pink floyd

Put that joint DOWN!

Introduction

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

A Saucerful of Secrets 

Soundtrack to the film More

Soundtrack to the film Zabriskie Point

Ummagumma

Atom Heart Mother

Relics

Meddle

Obscured By Clouds  

Dark Side Of The Moon

Wish You Were Here

Animals

Wall, The

Is There Anybody Out There?

The Final Cut

Momentary Lapse Of Reason, A

Delicate Sound Of Thunder, The

Division Bell, The

Pulse

The Lineup Card

Syd Barrett (guitars/vocals) until 1967

Roger Waters (bass, vocals, etc.) until 1984

Rick Wright (keyboards) until late 70's...returned mid 1990's

Nick Mason (drums)

David Gilmour (guitar, vocals) since 1967

It's hard not to like Pink Floyd and it's hard not to hate Pink Floyd as well. Pink Floyd is the unthinkingman's art rock band. If you happen to be a narrow-minded, die hard, dyed-in-the-wool, tongue-halfway-up-Roger-Water's-rectum Floyd fan, I really suggest you leave now, put on The Wall yet again and beat your sister to a pulp or whatever you guys do for fun. You probably won't appreciate most of what I'm a gonna say here.

Taking the first point, about liking Floyd, I don't know off the top of my head what other band could be considered as visual and cerebral as Pink Floyd was in their mid-70's heyday, yet was also able to back up their gimmicks with, well, if not fresh then at least palatable musical ideas. They were accessible yet inventive, and more professional than a swimming pool full of anal-retentive accounting majors, and we all know they sold more plastic to budding heads than all the other psychedelic bands combined. The total amount of weed smoked to Pink Floyd records must, is amassed in one huge stack of THC-godhead, weigh at least as much as John Ashcroft's sexual repression. Their simpleton worldview on later albums really appeals to folks who like to keep their thinking to a minimum. There ain't a lot of 'rough edges' like King Crimson or the Bee Gees, so most of the time albums go down easy if you aren't listening too hard. For those of us who need a bit more insanity in our music, the early mid-60's Syd Barrett Pink Floyd can be held up as definitely one of the earliest and most enduring symbols of fucked-up bass-ackwards psychedelic funsieness in all of rock music, and Syd Barrett as its pretty boy drug martyr. And after he left, the band was able to put forward a pretty decent attempt at cosmic rock for an album. In almost all of their epochs (save the latest one), from blot-by-numbers psyche madness to space rockers to folkies to arena-packing album rock kings they were always at least able to put forward one album that's worth putting in a collection, which is more than you can say about most bands with a 30 year history....so in that much their popularity is justified.

But Pink Floyd has definite and crippling limitations as well, especially when you begin comparing them with some of their contemporaries. And though Syd's Floyd has its own problems, the following section is only for the Gilmour-era Floyd, and particularly the hugely popular '73-'83 Roger-dictated epoch. First, they are very far from being proficient on their instruments, at times even approaching out-and-out hackhood. David Gilmour is the only one able to hold his own at all, and he is usually so calculated and dispassionate on his solos its rather like listening to some sort of human Midi program than a rock guitarist. He, by far, is the Anti-Keith Richards. The other three are no great shakes at best and unable to play at worst. And since they're often unable to carry a passage by their musical prowess alone, and can't get by on good ol' rockin' (and ooohh...the times they try to do that...*shudder*), they're left having to create melodies and emotional passages, which they're only able to do sporadically. They mostly like to put together long, repetitive and monotonous, yet pleasantly harmonic background music. Why background? Because almost without an exception, it's BORING. Really, really boring. So few jaw dropping, stop-what-you're-doing-and-listen sections (that aren't based on some sort of special effect, anyway) that I wonder why I even try to care. Secondly, Pink Floyd's 'message' is often unpleasantly cynical, insincere, and adolescently simplistic. World Bad! Greed Bad! Mother Bad! The early band didn't have much of a message at all (other than that boring the shit out of you is, like, far out man), but after the development of Roger Waters as the band's conceptual and operational Saddam Hussein, the message began to get so overbearing that, finally, the band itself was no longer able to contain Roger's ego and it imploded. The latter-day cash cow Pink Gilmour is again sans-message, unless you count the most banal Down With People philosophizing as some sort of message. It's often hard to believe this band was able to make something as heartfelt as Wish You Were Here when you're trying to hash your way through The Division Bell, and hard to believe they were so intent on breaking down the 'walls' between artist and audience when they were always one of the least populist bands out there. (Can you imagine the Live At Pompeii Pink Floyd signing autographs and slapping fives with fans after a gig? I see them negotiating a half point on their Bentley financing rate, if you ask me.)  It's like Waters & Co. like the idea of connecting with an audience more than the process of such, and as a consequence turn to the usual rah-rah button pushing you'll find on their live albums. Ooh! Lights! Ooh! Big Dirigibles! Oooh! Lookit that film in the background! Oooh! Hear that 100% mapped-out market analyzed 'heart-wrenching' guitar solo! God, I'm lucky they did have a time when they just bashed it out until you fell asleep. At least then I didn't feel like I was being manipulated quite so much.

In the end, the Pink Floyd catalogue is a risky investment but with some decent sides. Many albums contain real shitty sections, and very few are great from beginning to end. But then again, very few are rotten from beginning to end either. It is a mistake, and one that a lot of people make, to believe that Pink Floyd were the be-all and end-all of psychedelic and cerebral rock music. There's a whole 'nother world out there for you to discover, young heads! But Pink Floyd are still the most revered, and as such we must give them at least some respect.

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn - Capitol 1967.

