine" an "Interstellar Overdrive." There also were Syd's little story-songs, especially "See Emily Play" but also "Bike" and "Scarecrow" and the like. There was a strong reliance on reverb and echo on the LP, which was somewhat new at the time but would become standard procedure both for Pink Floyd and for many other rock artists during this period.
Syd also was taking lots of LSD during this period, making the recording sessions pretty unmanageable, but with the help of Beatles' engineer Norman Smith, a full-fledged LP was produced and it is generally regarded as 1 of the great "psychedelic" records of the late 1960s-early 1970s "psychedelic" era.
7. Ummagumma (1969). We remain outside of Pink Floyd's classic period with this and the next selection as well. Band members have in fact long disparaged both works, but Ummagumma is a terrific snapshot of the band after the departure of Syd Barrett. His short accessible though idiosyncratic songs had been abandoned, but his long instrumental/sound effects rambles had become a staple for the band, both live and in the studio. And so, Disc 1 was a live disc of four of the band's instrumental rambles--"Astronomy Domine," "Careful With That Axe, Eugene," "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and "A Saucerful of Secrets."
Disc 2 was initially conceived as 2 full discs, 1 side each which would be a solo work by 1 of the band members. In fact, each of the band members produced a track (or 2 in Waters' case), but their total length ended up filling 1 disc, not 2. Richard Wright described his "Sisyphus" as "real music" at the time but later he called it "pretentious." Waters' 2 contributions are largely sound effects. Gilmour later said he just "bullshitted" his was through the bluesy "The Narrow Way," while Nick Mason's contribution is a 9-minute drum solo plus his wife Lindy on the flute.
8. Atom Heart Mother (1970). This record is of a piece with the band's work between Syd and the breakthrough LP The Dark Side of the Moon. It is half lengthy instrumental works and half songs written and sung by the individual band members more as solo works than as real band creations. The big distinguishing factor with Atom Heart Mother, however, is the use of a symphony orchestra on the title track, which is in 6 parts that occupy all of side 1 of the vinyl disc. In fact, after the band had finished recording the suite, they decided it needed something more, and asked Ron Geesin to compose an orchestral accompaniment. The way things worked out, the orchestra ended up being in the lead with the rock instruments in the background except for some Gilmour guitar work.
Actually, a 2nd distinguishing characteristic would be that the songs on side 2 ("If" by Waters, "Summer '68" by Wright and "Fat Old Sun" by Gilmour) are quite listenable. In this sense they foreshadow their similar efforts on side 1 of Meddle, but distinguish from some of the earlier "songs" including many of Syd Barrett's.
9. Radio KAOS--Roger Waters (1987).
10. David Gilmour (1978).
The 7 Pink Floyd records listed above pretty much exhausts their good and great work. Everything else under the name Pink Floyd is deeply flawed, though not without their moments and their rewards. A theme that appears in Pink Floyd's music also appears in their biographies and in their history as a band--that is, the impact of unique and sometimes quirky (and more) personalities. The inability of the 5 band members over the years to communicate and to work together is legendary, and the band's output does not do complete justice to their brilliance as artists for that reason. But their brilliance, I guess you could say their potential (to some extent unrealized), is also seen in selected solo works.
Waters and Gilmour, of course, recorded a number of virtually "solo" performances in the band's early years with fairly satisfactory results. I mean, both were immature as artists at that time and so their output (this is from the years 1969-1972) is a bit crude. But Gilmour and Radio KAOS captures the band's 2 leading lights near their peaks (their peaks of course came on Pink Floyd records).
In Gilmour's case, the instrumentals "Mihalis" and "Short and Sweet" stand out. The latter sounds like a precursor to "Run Like Hell," which later became a part of the Pink Floyd LP The Wall. For Waters, the 2 songs that open the 2 sides of the vinyl record, "Radio Waves" and "Sunset Strip," are straightforward pop-rock tunes. All 4 of these tunes may be considered to be significant within the broader Pink Floyd legacy.
