Sometimes, when I listen to songs like Shine On or Comfortably Numb, I feel very small and inconsequential. I find the music to be extremely powerful.
Wish you were here (Album) lifted bad form yesterday. Paperwork today, still have it playing in the background. Really only familiar with this one and Dark Side.... Must rectify as they are two of my favourite albums. Ever.
Wish You Were Here is their best one. Legitimate arguments for that one as just the best album. The Wall has a load of famous cuts, though it's pretty fucking depressing if you actually listen to what Rog is saying. Meddle is well worth a listen, One Of These Days is one of their best songs. And this tends to get eye-rolling when I mention it to purists, but I'm quite a fan of a lot of stuff on The Division Bell. It's a bit more straightforward rock without Roger around, but there's some good stuff there.
I didn't like it when I first heard it, but I've come to appreciate some of the songs. Of course all the members are extremely talented, but I discovered Pink Floyd went through a rapid 10,000 hour level-up period similar to the way the Beatles did. The Beatles took a job as the house band for a strip club in Germany. Apparently that was a normal thing at the time, the German strip clubs all wanted their own house band who worked like 12 hours a day every day (or was it more like 18?). But unlike all the other bands who did the same job, the Beatles used the opportunity to keep adding new songs to their repertoire, thus increasing their skill and knowledge. For Pink Floyd, and this was during their acid rock psychedelic period with Syd Barrett as the leader, they played a lot of—ah, man, I can't remember what they were called. House parties maybe? Someone would rent out a house or just use their own house, and you'd get a bunch of acid-heads tripping out and draped over the furniture all day. The band would play all day, and started doing extended versions of their songs, working up to songs lasting over an hour with ridiculous extended solos. All this massive practice jammed into such a brief period can push your skills over the top, assuming you're practicing right (not reinforcing mistakes) and already have your fundamentals solidly in place.
It was over for me after Roger Waters left. David Gilmour just isn't a great singer/lyricist. On Division Bell, it was like he was trying to sound like Waters and say things Waters would say. Doesn't work in my opinion. Hell of a guitar player, though. Especially since nothing he played was complicated... meaning I can play all Gilmour parts and solos without much effort. Unlike Eddie Van Halen or most of Buckethead.
I don't play guitar, but Gilmour's playing never sounded complicated to me so this isn't surprising. However, I love the sound of his playing and his solos. Buckethead is a beast. Never liked Van Halen, though I can appreciate the seemingly effortless talent Eddie had.
I have it on my ipod but these albums need energy when I'm unfamiliar with them. I have just stuck to the tried and trusted of Wish... and Dark... but will dip a toe over the next few days.
Yeah his tones and intonation are top notch. Can't beat the production values either. Floyd was to production like George Lucas was to special effects. Buckethead is pretty much a robot as far as fretwork goes. He'll go a dozen bars without altering the note length once. Piece of cake for eighths and sixteenths, but another story for thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths.
I'll second Animals. Great album. Based on Orwell's Animal Farm. All about the Sheep, the Dogs and the Pigs.
Yeah, the Pigs on the Wing sandwich with three 15 minute songs between is artfully done. Meddle is great, too. You can hear them working through the cypher before putting it all together for Dark Side.
The one that starts with the recorded pig grunt, where he keeps saying "You radiate cold shafts of broken glass". One of my favorite songs. In fact, here it is:
I agree. Gilmour needed the edginess he could only get with Pink Floyd. I really want to like his stuff, but it puts me to sleep.
Fun fact: Waters sued to keep the name Pink Floyd and lost. Axl Rose sued to keep the name Guns n Roses and won. Both were volatile frontman (more so Axl) who ultimately didn't get along with their visionary guitar players. Neither were able to do anything without them. Both were Mozart level composers, studio mavens, designed crazy stage productions (more so Waters). I had like 10 more Axl/Waters comparisons once upon a time, but can't remember them now.
Speaking of Axl Rose and his takeover of GnR, I love the whole interplay of names that played out afterwards. Chinese Democracy (the name of his GnR album I believe, or a song on it?) was a term Slash or somebody else used to describe his tyranny over the rest of the band. And one day it struck me that the end of Communism in the Czech Republic was called the Velvet Revolution. Velvet Revolver was the name of the band that was essentially GnR but with Scott Weiland singing. Plus, a revolver is a gun. A gun but no rose. Very clever. I also love the fact that, in the scene from T2, Arnold flipped open a box of long-stemmed roses that had a sawed-off shotgun inside it. A gun & a rose. That scene was featured in the promotional video with music by G&R. Ok, getting carried away and way off topic. So how about that Pink Floyd huh? He had quite the arm (oh wait, I'm thinking about the character from Dazed & Confused... )
Since we’re already off topic, I suspect many in this thread will like this cover of Syd-era Pink Floyd from an excellent Canadian band:
The reason I used to hear the song so much was because the local rock station, KSHE 95, had this as their logo and mascot, a pig known as Sweetmeat: Spoiler: Click Me So yeah, they used to play Pigs (3 Different Ones) a lot.
Interesting. I just learned the pig noises were not recorded (I mean, they're not recordings of real pigs), Gilmour created them using a talk stick and harmonics and some kind of distortion. He also made some dog whine sounds the same way. Phenomenal job!! I never would have even guessed.
Ah, nothing like the ingenuity of 1970s sound effects. People had to work to get things done back then.