Far out, man...far out. Pink Floyd's debut would have placed them on the Big Picture Placemat Menu of Rock Notoriety (get 'em Smothered! Covered! Play a Patsy Cline song on the jukebox!) even if they'd suddenly turned turtle after this release and started making cocktail jazz music from then on. The only album they made with Little Lysergic Lupe Lu Syd Barrett as their leader, Piper is a strong contender for Best Early Psychedelic Album...but maybe not the final winner. Count it as one of the chicks who gets the big bouquet and fights off rageful tears as she sees Jimi Hendrix grab the crown even though she suffered through 6 months of bulimia to get this far. In fact, the album is about as consistent as a turd in a hot tub. The Syd-era Pink is nothing like the massive-hit 70's version, for one thing. They really hadn't learned to play their instruments yet, and after looking at a guitar tab of one of Syd's songs it dawned on me that this guy knew next to nothing about his instrument. Didn't know how to play scales. Didn't probably know more than a handful of chords. Obviously couldn't play along with stuff on the radio. Didn't even know how to make the coolest sounds come out of it. But somehow the man made that guitar work for him and was somehow able to realise the music in his head. His chaotic slashing has more than a little accidental melody under the surface, and he had an impeccable pop sense under all that druggy marshmallow covering. One only need listen to the early single 'Arnold Layne' (not found here, unfortunately) to see that.

But, all the same, Syd's mind was buried under about an inch and a half of Fairy Juice, and that's why he preferred writing either twisted children's songs or spacey  trips to the outer rings of Saturn than silly songs about crossdressing. The opening piece on Piper, 'Astronomy Domine', is still one of the bands best-ever and most realized creations. The cosmic slashing and bashing feels as if it can fly apart and send broken sprockets straight for your solar plexus at any moment...but it holds together. Somehow the ship holds together and safely gets us out of the range of the solar flares. I mean, the band spent like 5 years attempting to write another one of these, and though they came close several times nothing quite matches the shattering open-chord crashes and descending 'ahhhhhs' of the 'Domine'.

As for the best of the wacky Sesame Street side of the early Floyd, 'Lucifer Sam' is also one of the most accomplished tracks they ever made. The sexy, pounding, rock swing and snotty singing style probably created more awful imitators than any other Floyd since, as can be evidenced by listening to any Britpop album between 1991 and 1997 or so. And its about a cat. That's different, innit? But we only get one 'Astronomy' and one 'Lucifer Sam' on Piper each...they only had so much in them. The rest of the tracks range from melodic but uncompelling doo-dah fruit psychedelia ('Matilda Mother') to simply childish vacuousness. ('Flaming', which has, I'll admit, a nicely off-putting hook line in 'you can't see me, but ayyyye cannn youuuu!'). You also get some of the usual 1967 sound 'experiments' ('bullshit') like 'Pow R Toc H' (don't ask me to explain that to you), which is nothing more than a bunch of mouth noises like your 9 year old brother used to make just to piss you off, a fair jazzy piano part, and then more annoying mouth noises mixed with feedback and screaming. Okay, I'll bite...psychedelia was mostly just an excuse for talentlessly wanking off a lot of the time, but gosh...and Roger's first composition, 'Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk' is little better. The guitar parts are okay in a Velvet Underground-y way, but I'll be Alex Trebeck's fluffer girl if those lyrical parts aren't just a load of shit. In my little girl's Pampers no less. Did you know that a newborn baby's first poop is a jet black tar-like substance that acted as a buttplug while the little one was forming in the womb? And if you put your ear up to the diaper real close you can hear 'music seems to help the pain'....AGGGH!

And the 'other' space rock song on here, the 'epic' 'Interstellar Overdrive' is cool, but c'mon...that sounds like the first song my college joke band ever wrote together. Even down to how it was obviously recorded direct-to-four track real hot so the guitars would get all overdriven like that. Those even sound like how I played solos back in 1995, and I had never even heard this album back then. Our drummer was better, but I'll give 'em that Roger is a better bass player than Joe McNulty was. Sheeit, man, I mean I feel like an ass comparing the Flamin' Schnanuses to Barret-era Pink Floyd, but the proof is in the pudding, you know? And the self-indulgent noisy slop is in 'Interstellar Overdrive'....call it 'Astonomy Domine' without the focus. And without an end.

The rest of the album is better than the worst moments of 'Power Touch' and 'Try To Walk With An Stethoscope in Your Colon' but worse than the first two songs. 'The Gnome' and 'Scarecrow' do little for me, 'Chapter 24' is allright but overstays its welcome real quick. Quoting books in rock songs is always a bad idea, and doing it over and over is grounds for detention, mister. 'Bike' is as silly as killing a homeless drifter on your way home from soccer practice but its still funny...'he's getting rather old but he's a good mouse' always kills 'em down at the Lodge, doncha know? And you know what? Each one has at least some semblance of a melody going on. Thanks Mr. Barrett. You can go on home now. I hear there's some juicy steak on the stove and some good TV shows about ready to start...

Capn's Final Word: Times of unbearable annoyance, times of rocking brilliance, and it all comes off like a walk through the mind of an over-sugared kindergartner on paint fumes.

 

nazar     Your Rating: B
Any Short Comments?: Piper has moments of great brilliance that are ruined by pointless noise making. I really like all of it until Interstellar Overdrive. That song (if you can call it that) is a 9 minute noisefest that should not have seen the light of day. I'd rather have something like Arnold Layne instead, y'know. The ending of Bike is just some bells ringing and gnome laughing, which is retarded. The rest is ok, but not as great as it's sometimes made out to be.

Mike     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: Much better than you give it credit for, but I probably think that because I haven't burned out on it yet. Definitely, it's flawed, but I think it's a great LP. It's hard to think of another classic LP, though, with such a questionable first side.

"Astronomy Domine," "Lucifer Sam," and "Matilda Mother" are all really something. No complaints for me there, other than I think "Matilda Mother" should have been placed somewhere else on the LP. "Flaming" is really weird, though, and I sometimes think it would fit better on "A Saucerful Of Secrets." It just sounds really creepy to me, and I think that it would fit better on the overall darker tone on that album. "Pow R. Toc H." (Power Tokage - Syd was a world-class herbal cowboy at this point along with everything else) and "Take Thy Stethoscope And Walk" are horrible jams that sound like sperm whales farting. The second side rules mercilessly, from "Interstellar Overdrive" onwards.

