Pink Floyd Thread

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Are there any queeeers[i/] in the theatre tonight, get em up against the wall
There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me, get him up against the wall
And that one looks Jewish, and that one's a coon!
Who let all o'this riff-raff into the room
There's one smoking a joint! And another with spots!!!
If I had my way... ID HAVE ALL O'YER SHOT!!!!


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I'm sorry, I know opinions are opinions and all, but I can't imagine any scenario or interpretation where Momentary Lapse or Division Bell are superior to The Wall or The Final Cut. I know it's fashionable around here to shit on any Waters-centric albums, but Jesus Christ, MLoR and Division Bell are so vapid lyrically and unfocused musically to place them beneath any Floyd album but Ummagumma. Both of those would have been better served as instrumental albums a la The Endless River than anything else. I challenge anyone to sit down and simply read the lyrics to Division Bell in particular without wincing innumerable times.

And Atom Heart Mother better than The Wall? 2/3 of AHM's runtime is pure wankery. A guy actually reads the ingredients of his breakfast. It's amusing and shit but it's little more than a curio in the scope of their wider catalogue. That period between Saucerful and AHM had some serious growing pains for the band.

I'm not even shitting on The Wall or The Final Cut because they're Waters-centric - to be honest, I couldn't tell you who wrote my favourite PF songs off the top of my head and I'm one of these people who finds Gilmour and Waters to have rather similar voices - but because they are so fucking interminably boring. The Wall has a couple of obviously legendary moments, but they are lost amidst an album so bloated that I have literally never been able to sit through the entire thing in one listen. Not once. I just cannot do it. It's not often an album defeats me like that, especially not an album by a band I like, but it's where my hatred of double albums began as a teenager. And I find The Final Cut entirely lacking in interest. At least Ummagumma has curiosity value, though I'm hardly going to come in to bat for it.

Of course AHM is better than either of those two albums. "If"/"Summer '68"/"Fat Old Sun" is one of the best three-song runs on any PF album. I agree the psychedelic brekkie is gimmicky and only merits a single listen, and the title track is overblown, but those middle three songs are good enough to redeem almost anything.

I won't defend AMLOR outside of "Sorrow". It sticks out glaringly, this one astonishingly great song to reward you for sitting through an album overwise burdened with terrible song after terrible song. The lyrics are excruciating. I don't get your disdain for The Division Bell though. That has some duds, yes, but also some very good songs and stands well as a final album (The Endless River doesn't count). "High Hopes", what a track. I'd rate Division Bell as PF's fifth or sixth best album. Maybe I'm biased in that my first serious exposure to PF was from Pulse, so a lot of those songs have a kind of nostalgia value ("Sorrow" on Pulse is what made me realise that I needed to hear more of the band's work), but I think that Division Bell stacks up even without that.
 
It seems The Wall fans are getting a bit testy here, so I'll just throw a couple more bombs before I talk some good. It all falls to absolute shit after Run Like Hell. The last 10 or so minutes are garbage, and that's mostly thanks to the story taking precedence over the music. The Trial is well up there in 'Pink Floyd Worst Song' discussions. How anyone could enjoy that outside of the context of the album, heck even within the context of the album, is beyond me.

Well, you're not supposed to hear it outside the context of the album. IT'S A FUCKING CONCEPT ALBUM.

And obviously they're going for something more along the lines of musical theatre on some of this material, with spoken word elements, sound effects, short musical interludes, etc.

Now I do agree that they focused too much on the story and that the music is lacking in parts, but I still find it to be a tremendous achievement and far from a slog as a listening experience.

The Trial is hilarious. It's cabaret, and that might not be for everyone, but it's more likable than many give it credit for. And you know what? Yeah, it's essential to the story above all, but it ties that story together impressively for the medium. I love that we revisit the cast of characters and have one more laugh with them.

To be honest, the album had such a profound impact on me at age 13 and I've heard it so many times since that I don't think I can be objective about The Wall anymore. One thing I'm certain of though is that it's not indulgent drivel. In fact, I think Roger has a great message to tell with his story and it certainly came from an autobiographical space. I applaud him for opening himself to scrutiny and criticism through the Pink persona while placing just enough distance between himself and the protagonist to make it feel more like a twisted fable than a confession.

The great irony of The Wall, though, is that an album cautioning isolation and insularity was a pet project. This is why it will never be their greatest work. There's something sickly and thin about many of these songs, as if they're in dire need of attention from their writer. Maybe Gilmour could have warmed them up a bit the way he did with Comfortably Numb. Alas, we'll never know, but it is still a damn good record that I find engaging from start to finish. It's gruesome, allegorical and very personal.

^^^ and all of that, too.

I'd rate Division Bell as PF's fifth or sixth best album. Maybe I'm biased in that my first serious exposure to PF was from Pulse, so a lot of those songs have a kind of nostalgia value ("Sorrow" on Pulse is what made me realise that I needed to hear more of the band's work), but I think that Division Bell stacks up even without that.

You were right the first time. You're biased.

And it hasn't been mentioned yet, but Gilmour writing with random non-band members (6 tracks with his wife??) is just colossally lame.
 
The Wall is my favourite album from PF, because I just love the whole concept - it's the best rock opera ever.

I usually also prefer Waters-written songs rather than Gilmour's, as I prefer dark themed songs. Even though I like some songs released after 1984, to me they are all very similar. It's basically always the same song structure, the same way to build momentum for solos, etc. Most of them are awesome, but aren't as creative as what they have done with Waters, just that.
 
I'm pretty sure the moment I realised I wasn't cut out to be a proghead is when I realised every concept album ever made is really fucking lame.
 
