What i have learned about the Floyd is they did some bloody unique and adventurous live performances. All they seem to be judged on are their albums. I guess most acts are, really (Paul Williams had to write three volumes titled Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, because that was Bob’s main art form of expression). All the best concert loving acts know. A hundred times more music in the concerts than the records. These cats will tell you: live performance took way more time and energy spent than making a few records, that they mainly regard as snapshots of a time. I think for a good part of their best years the Floyd were always looking for fresh adventurous creation on stage. I’ve read accounts of many thoroughly unique and fascinating Pink Floyd concerts. And so little of it has been properly documented! Why do The Doors have ten bloody concert DVDs?
Whatever. If it's not "songs" (i.e. with lyrics), then it's great composition (with some improvisation thrown in from time to time).
Great post! Why oh why did they not professionally record the Animals tour? Floyd at their live peak.
Their journey echoes many people's live. Even casual listeners can relate. They started off young and adventurous. Practiced their craft and succeeded in sharing that with others. Then it all turned rubbish in the end, as so many lives do. That's life, baby.
People either love or hate Syd (I love him) but the reality is if not for him they'd be architects & Gilmour would've forged a music career through other avenues.
“What nationality do you think these oysters are?” “I’d like to think that oysters transcend national barriers”
This sums it up for me, I love Pink Floyd , I love the music from their first album to the Endless River some of it is ear candy, some of it is soothing and some of it is inspiring, I lump them right along side David Bowie as far as my love for them goes and David Bowie is at the top of that musical chain for me. So yeah I love the Floyd
i truly believe that david gilmour's guitar work was hypnotizing to many people. it is very hard to find someone who does not like pink floyd.
Great question. While I like Pink Floyd well enough, I have never understood their truly massive appeal. They have sold 10x more records than many groups that IMO have many more good songs. They are up there in Beatles/Led Zeppelin/Rolling Stones territory as a seller, and I do not get it, never have. I recall being dumbfounded when in 1987, without Roger Waters, they played to sold-out football stadiums - not hockey arenas but football arenas - touring a weak album. Amazed me. E.g., IMO, albums like DSOTM and The Wall (which I own, of course) should have sold around 5 million copies each, not 40 million copies each, or whatever. Just have never understood it. They struck a massive nerve I just do not possess.
I was born in 1962, and during the 1970's was introduced to Pink Floyd by my High School friends. I just missed seeing the Animals tour in 1977 :-(, but I did see the Wall live in February, 1980 at the LA Forum (Los Angeles, California)... good concert What many today may miss is how enigmatic Pink Floyd was in the 1970s. While the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, and basically any other artist would do is try to get press in the trade rags and media, Pink Floyd was extremely low-key, off the radar. They had a mystique about them that is hard to describe today. I finally found a book in 1979 at Liqorice Pizza (record store, Pacific Beach, San Diego), that gave me the backstory on the group. Until then I didn't even know what the band members looked like! I do think their music will stand the test of time, a truly unique and talented band.
I can’t believe my posts were deleted because of “drug talk”! Are we in freakin China here?? Unbelievable! most of the music being discussed on these dozens of forums were made by people on drugs and often to listen to while on drugs. hello we’re talking about rock n roll. And jazz. without drugs there would be a lot less to discuss here. Ridiculous.
Their live stuff is brilliant. I love their vocal harmonies, sometimes their vocals sound like ancient chants, hypnotic. Their penchant for the unknown. Like all the great jam bands, PF functions like a jazz band, they improvise instrumental and voice. I love Roger's scream in CWTAE. They simply kick ass.
Interesting... my experience was the opposite. I came to appreciate them more with age. But for me, the most perplexing thing about Pink Floyd was the quantum leap they made in quality and purpose with DSOTM. As much as I enjoy most of their post-Piper, pre-DSOTM work, it still sounds like a lot of experimental noodling... interesting but unfocused, random ideas in search of a theme. And then, BAM... Dark Side—as overexposed as it is—inarguably stands as a singular, consistent, unified piece of music. Kind of mysterious how it all came together. You’d think that they made their own deal at the crossroads... As for the Syd era, Piper has risen in my estimation to be perhaps my favorite album of 1967.
Circa 1977 aged 6 I actually knew about Pink Floyd before I knew of The Beatles which was nearly the same time but not quite. A girl I grew up with over the road to me was always on about them and they had a certain mystique even then and I hardly knew much about them. Then reading in the Guinness Book or Records about the records set by 'Dark Side of the Moon'. Just like the Beatles they all spark off of each other with that very strange mystique I saw aged 6.
The great thing is about Pink Floyd with being born in 1980 and basically learning the big records first and then going backwards is that they all get more interesting. So many different eras of that band. I love the Syd albums, and then you get into animals and Meddle and it’s all definitely Pink Floyd but it’s so unique and so special. My point is I knew the two big records first and there are about seven records that I like more than those now. That’s unique.
I think you’re pretty unique. I find most people who only discovered Pink Floyd after Dark Side Of The Moon, have a problem with the earlier material and find it difficult to live with. Or, you have the Syd cultists who deny there was a Pink Floyd after he self-destructed. But me, I’m in the fortunate position of being able to love it all: yes even The Endless River, which should have been an addendum rather than an official album. I first heard Pink Floyd in 1967 when I was 9 and Arnold Layne and, particularly, See Emily Play really fired my imagination. But then I didn’t really hear much of them again until 1970, when I was 13 and music was becoming my master. I had an older friend across the road and he had everything Pink Floyd including all the singles. The first Pink Floyd album I bought from new, was Atom Heart Mother and I never looked back. I love it all: the uncomfortable listen of The Final Cut and the Floyd by numbers comeback with A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. This band has given me and continues to give, incredible pleasure. They have been there through all my life’s ups and downs. I love them.
Coming into FM radio around 1974, I certainly started my love for the band almost solely based on tracks played from Dark Side and Wish You Were Here (in 1975). But we moved to Connecticut in 1975 and I think it was WLIR or maybe some small CT station that used to feature PF music all the time, maybe at lunch hour or early evening. There I was introduced to Syd era, Meddle, Obscured By Clouds. I am very grateful for this station. They truly gave me a gift as a listener.