My ideal Piper LP would be:

1 Astronomy Domine
2 Lucifer Sam
3 Arnold Layne
4 Candy and a Currant Bun (Arnold Layne B-side, and in that same vein,
except with crazy guitar)
5 See Emily Play
6 Interstellar Overdrive
7 The Gnome
8 Matilda Mother
9 Chapter 24
10 The Scarecrow
11 Bike

How's that?

A Saucerful Of Secrets - Atlantic 1968

Syd cracked himself up on LSD throughout the year of 1967 (not that LSD makes everyone who takes it nuts, it only amplifies tendencies that are already pre-existing. And it's pretty obvious Syd had more than one crack in his eggshell long before he took his first sugarcube) and by the time of the second album was unable to do much of anything. I remember reading a story about how Floyd went on some live TV program like Top of the Pops or something and, instead of lip synching (or actually singing...did they always lip synch on TV music shows? Not on Ed Sullivan they didn't. I dunno about the others.) he just stood there and looked vacantly into the camera lens and not even touching his guitar neither. For 3 minutes. Live, on nationwide television. Creeep-y, even for 1967. That's when they knew it was all said and done for poor ol' Syd Barrett and sent him home to momma. They replaced him with his astrological opposite, David Gilmour, a guitarist for which the word 'chaos' does not exist. Syd used to play these neat simple two-finger chord leads, New Man Dave plays actual melody lines like Clapton or the guy in Chicago does, with bends and vibrato and all that Italian sausage. But the rest of the band is happy to carry on playing along more-or-less in the same spacey-rock vibe of Piper here on Saucerful, and can't help but improve somewhat on the old sound.

First thing you'll notice here is that the singing is a lot more soothing and, you know, adult than on Piper. Secondly that they're all playing together as an ensemble more than before rather than a collection of various parts thrown together in a bowl with two eggs and a shot of horse jizz. Take Rick Wright's 'Remember A Day', with its Jefferson Airplane-esque roll and sighing chorus. It's still, you know, psychedelic and stuff, but think amassing storm clouds on Jupiter rather than fanged trolls living in your fusebox. It's less on-the-edge and seat-of-the-pants and up-the-butt-Bob than last time, but its also got a more additive effect. Like song 1 leads to song 2, which builds on the feeling of song 1 rather than leaving it in the dirt and switching completely to another, 100% unrelated, theme. The ever-so-slightly menacing 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' takes the foundation of 'Remember a Day', reduces it, and brings it on home in a way that Robert Plant never dreamed of. And, even better, the huge 12 minute badass motherfucker title track culminates all of the monotonous (yet not metronomic...these guys aren't Can, you know) space rock theme. While 'Interstellar Overdrive' was a mission to deliver Plan 9 From Outer Space in a cardboard rocket ship, 'Saucerful' is the soundtrack to a love scene starring a huge leathery extraterrestrial locust and a reluctant gelatinous blob somewhere on the outskirts of the Vega system. No I don't mean the car, you frigging gobstopper!

Its a bummer, then, that the album has to stick the totally out-of-place 'Corporal Clegg' right in the middle of our voyage. Now Roger's second composition is better than his first, I'll give him that (that wah-wahed Mrs. Clegg part is great) but not by much. And must I tolerate another kazoo part from yet another 60's drug band? Fucking drugs make you do the stupidest things. Listen, I know Roger was deeply affected by the death of his father in WWII, and I can appreciate that. But Jesus, man...right in the middle of this album, this...this...military march parody? You've got a lot to learn, boy.

Stop the presses and flog the pressmaster 'cos we've also got a new development here, the Pink Floyd sensitive folk-rock tune. Joining all the other freaks who like a bit of a break from the craziness now and then, 'See Saw' is the first exercise in the near tuneless Floyd-ian fuzzy-headedness that would later come to a head on Atom Heart Mother and Meddle. Oh, its not bad...perfectly enjoyable actually, but nothing to tip your milkman for. Syd's take on this sort of song (and his only writing contribution to Saucer, and his last ever collaboration on a Pink album), 'Jugband Blues', sounds like a few Sgt. Pepper outtakes mashed together, but with Syd making precious little sense in his rambling vocal delivery sections. It's like watching a car wreck...fascinating and not wholly unentertaining but still somehow bothersome to your sense of social consciousness.

Capn's Final Word: The space rock part of the album is great stuff, but ruined by the unwelcome intrusion of 'Clegg'. The other parts are barely fair. Lacks the peaks of Piper but is a more consistently mind-blowing ride.

 

Adrian Denning    Your Rating: A-

Any Short Comments?: My thoughts concerning this record is that they were unsure of what to do given Syds absence from the world of the sane. Rick Wright does a couple of Syd parodies that lack Syds inventiveness but aren't all that bad. Roger writes 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' of course and points the way forwards. 'Corporal Clegg' was Roger trying to be Syd. He soon stopped trying! The title track is largely tuneless but even that gave them encouragement to attempt similar ( and better ) things in the future. This album is an underrated gem, for me. No, its not perfect. So, an 'A-' from me.

 

Soundtrack to the film More - Atlantic 1969

Now I like French art films as much as the next Johnny Beer Bong (meaning that I'd rather felch a puddin' pop outta Bill Cosby's arsehole than watch one, but I'll consider it if the boob count is considerable) but sho 'nuff those Pinkies loved doing soundtracks for the damn things. Probably has something to do with their being left out of the London rock club scene in Blow Up (which is real good) in favor of the Yardbirds and wanting to catch up. This here is their first attempt at soundtrack writing, and if you were expecting a bunch of instrumental music and maybe a couple of outtakes tacked on, you'll be embarrassed to find out you're as wrong as wrong can be. No, not as wrong as Mark David Chapman or as wrong as Stalin, but close. More's just about packed with actual songs, but not the usual sleep-inducing, repetitive Secrets stratospherical logjammin' you're used to hearin' but a nice combination platter of dull, repetitive tranquilizing folk rock ('Cirrus Minor', 'Crying Song'), some sweet-but-inconsequential folk rock wussiness on 'Green Is The Colour', an oddly Donovan sounding folk rock 'Cymbaline' (good!). You following me, greenhorn? This is the absolute peak of Roger Waters' folkie period, and he was just a servin' out these sorts of underdeveloped and melodically handicapped folk-rock songs as if he was a-gonna hop on that freight train to Omaha or eat human flesh or whatever it is that folk rockers do. No, wait, I know! I know! They get real old, refuse to cut their stringy, nit-infested nest of grey hair, and appear at various county fairs along the Pacific Northwest just as long as they get gas money and a bottle of hooch in the bargain.