11. The Final Cut (1983). The Final Cut was written and produced and sung by Waters as a sequel to The Wall, with the rest of the band members used more or less as session men. In fact the band's peak period is characterized by the fairly abrupt disappearance of writing and singing credits for band members other than Waters. In fact Richard Wright was thrown out of the band between Animals and The Wall.
Waters himself officially left Pink Floyd in 1985 and the name belongs, now, to Gilmour and Mason, and you may note that on the official Pink Floyd Web site neither The Wall nor The Final Cut is included. Waters eventually came to dominate the band, and the other band members came to dislike Waters so much that his signature work has been disowned.
There is of course no way that The Wall will be forgotten or overlooked as a part of the Pink Floyd legacy. The Final Cut, on the other hand, is fading from memory. The album went to #1 on the U.S. album charts but also went just 2X platinum compared to The Wall's 23X platinum and The Dark Side's 15X platinum. A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the 1st Pink Floyd record without Waters, went 4X platinum. Still, The Final Cut has at least 2 classic songs on it: the title track and "The Fletcher Memorial Home."
"The Final Cut" sounds for all the world like it belongs on The Wall. Its lyrics conjure images from the movie--approaching Pink's hotel room and viewing it through the fish-eye lens of the door hole, Pink phoning his wife and a man answering, Pink contemplating suicide: "I held the blade in trembling hands/Prepared to make it but/Just then the phone rang/I never had the nerve to make the final cut." It is as powerful a statement in its own right as is The Wall.
"The Fletcher Memorial Home" is a place where despots are taken to grow old, safely deprived of the opportunity to do harm to the human race. There's Reagan and Thatcher, Brezhnev, Begin, Paisley, Nixon.... "Did they expect us to treat them with any respect.... Now the final solution can be applied." The Fletcher Memorial Home is of course a memorial to Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who was killed in WWII.
The rest of the LP is surprising solid including "Not Now John," which Waters persuaded Gilmour to sing.
Just Okay
12. Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987). One of just 2 releases under the Pink Floyd name after the departure of Roger Waters, this went to #3 on the American LP charts, compared to #1 for The Final Cut, but it went 4X platinum versus The Final Cut's 2X platinum and vastly outsold it. The sound was a bit monotonic but still it was unmistakably Pink Floyd. Gilmour's guitar dominated more than ever--much of the material had original been written and recorded for a Gilmour solo album, but then he decided that a new Pink Floyd record was in order. And a record dominated by Gilmore's guitar is hardly a bad thing. Just ever so slightly monotonous.
But "Learning to Fly" was vintage Pink Floyd. It worked on both a literal as well as a metaphorical level, as Gilmour was a licensed pilot and flying enthusiast. But the song also sounded like a declaration of freedom from Waters' domination and a determination to spread one's wings anew in his absence. Gilmour seemed to confirm this interpretation in interviews. The album also vastly outsold Waters' Radio KAOS, released the same year, and most Pink Floyd fans seemed to take Gilmour's side against Waters, and confirming that at a glance Gilmour's guitar and not Waters' concepts are what people take to be the heart of Pink Floyd.
13. Animals (1977). Animals is yet another of Roger Waters' concepts: A scathing critique of capitalism portraying greedy "Pigs," combative "Dogs"and the general population as complacent "Sheep." The sound is vintage Pink Floyd but none of the songs presents anything close to a memorable hook or line.
14. The Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988).
15. Pulse (1995). Both are live "greatest hits" type LPs the 1st from the 1988 Imaginary Lapse of Reason tour, the 2nd from the tour behind Division Bell.
