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.
No comments:
Post a Comment