What's totally hilarious about this record is, that at the same time Roger was writing these sorts of pensive acoustic ditties that anyone can write and make palatable, David Gilmour was indulging his cock in some rock made for such a phallic instrument. This sort of gizz-rocking may not have been totally passe in 1968 (it was barely invented, actually), but now, in these halcyon days of System Of A Down and Creed, 'The Nile Song' and 'Ibiza Bar' sound like such musical antiques that its hard not to stifle a giggle at them. Sure, space rock is still cool and psychedelia never really did go out of style, but this sort of 'stand up on the amp and make the girls moan with pleasure' masturbatory rocking style is about as stylish as a set of Hypercolor parachute pants.

As for the rest, well, the soundtrack music had to go somewhere, and here you go. You have some fairly passable blues playing by Gilmour on 'More Blues', a horrid organ based piece of space rock trash 'Quicksilver', and a few other bits and pieces of more standard Floyd-sounding music. I don't hear much from anyone other than Gilmour and Waters any more....what happened to good ol Ricky Wright putting his 'Remember A Day' on an album? Poor boy probably already forgot how to play his instrument. Nahh...that didn't happen until 1972 or so. Oh well...Ummagumma would give everyone their due chances.

Capn's Final Word: This album is too much lame folk rock, stupid cock rock, and soundtrack filler. There are some moments, though, and enough of them to make me at least count this as a real Pink album.

 

Mike     Your Rating: A-
Any Short Comments?: This is actually one of my favorite Pink Floyd albums, probably because I haven't burned out on it yet like I did with Floyd's monster '70's AOR albums in early high school (now those were the days...I was a huge Floydian in 9th grade...). But I really like "Cymbaline" and the instrumentals aren't very wanky at all, and mostly do their job of being hypnotic and, to me at least, damned cool. You do have to be in the mood for "Quicksilver," and that one foresees some ambient Krautrock (it kinda reminds me of some Ash Ra Tempel stuff). I like it. Yeah, "The Nile Song" and "Ibiza Bar" are awful, despite the nice titles of both. Hey, personal taste. "Animals" is still my favorite Floyd album, though.
 

Soundtrack to the film Zabriskie Point - Atlantic 1969.

Another soundtrack, another drug movie (this one was more popular, though), another bunch of Pink Floyd soundtrack music. And this time it's just soundtrack music. And less interesting than on More, but more interesting than Les Nesman. 'Heart Beat, Pig Meat' is notable because it introduces the vocal samples that later made Dark Side Of The Moon the best spoken word album since Andrew Dice Clay's I Shat On My Audience Because I Used To Be Called 'Pussy Lips' Back In Grade School LP. Some surprises: The cute country-rock 'Crumbling Land' is the best ever Pink Floyd song ever relying on acoustic guitars, and should've been on a real album. Okay, so it sounds like the Byrds with Brian Eno singing, but it's Good Stuff. And Floyd also more or less invents ambient music on here, because the rest of their tracks are some of the most static sounding music I ever heard since my washing machine broke down. I mean, I guess it is soundtrack music, and I could see someone really digging getting a few Z's in the bag to this record, but then there's the darn Grateful Dead on here ripping through a solo section of 'Dark Star'...oooh those wascally Deadheads! Their music was genuinely trippy. Pink Floyd is often merely sleepy. Honestly, I don't see much one here for a Floyd fan to really get excited about, unless you're a really sonambulistic one.

Capn's Final Word: 'Crumbling Land' is great, but only a true weirdo need seek this album out. Be advised: that rating you see is only for the Floyd parts.

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Ummagumma - Atlantic 1969.

Schizoid. A double album by Floyd, the first being a live presentation of their entire goofy Space Cowboy stage act, the second being a bunch of solo sections by each of the egotistical assholes....err.....I mean band members. Some folks count this among their favorite Pink Floyd releases, but then some folks like George W. Bush too. Were there really that many kids going to special ed back in grade school? Dang. Enough to elect a president. Boggles the mind, much like the old board game Boggle may have done.

The live album is a mixed collection of the many different sides of Pink Floyd, giving us such various and sundry luminaries as 'Saucerful of Secrets', 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun', 'Astronomy Domine', the new 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' and much more. If you count some silence between songs as 'much more'. Show me a live record with four songs on it and I'll show you a good opportunity to study the insides of your eyelids. I mean, if you're only putting four songs on a space rock album, you're probably too busy cutting lines on the Hammond organ to attempt to make 'Astronomy Domine' come in anywhere close to its original running time. Dig it: later early Pink Floyd's live show was repetitive and boring! Yes! Repetitive and boring! The Same Thing over and over and over and over and over. Repetition of the same chords. Boring revisitation of the same themes. I hear reappearances of certain notes and duplication of...okay. You get the idea. 'Careful' is pretty fucking cool, though, at least in the big, scary middle part with the whispers and the cathartic scr-...I'm not gonna tell ya what happens there in the middle of 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene', but suffice it to say you might YELL your head off when you hear it. You could ROAR with delight or even SHRIEK with surprise. But make sure you're not in some dark HOLLER reading Saul BELLOW novels with C. Thomas HOWL under the SCREECH owl tree. Got that?

So if you feel some relief when the live album finishes (and you will, you will...) you're not going to make it through the...umm compositions on the studio album. Each band member gets their solo spot where they can do whatever they like, and you know what? They like to bore the shit out of us with toonless noodling and crappy experimentation! 'Yay, mommy, can I PLEASE have another fucking sound effect collage?' 'Yes, son, but only if you stop playing with Mr. Happy in the bathtub!' The opening 'Syphillis', Rick Wright's 'contribution' starts out okay, but quickly devolves into awful horror movie screeches and gratuitous piano abuse. 'Part Three' and 'Part Four' is a continuation of the already-dull-enough 'Quicksilver' off More. It just keeps dragging its rotting, stinking corpse all around the parking lot even though you thought you already snapped it's neck.