16. Obscured by Clouds (1972). A modest little album consisting of 10 songs, several of which are noteworthy. Waters' "Free Four" was the band's 1st single to get airplay in America. Gilmour and Waters collaborated on "Wots...Uh, he Deal" and "The Gold It's In the..." The former was sung by Gilmour on record and resurrected on Gilmour's 2006 tour. It's about life: "The turning of the wheel,,,, Flash the readies/Wot's...uh, the deal/Got to make it to the next meal." In the end: "Hear me shout, come on in/What's the news, where ya been/'Cuase there's no wind left in my soul/And I've grown old." The latter was a rare uptempo tune espousing the hippie philosophy.
17. Relics (1971). A greatest hits type album, but it included 4 songs not previously released on LP. "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," the band's 1st 2 singles, both by Syd Barrett, were the reasons to buy this LP.
Not Okay
18. A Saucerful of Secrets (1968). Contains the songs "A Saucerful of Secrets" and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, but you can get those elsewhere, and everything else is pretty much throwaway. Well, Syd Barrett's "Jug-Band Blues" is an interesting curiosity because it is Syd's.
19. Amused to Death--Roger Waters (1992).
20. The Division Bell (1994). The band's 2nd and last LP without Roger Waters and its last LP overall. The album was written by Gilmour and Wright around the topic of communication and "people making choices." But there's nothing here that is at all memorable or adds to the band's legacy.
21. Soundtrack from the Film More (1969). The album contained the customary mix of songs for this era--acoustic "folk" ballads, heavy rock and avant garde instrumentals, but there is nothing of real historical or other interest.
22. About Face--David Gilmour (1994).
Pink Floyd's Best Songs
As a generalization, Pink Floyd's songs fall into 3 categories: 1) Long, rambling instrumentals, many of which include sound effects various kinds. These songs were especially prominent in the band's early days through The Dark Side of the Moon, but became less common thereafter. 2) Short, compact pop songs, many of them acoustic, "folk ballads." These too were most prominent in the early days. 3) Classic rock 'n roll songs, or in other words, everything else.
Or, looked at another way, Pink Floyd's songs were written 1) by Roger Waters and 2) by everybody else. Over the course of the band's career, the trend went from 1 and 2 to pretty much just 1. The band was successful under both models commercially, but socially--well, the band broke up rather than continue to be dominated by Waters at the end.
1. Echoes, from Meddle (1971). "Echoes" was originally performed live in April 1971 with the title "Return of the Son of Nothing," which later became the working title (later abandoned of course) of the LP. "Nothings" was originally a reference to various experiments the band had conducted toward the new LP but which had been unproductive (had produced "nothing"). Well, not entirely nothing. That "ping" sound that opens "Echoes" came out of those experiments (created by keyboardist Richard Wright) and the song was built from there. David Gilmour's guitar was the next thing to be recorded over the pings. And while Gilmour's guitar work on The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall may be considered to be prototypical of his work and representative of his best work, to me "Echoes" is his greatest work and most representative. If somebody hasn't heard Gilmour's or Pink Floyd's work and wanted to know what his guitar sounds like, this would be the example as far as I'm concerned: Beautiful, silky, languid, single-note guitar leads, that's what Gilmour contributed to the genre of rock 'n roll guitar.
And let's be honest. As much as Roger Waters contributed to Pink Floyd's success and to its sound and to its legacy with his lyrics and thematic concepts, it is indeed Gilmour's guitar that makes Pink Floyd Pink Floyd.
But as far as lyric themes are concerned, "Echoes" starts as a natural soundscape: "Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air/And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves.../Everything is green as submarine." But the true subject slowly emerges. "Echoes" ("An echo of a distant time") refers to "strangers" striving to achieve communication and understanding. "Strangers passing in the street/By chance two separate glances meet/And I am you and what I see is me/And do I take you by the hand/And lead you through the land/And help me understand the best I can." And in the final verse: "No one sings me lullabies/No one knows the wheres or whys/So I throw the windows wide/And call to you across the sky...."
"Echoes" is somewhat unusual in Pink Floyd's work because there's an optimistic tone. Something positive is going to come of this human striving. Much of their work dwells more on the dark side.