Roger's 'Grantchester Meadows' is more of the same stuff he packed More with, but even more normal this time. Nary an ominous organ chord to be found. But, ooh, watch those seconds of your precious life tick by as you wait for 7 minutes of this meandering limp-wrister to finally peter itself out and lead into the animal-noise orgy 'Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathering Together And Attempting To Create The Longest And Most Sophomoric Song Title In The History Of Modern Man' which most folks who don't worship comic books or Japanimation need only hear once in their lifetimes. Those who do worship comic books or Japanime (why can't they ever get all of a drink of water in their mouth? What's with all the kiddie porn and screaming?) will probably also play nicely with Nick Mason's distracted lo-cal drum soloing on 'The Grand Vizier's Garden Party'. Ohhh, will the bullshit ever stop on this thing? Well Dave's part ain't all that bad, and he keeps each section of 'The Narrow Way' a nice 3 or 4 minutes so we're not absolutely bored Tootie like on 'Grantchester', but c'mon, none of this stuff is exactly burning down the Synagogue, you know?

Capn's Final Word: I think it's quite obvious that these guys need to play together to be anything other than a bunch of self indulgent jellyfish. A good half of this album is dull and repetitive (if interesting), and the other half is just plain unlistenable. I find very little of value in it. Sigh...let the hate mail roll in.

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Brian     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: Take what Capn marvin says about this album with a dollop of something tasty.  The live version of a Saucerful of secrets has a depth that can not be experienced the first few "listens"  This combined with jammin versions of Careful with that axe and Astronomy domine make this live recording truly amazing.  The live versions of these songs make the originals sound like they were simply blueprints for these final masterpieces.  Also if you have the studio album just hit track skip when the noises start and you can skip all that avante garde crap without missing toons.  This makes it much easier to listen to.
 

JesЗs     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: C rating? :|. omg this album is a master piece. Careful with that axe eugene is just unreal ... a true clasic :p
 

Mike      Your Rating: C
Any Short Comments?: C is about the halfway mark, right? Well, I guess it should be C+, since I like Grantchester Meadows.

Live: Great. Fantastic. Weirdo live improvs that go into nutty trance-out modal space grooves. You won't regret it. Floyd was not boring live, as this more than adequately shows. A Saucerful of Secrets has a marvelously foreboding bass intro, Careful With That Axe Eugene gets its definitive outing here (great organ playing throughout the live LP), Set The Controls is turned into the bizarro space jam it was always meant to be, and Astronomy Domine has totally different drums and sounds like almost a different song. My rating is: A. Close to A+. Definitely the best live stuff Floyd ever legitimately released.

Studio: Yecch. Awful. Grantchester Meadows is nice enough, but even that gets boring over the course of seven minutes. Rick Wright's stuff is ok, at first, but just degenerates into hideous avant-garde fuckery. I liked "Quicksilver," and Part Four of Sysyphus is indeed kinda similar, but it sucks instead of being a groovy pot-haze trance session. I would have slept if the air around me hadn't been compressed by the sheer weight of pretension pouring out of the speakers. Waters has Grantchester Meadows, which is ok if overlong, and the repulsive Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Having an Orgy Under the Influence of Various Hallucinogenic Substances Harvested From Syd Barrett's Brainstem, which huffs dog balls. Gilmour's "The Narrow Way" Pt. 1 is cute enough if completely insubstantial, Pt. 2 makes no use of a menacing riff, and Pt. 3 is limp-wristed singer/songwriter drool. Shockingly, you're not listening to assorted tracks from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. Nick Mason's psychedelic drum solo is as moronic as you'd expect, though the flute solos that bookend it are nice enough. My rating is D. Close to D-. I got this album burned and used the second disc to kill squirrels.

So the halfway rating for the whole shebang is C+, or C, it doesn't matter. I can't do math and the studio half is a unloved puddle of liquid zebu droppings mixed with tape loops documenting several species of small furry band members masturbating all over a poster of John Cage. Too bad Roger stole the hand lotion, I heard Rick had to use a vibrator. The live half is like playing Fillmore West while tripping balls with a beyond-amazing psychedelic modal acid heavy space jam mind death band, nuking everyone else off the stage, and then balling Grace Slick afterwards. Wooooeeee!
 

Atom Heart Mother - Capitol 1970.

Hrm, one of the Floyd albums I never got around to buying as a teenager, mostly because I heard the words 'classical suite' and my mind just shut down. Actually, my mind shut down on just about anything that didn't include the words 'trippy', 'Led Zeppelin', or 'breast', but that's another man's sac. And I'm Pleased To Meet Me new Pink Floyd record, one that really, truly ain't half bad. Ain't really half good neither, but at least it's fairly efficient in it's shitty time wasting, unlike that Ummagumma gramma killer that kept chomping away at the rim of life for 100 full minutes.

But Gosh, that 23 minute first side isn't bad at all! A first, really, for a song that long not by Yes or the Live Dead. There ain't a part I don't like in the first, oh, 10 minutes or so. You got a halfway decent opening theme, a plasticky-but-enjoyable Gilmour slide solo, a 'heavenly chorus' section that goes on a tad long (but improves when the rhythm section comes back in again) and a part where Gilmour gets his calculator back out again and 'crunches' some 'numbers' if you Sue Case Logic for Screwing Up My $10000 CD Collection, and I think you do. Round about 13 minutes through it begins to get out the Patented Pink Floyd Suck Gun and starts shootin' away this way and that. They get out of the Pickup Truck Of Interestingness and start moseying down Avante Garde Time-Killing Road belching Unfunky Prog Rhythm Burps with nothing on other than an Ugly Synth Burp T-Shirt and some Feedback Underpants loaded with Orchestral Dissonance Skidmarks. And when that final theme starts humping around again I get the feeling that the song has gotten pretty weak. I can't imagine someone actually buying this record for full price, sitting down, and thinking 'Wow, that first 23 minute song was damn good, 100%. Wouldn't change a minute!' I'd actually expect the man to be asleep, or else in the john reading an especially funny Dilbert strip. Boy, that Dilbert is hilarious the way he satirizes the fact that every living human being in the Western world is doomed to pass away their meaningless lives in a faceless, cowardly, grey-and-white soul-destroying, ass-expanding, thought-controlling cubicle farm. Ha HAAA! Chortle-inducing! No wonder why I'd rather teach mathematics in an inner city high school where more murders occurred in one year than in most Scandinavian nations. Fuck you, Dilbert.

Side 2 is more of that late 60's Pink Floyd stuff they usually make short songs out of. Roger's folk rock 'If' is another one of his better songs, real 'sincere' and sounding more than a bit like the theme song for some fat teenage kid living life without much attention from the opposite sex (hey! Like I was before I scored a really horny girlfriend!). Rick Wright's 'Summer '68', about screwing chicks you don't really know very well, sounds like a reiteration of 'Atom Heart Mother' and fails to keep me interested. 'Fat Old Sun' is simply bullshit. and the closing 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast' is a put on from beginning to end. Maybe this was their idea of a joke, but I'll take Monty Python over some Valium-influenced acoustic non-melodies and eating noises. And, you know what? I'm not even sure this may be their idea of a joke. Oh, some parts aren't that bad, but c'mon. I'm getting tired of saying that. The song blows.

Capn's Final Word: The inconsistents strike again. Now their almost entirely unable to make something that doesn't begin to suck halfway through. So you've got a lot of puffed-up songs that start out fairly well and then denigrate into a load of bloated Lizard corpses.

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Relics - Capitol 1971.

Now, after sitting through such tripe as Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, one may begin to doubt whether mid-period Floyd was worth all the trouble, and I like to believe that Pink Floyd themselves started to wonder the same thing. During the Meddle sessions, the band put together this collection of old singes, album cuts, and whatnot, an album that showed that, yes, Pink did, at one time, not suck all kinds of ass, from Irish to Bangladese. And for those of us not lucky enough to live in London in 1966, we've got the Floyd's first hit singles, the ones that show that Syd wasn't always writing eerie kid's tunes. We've got 'Arnold Layne', a groovy proto-psychedelic rocker dedicated to a transvestite, and the James Bond/'66 Beatles hybrid 'See Emily Play', both of which rule. The studio version of 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' is, as you may well have read on the outside cover of your SAT packet, quite inferior to the live version on Um, Can I Trade This Album In For A Stick Of Gum-ma?. These guys just weren't ever able to use the studio as an instrument until the heady days of Dark Side, and nowhere is the proof more pudding-like than here. Still a good song, tho. And it was a B-side, so whaddya want? Rick's dorky 'Paintbox' and Roger's dreary 'Julia Dream' show that the early band was not filled with underappreciated songwriters not named Nick Mason. Oh, 'Julia Dream' is a better effort than that 'Stethoscope' song (which, thank your lucky stars, is not on here), but it spends its time going nowhere fast, and the joint it's in is looking like it's seen some better days. And some songs on the other albums, like the great 'Remember a Day', 'Cirrus Minor' and 'The Nile Song' off More, and 'Bike' and the full 9 minute 'Interstellar Overdrive' to top it off. Why 'Interstellar' on a collection of B-sides and old singles instead of something else? I dunno, I'm not the one that scarfs up all the damned narcotics around here.

Capn's Final Word: What, you gonna buy the 10 disc box set or something? Just get this one and add 'Arnold' and 'Emily' to your collection.

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Meddle - Capitol 1971.

Floyd take a fairly substantial step away from their recent amateurishness on Meddle. In fact, the whole band was changing from a flat, faceless classical/avant garde rock band to a flat, faceless arena rock band. But a professional and listenable arena rock band. Just listen to the opening 'One Of These Days', an update of such things as 'Astronomy Domine' and 'Set The Controls' for these wild new 70's days. Hear Gilmour's new ultra-slick, sustained-all-to-frig guitar tone? He will continue to use this tone until the current day of 1995. I've heard some opinions describing this guitar tone as being really emotive and wrenching, but all I hear is session musician-esque perfection. Dave's been practicing and he wants us to know.

The rest of side A is yet MORE of that same folk-rock stuff we've been force fed since late 1968. Boy, I wish Roger'd just released a solo album of all his acoustic songs some time in 1969 and cleared is system of it for good. As it is, he at least gives us listenable examples (no 'Grantchester Meadows' here). For example, I find 'Pillow of Winds' to be at least as pretty as any of his other folk songs, if a minute or two too long (and what Pink Floyd song isn't, exactly? Other than 'Another Brick In the Wall Part 3' and maybe 'Astronomy Domine', anyway.) And 'Fearless' is just groovy, laid back psychedelic country music not a whole lot different than something off the Grateful Dead's Wake Of The Flood album. And shit, I love the stupid fucking 'San Tropez' and dog-blues 'Seamus' too. Aaaawwoooo! This stuff is awesome, and you sure can't find it on any Genesis record. NEVER again would Pink Floyd hint at having even the slightest bit of a sense of humor, and it wasn't like they were Don Rickles to begin with. Nah, I don't wanna hear it all the time, but once in a long while (and more often than any of AHM or Umm, for sure).

Side B is, umm, well, to be perfectly honest it's one song. The name of the song is 'Echoes'. It's more than a bit 'Atom Heart'-y, but with more muscular production and a little bit more rocking power. If you're a big fan of Gilmour's new mannequin guitar technique you might fall in love, other than the middle part where he imitates a bird being tortured to death by two thirteen year olds armed with a car battery and two jumper cables, which just coughs up blood on my speakers. The ending part is okay. As a whole, it never did impress me as much as I read it was supposed to do. Actually, that's the problem with this album as well. They just seem so...damned...dislocated on most of it. I mean, its nice they aren't screaming or playing with godawful noises as much as before, but I sure could have hoped for something that doesn't feel so damned cold. Listen, I could really care less for Pink Floyd lyrics at their best, but on the early stuff I really don't care to pay attention at all. Now that the music is just as chillingly applied, I feel like running for cover by the time 'Echoes' runs out.