2. Comfortably Numb, from The Wall (1979). The Wall is of course the darkest of Pink Floyd's works. As you probably know if you're reading this blog, it's the story of rock 'n roller Pink, who is probably a paranoid schizophrenic and loosely based on Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's founder and a certifiable madman. He is also part Roger Waters, whose father Eric Fletcher Waters was killed in WWII. Pink's father is shown dying in WWII and his madness and alienation are attribution by reference to the loss of his father.
"Comfortably Numb" is the centerpiece of the gargantuan story of "The Wall," if there is one.
"Comfortably Numb" is also the centerpiece in that it contains Gilmour's most soaring, eloquent guitar solo on the record.
3. Us and Them, from The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). "Us and Them" is a bit unusual in that the instrumental solos are taken by Dick Parry on the saxophone. The overall tone of the song is quiet and contemplative. In fact, the music was originally written by Richard Wright for the movie Zabriskie Point. Director Michelangelo Antonioni rejected it, saying, "It's beautiful, but it's too sad." Three years later, Roger Waters added lyrics to it and the rest is history.
4. Brain Damage, from The Dark Side of the Moon. A slow ballad, this is the best of many Pink Floyd songs that explore mental illness:"The lunatic isi n my head."
5. The Final Cut, from The Final Cut (1983). The rest of the band has disowned this great record, this great song. Waters had gradually supplanted all the other band members and had come to do all of the writing and most of the singing and, more to the point, all of the dictating. That was true of The Wall and it was especially true of The Final Cut. But, seriously, there was some beautiful music there.
6. Run Like Hell, from The Wall. A great uptempo rock song based on a sequence of descending guitar chords. The songs depicts Pink's hallucination in which he is a fascist dictator who turns a concert audience into an angry mob. "You better run" from this angry mob if you're "riffraff"--a Jew, a "queer," a black, etc.
7. Money, from The Dark Side of the Moon.
8. The Great Gig in the Sky, from The Dark Side of the Moon. "Money" is a sly, ironic, cynical tribute to money: "Money, get away/Get a good job with more pay and you're OK/Money, t's a gas/Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash." It's another uptempo number, thus differentiated from the majority of Pink Floyd songs that tend to feature more deliberate rhythms. "The Great Gig" is of course one of those slow cookers, and is also typical in that it utilizes some sort of unusual sound or other--in this case a famous and fabulously expressive wordless vocal by Clare Torrey. "The Great Gig" was written by Richard Wright and was performed in concert through 1972 as an instrumental as "The Mortality Sequence" and/or "The Religion Song." At the last minute it was decided to add a girl singer "wailing orgasmically," and producer Alan Parsons suggested Torry. She did 2-and-a-half-takes, and the final version was assembled from all of the takes. The band was impressed, by their own testimony, but was so reserved that Torry left the sessions thinking that her vocals would not be used.
9. Hey You, from The Wall.
10. Goodbye Blue Sky, from The Wall.
11. Another Brick in the Wall, from The Wall. "Goodbye" occurs early in The Wall, when Pink is traumatized by the Nazi bombing of London. A little later he is traumatized by abusive school teachers ("Another Brick in the Wall"). Much later, as Pink descends into his isolation and paranoia, he pleads for help:
"Hey you, out there on your own/Sitting naked by the phone/Would you touch me/Hey you, with your ear against the wall/Waiting for someone to call out/Would you touch me/Hey you, would you help me to carry the stone/Open your heart, I'm coming home/But it was just a fantasy/The wall was too high, as you can see/No matter how he tried, he could not break free/And the worms ate into his brain."
12. Shine On, You Crazy Diamond, from Wish You Were Here (1975). This is of course the sprawling tribute to Syd Barrett, consisting of about 26 minutes and 10 "parts" in 2 segments. The 1st segment opens the record Wish You Were Here and the 2nd closes it. There are 4 different David Gilmour guitar solos as the song unfolds.