Capn's Final Word: Goes like this: Slick but rocking, fruity but pretty, stupid but funny, interesting but cold.

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Jakeass sneakthaslinger@aol.co     Your Rating: B+

Any Short Comments?: "One Of These Days" is awesome, and almost spooky in it's repetitive mechanical rocking-ness, but then Nick Mason's robot voice comes in and sends it right over the top.  It's HILARIOUS!  It sounds like they wanted to start off by making somebody frying on acid feel really uneasy, followed by making them crack the fuck up when they hear that part.  AND it's about a radio DJ that used to talk shit about Floyd on the air!  Cool. "A Pillow Of Winds" similarly makes a smooth-ass transition from "sweet little lullaby song" to "dark atomespheric song of acoustic weirdness" and back seamlessly, without even changing the arrangements very much. Dave even keeps the slide guitar going throughout!  I likes it a lot, although some of the lyrics are laughably ridiculous("Sleepy time when I lie/With my love by my side"??  This is the same band that did THE WALL 8 years later?) "Fearless" is a song I either furiously love or actively loathe depending on what mood I'm in.  If it's a good one, it's one of my favorite songs in the world.  If it's shitty, it makes me want to throw the cd out the window and run it over with a lawnmower.  And who the fuck's idea was it to put that stupid-ass Liverpool football team in at the end?  THAT's supposed to make you feel better about the challenges you face in life?  Whatever.  The song itself is ok. "San Tropez" sucks if you attempt to take it seriously.  From a comedic standpoint though, it's floggin' brilliant, and succeeds on every level.  I mean, the fucking song begins with the line "As I reach for a peach"!  I don't know, I just hope they made it that stupid on purpose. "Seamus" is also impossible to take seriously, but that doesn't mean it's bad.  Just too boring.  I mean, have you EVER heard a blues song played that SLOW?  The dog does much to redeem the track, however.  And for some reason, all four members of the band are credited with writing it.  I guess that just adds to the joke.  "Echoes" starts off VERY nicely, with great melodies, orchestral instrumentwork, and pretentious-yet-cool-sounding lyrics, but suddenly Dave starts soloing and the whole thing reverts to a boring pile of wank.  Then the wankingess fades out and we're subjected to a bunch of stupid sea animal noises.  If you're stoned(like me), then it'll prove to be quite entertaining and interesting(because being stoned makes you stupid); but if you're sober, you probably fell asleep back during that "wanking" part, so you aren't missing much.  Oh, and then of course the "ping!" noise comes back.  I don't know about you, but when that "ping!" is suddenly followed up by a second, lower-note "ping!" that echoes maniacally all over the damn place, my brain is just Weeee!  Acid flashbacks are FUN!  And the buildup to the last verse is really fucking cool.  Finally, after the majestic splendor of the last verse, the song somehow manages to take fucking forever to end already, goddammit.  I think!  I agree with Mark Prindle when he says that it's basically a great 5-minute song dragged on and on for eternity.  If they'd deleted the boring parts and/or replaced them with something more listenable, it'd probably be the best Floyd song ever.  But then Meddle probably wouldn't have equalled the running time of a normal LP. This is the lightest, least scariest, most anti-depressant Floyd album there is.  It's also one of the iffiest.  Tread with caution, young record-buyer.
 

Obscured By Clouds - Capitol 1972

Another oft-overlooked soundtrack album, now in the new ultra-clear Pink Floyd style, meaning that those mechanical drum and synth patterns sound really really clear as they bore you off to sleep. Floyd, I'm afraid never quite lost the ability to bore on every album they made after Saucerful, this one is no excrement, ooh, I mean exception. No, it is excrement. Sheeit. this ain't no 'Lost Floyd Classic'! I hear a bunch of half-assed instrumental tunes with little-or-nothing done on each one (but wait, doesn't that describe most Pink Floyd? Basing overlong songs on way too few ideas, way-too-slow-tempos, and way too sleepy atmosphere?) Fuck the shit out of 'Burning Bridges', the dullest fucking Floyd non-instrumental in some time, fuck 'The Gold It's In The...' for sounding like early 70's Fleetwood Mac, fuck 'Wot's...Uh The Deal' for sounding just as monkeyfucking, teethgrittingly boring as 'Burning Bridges' (ooh, but excuuuuuse me, its got a crescendo in it, so just out that right up there with fucking Abbey Road, then, why doncha?), fuck 'Mudmen' for sounding like 'Time' nodding out on China White, and fuck all those idiotic Pink Floyd nuts for keeping this shit in print so I have to review it.

Oh, but 'Childhood's End' is fine for something that sounds like a work tape for Dark Side, the country/ominous ambient combination 'Free Four' is pretty great (and is that more humor on there?...Roger, I underestimated ye, my boy). And really, if you like dull music, and I mean like 4 am PBS sort of boring, this may be the disc for you. For anyone who cares at all about excitement not based on 'texture', steer clear.

Capn's Final Word: Actually, its obscured by a bunch of slow, shitty tunes and enough organ to choke Tori Spelling.

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Dark Side Of The Moon - Capitol 1973.

Ah goddamn it, I'm not going to review Dark Side tonight, I'm not. It's already 2 am and I've been fucking typing since about 9, but, awww shit I guess I'll knock this big fucking bastard out before some sack time. My wife's in the hospital with our new baby, see, so I may as well use this time to write as many reviews as I can before they come back home and proceed to steal all my free time with dubious ways of spending time like 'parenting' and 'giving attention'. Sheesh. Don't they know how important it is to write a bunch of half-assed and unnecessarily profane rock reviews for no financial gain and only for the enjoyment of myself and about 6 or 7 people I'll never meet and probably wouldn't want to? There's priorities in this life!