13. One of These Days, from Meddle. The song is an uptempo instrumental played over 2 double-tracked bass guitars played by Gilmour and Waters. There is a spoken (by Nick Mason) vocal at the end: "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces." The threat was aimed at a BBC DJ named Jimmy Young, whom the band disliked because of his alleged tendency to "babble on.". In live concerts, Pink Floyd had earlier strung together a series of tapes of young "babbling," edited so as to be completely non-sensical. Thus, the band had already cut Young into little pieces.
14. Mihalis, from Roger Gilmour (1978). A beautiful guitar piece.
15. The Fletcher Memorial Home, from The Final Cut. "The Fletcher Memorial Home" is a place where despots are taken to grow old, safely deprived of the opportunity to do harm to the human race. There's Reagan and Thatcher, Brezhnev, Begin, Paisley, Nixon.... "Did they expect us to treat them with any respect.... Now the final solution can be applied." The Fletcher Memorial Home is of course a memorial to Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who was killed in WWII.
16. Wots...Uh, the Deal, from Obscured by Clouds (1972). The soundtrack album consisted entirely of that rarity in Pink Floyd's catalog--the slow, acoustic ballad. But the fact is that the type was fairly common in the early days, but disappeared from the repertoire after Meddle. The best of all of these is "Wots...Uh, the Deal," from Obscured by Clouds. The song concerns, well, the cycle of life and happiness : "Heaven sent the promised land/Looks all right from where I stand/'Cause I'm the man on the outside looking in/Standing on the first step.Show me where the key is kept/Point me down the right line, because it's time...." Later: "Someone sent the promised land/So I grabbed it with both hands/Now I'm the man on the inside looking out/Hear me shout, come on in, what's the news, where you been/'Cause there's no wind left in my soul/And I've grown old."
17. Perfect Sense, from Amused to Death by Roger Waters (1992). Concerning war: "It all makes perfect sense/Expressed in dollars and cents."
18. Interstellar Overdrive, from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967).
19. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, from A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) and Ummagumma (1969). Sort of the prototypical Pink Floyd spacey/psychedelic/music plus sound effects rambles, the 1st written by Gilmour-Mason-Waters-Wright, the 2nd by Waters.
20. Mother, from The Wall.
21. The Trial, from The Wall. "Mother, did it have to be so high?" Absolutely chilling. And "The Trial." Totally Kafkaesque.
22. Fearless, from Meddle. "Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd." One of the better songs in the folksy, acoustic ballad bucket.
23. Radio Waves, from Radio KAOS by Roger Waters (1987).
24. Sunset Strip, from Radio KAOS by Roger Waters (1987). A great forgotten record.
25. Atom Heart Mother, from Atom Heart Mother (1970).
26. A Saucerful of Secrets, from A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma. 2 more of those typical Pink Floyd instrumental rambles from the early days. Well, though "Atom Heart Mother" is unique in that it includes a full orchestra and, in fact, in the final mix the orchestra became prominent and the band mixed into the background.
27. Arnold Layne, from The Best of Pink Floyd (1970) and Relics (1971).
28. See Emily Play, from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Syd's songs about the transvestite kleptomaniac and "the psychedelic schoolgirl."
29. Learning to Fly, from A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987). The 1 and only memorable song from the 2 post-Waters LPs.
30. The Gold It's in the..., from Obscured by Clouds.
31. Astronomy Domine, from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Ummagumma.
32. Wish You Were Here, from Wish You Were Here.
33. If, from Atom Heart Mother.
34. Fat Old Sun, from Atom Heart Mother.
35. Not Now John, from The Final Cut.
36. Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, from Atom Heart Mother.
37. Jug-Band Blues, from A Saucerful of Secrets.
38. Breathe, from The Dark Side of the Moon.
39. Sheep, from Animals.
40. Free Four, from Obscured by Clouds.
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