Anyway, that's the message Roger Waters wants us to get on Dark Side Of The Moon, that there's priorities in this life. Like how 'Money' shouldn't be one, or how spending 'Time' wisely should be. Actually, I don't much care for Roger's new preachiness, and often on this record he sounds like the old guy at the country store admonishing all the young kids for pissing their lives away on things like baseball cards and drinking Night Train (have you ever actually drunk Night Train? It's vile, but I went through a phase in 1997 where I actually enjoyed the stuff until my girlfriend, now my wife, refused to sleep with me even the day after I had drunk it because I still smelled so awful. Hey!). Roger often overlooks what people actually go through in their lives in favor of what he likes to believe all us unwashed masses are like, apparently viewing himself as some sort of expert in Life instead of a egomaniac bass player in a formerly fun psychedelic rock band. It is, unfortunately, precisely this patronizing view of his audience that he would continue to show until the slow death rattle of his career finally ended. Now, I'm not claiming that his lyrics aren't quite an improvement over earlier efforts, they're nothing if they don't sound cool, and 'Money' and 'Brain Damage' are even sorta clever. But I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna look at this lyric sheet and not wish I could fucking punch Roger in the nuts for being such an asshole.

But musically, man, this shit is frigging cool. I mean, there's only four songs on it, most of them are lightweight, and the rest is a bunch of connective tissue, but still, it's hard to imagine these guys had stuff this focused waiting to come out. Very few sections suffer from the ol' disease of Too Long Too Slow Too Boring, and only the howl-fest of 'The Great Gig In The Sky' can really be considered below the dog's nuts. Oh, I could shave off some of 'Us And Them', but that's about it. They pull out sexy saxophone, the guitar solos are compact, some of the beats are even funky! They can do something anthemic when needed (the closing 'Brain Damage/Eclipse' is a mastery of simple, uncomplicated, tunemaking) the dynamics ebb and flow, and all the parts seem in their places. And I love the shit out of the instrumental sections like 'Any Colour You Like'...they never kept it together like this before. Wow.

And of course, there's the sound. I'm not even talking about all the snazzy sound effects and vocal samples, just the clarity of sound. This is simply an album someone can climb through and walk around in. It think Alan Parsons was the engineer, and boy does he deserve some sort of God prize for the production of this record. Breathtaking every time. Just listen to the drums on 'Any Colour'...I know precisely what Nick Mason's kit looks like. Just blows me away.

Now if this album weren't such a damn cliche for teenage freakhood and if it weren't so goddamn elitist, I wouldn't have a problem giving it an unqualified A+, but Jesus H. Christ I don't like the feeling I get from these lyrics, like I've been a bad, bad, person all my life and all the world's problems are placed right at my doorstep, and all of this from a person as fucking irritating as goddamn Roger Waters.

Capn's Final Word: Excellent album. Fuck you, Roger.

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James S    Your Rating: A+

Any Short Comments?: This is the best recording of poetry/music of the 20th century. It sums up mankind's struggle nicely in a relatively short amount of time. Indeed, it will be remembered centuries from now as a classic in reflection, while the popular music of almost all contemporary performers will be remembered, if at all, as fodder.

Kake     Your Rating: B+

Any Short Comments?:     A good album, but one which one begins to bore me after a while. Its hardly a view of our world, its more of Roger Waters paranoia, about "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse", which 

hardly relate to the experiences of an ordinary mortal. Sure the other tracks are absolute classics, the brilliant "Time", with the clock chiming start and brilliant singing, the sarcastic (again!!) "Money" 

and the positively overwhelming "Us and Them", my favourite track on here. For more of the same, grab "The Wall" and let the rantings and ravings continue. And yeah Ryan, fuck Roger Waters.

Nathan Harper     Your Rating: A+
Any Short Comments?:	He, you don't like Floyd much, do ya? Well, I can understand that. Most Floyd fans talk about how underrated their non-dark side and the 

Wall work is, but to tell you the truth, those are the only two I really listen to very much. Animals just bores me. But back to this album. This is BY FAR their 

best album. I just really can't think of an album that really creates "colors" like this, only Jimi Hendrix came close. I could tell you exactly what colors 
each song reminds me of, but I'll spare you this time. Besides, I already sound like I'm stoned. So don't listen to the elitists, just because this one had a 

bunch of radio hits doesn't automatically make it inferior to their other work.

Jim H.S. jim887arc@yahoo.com     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?:	Well, there I was, listening to stuff like, oh, can't remember them all now, you know, really, but Faust, Soft Machine 
were there, still playing volumes 2 & 3, IV, So Far, and some other stuff like MacArthur Park I guess.  Who knows?

Well, about twenty years later ... yup, it must have been the mid 90's ... I caved in and bought the DSOTM CD at a cheap second hand store 
just for the sake of it. I'd heard Meddle way back, forced upon me, but never inclined to actually put my hand in pocket to get it. If I'd really fastened into DSOTM in the 70's, 

I'd probably come up with the (groan) most important poetry/music bullshit of the 20th century.  I'm glad I waited for so long.  Now I can just climb in and dig the sounds.  

Sure, the lyrics are there, but they don't get in the way so much after so long.  Hell, there aren't many that should. And neither Pink nor Floyd in their prime could match the ZimmerDylan.  

But then, I don't really like the whole getinyourfaceandspellitoneletteratatime social commentary thing. Oh, except the Last Poets. But I digress. This is a 
great album, overall.  And, for me at least, prob'ly one of Mr. Floyd's best, after Piper of course.


 nazar nazariusrudius@yahoo.com     Your Rating:	A
Any Short Comments?:	This album is pretty good, with its ups and downs. I especially like Time though. 

Gregg Brown      Your Rating: A-

Any Short Comments?: Sorry, have to to disagree with you about Great Gig. I find it to be the most moving, beautiful moment on the record, besides maybe the sax solo in "Us and Them". Maybe I'm biased because the rest of the album has become so classic-rock-isized that you can't go ten seconds without hearing the "hits" on the radio, but great gig has more passion and emotion than the rest of the record, probably cause Roger didn't write it. And sumptuous sounding it is, like the rest of the album.