Is Selling England By the Pound a concept album? I never even noticed. But I was going to counter with Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, so I guess they were just good at those.

Quadrophenia, SF Sorrow, Ziggy Stardust and Animals are also not lame.
 
I'm pretty sure the moment I realised I wasn't cut out to be a proghead is when I realised every concept album ever made is really fucking lame.

Then what are you doing in the Pink Floyd thread? :wink: The majority of their albums have been concept albums or at the least had a recurring theme. What made PF stand out in the 70's was their marriage of a concept and great music. Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. Those are all time classics of the concept album genre. 3 out of 4 of them clock in at less than 45 minutes with the exception of The Wall which is closer to 80 minutes. And the movie is only 90 minutes. I had the luxury of seeing the movie first before I heard the entire album. The album seems to flow a lot more quickly as a result. At least for me. :wink: All of the albums I mentioned flowed like one piece, not just a collection of songs. Young Lust might seem like "cock rock" (barf) on its own, but as part of The Wall story, it fits right in.
 
Is Selling England By the Pound a concept album? I never even noticed. But I was going to counter with Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, so I guess they were just good at those.

Quadrophenia, SF Sorrow, Ziggy Stardust and Animals are also not lame.

Every song with lyrics on Selling England is about how the early 1970s affected preconceptions of British culture in some way - Dancing With The Moonlit Knight is about the death of patriotism, I Know What I Like is about the desire for pastoralism in the wake of developing modernity, Aisle Of Plenty is about the death of the local greengrocer and the rise of the supermarket, etc etc.

The Lamb suffers from a similar problem to The Wall, to a lesser effect - there's definitely some good songs there, but also a fair amount of filler, especially on the second disc.
 
Is Selling England By the Pound a concept album? I never even noticed. But I was going to counter with Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, so I guess they were just good at those.

Quadrophenia, SF Sorrow, Ziggy Stardust and Animals are also not lame.

The only one of those albums that isn't lame is Animals. Lamb Lies Down is an unmitigated disaster. I'll take Selling England every day of the week over that unlistenable drivel.

Then what are you doing in the Pink Floyd thread? :wink:

Because ten years ago I used to be Mr Prog Rock on this forum ranting about PF, Dream Theater, and Porcupine Tree?

(I still like the first and love the last, but fuck what did teenage wanker me see in Dream Theater.)
 
The Trial is hilarious. It's cabaret, and that might not be for everyone, but it's more likable than many give it credit for. And you know what? Yeah, it's essential to the story above all, but it ties that story together impressively for the medium. I love that we revisit the cast of characters and have one more laugh with them.

To be honest, the album had such a profound impact on me at age 13 and I've heard it so many times since that I don't think I can be objective about The Wall anymore. One thing I'm certain of though is that it's not indulgent drivel. In fact, I think Roger has a great message to tell with his story and it certainly came from an autobiographical space. I applaud him for opening himself to scrutiny and criticism through the Pink persona while placing just enough distance between himself and the protagonist to make it feel more like a twisted fable than a confession.

The great irony of The Wall, though, is that an album cautioning isolation and insularity was a pet project. This is why it will never be their greatest work. There's something sickly and thin about many of these songs, as if they're in dire need of attention from their writer. Maybe Gilmour could have warmed them up a bit the way he did with Comfortably Numb. Alas, we'll never know, but it is still a damn good record that I find engaging from start to finish. It's gruesome, allegorical and very personal.

Wow... This is a great post. And coming from someone I mentally associate with haters of The Wall, too.
 
I hate the term concept album, really. I mean you could very easily argue that The Joshua Tree is a concept album. And Sgt Peppers, perhaps the most famous concept album ever alongside The Wall, really only has two songs that have anything remotely to do with the "concept" that Paul envisioned, the title track and a reprise of the title track. Even Quadrophenia, which is my all-time top five, gets bogged down at points.

But the number one reason I hate concept albums is because it results in things like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_of_the_World:_Welcome_to_the_Show

Evermore were a good band, their debut hit upon a good sound at a really opportune time and their debut was genuinely great, I loved it. Their follow-up was a less-inspired version of the debut, as so often happens, and then the lead singer died his hair peroxide blonde and that^ was their third album. It completely destroyed them, and thank god it did.
 
The term. You could spin a story about nearly any album and call it a concept album. Is Carrie & Lowell a concept album? By definition it probably is. But if all the PR stuff about it had been "Sufjan returns with a concept album about his mother", people would have rolled their eyes, I think. To Pimp a Butterfly too. The term has negative connotations.
 
Fine, you prefer "rock opera", which conjures up even lamer imagery?

Clearly we're making a delineation between any album with a loose concept or overriding theme and something like Tommy or The Wall, which have clear stories and characters. You can't take the latter to task for veering away from standard song structures.
 
The term. You could spin a story about nearly any album and call it a concept album. Is Carrie & Lowell a concept album? By definition it probably is. But if all the PR stuff about it had been "Sufjan returns with a concept album about his mother", people would have rolled their eyes, I think. To Pimp a Butterfly too. The term has negative connotations.

I asked, because your post clearly diverted into you saying you hated concept albums.

As Laz points out, there's definitely a huge difference between a concept album in general and then a rock opera, which also falls under the blanket term, but has a far stronger negative connotation. I don't feel that the term concept album gets the automatic eye roll, personally. But Rock Opera? Consider the album already destroyed if it comes with that tag.
 
Well I think if someone was to release a rock opera now it would be met with much laughter. I'm not sure if that was the case at the time of Tommy, Quadrophenia, The Wall. I don't really have a problem with that term because at least then you know what to expect going into it. "Concept album" is pretty loose terminology.

At any rate I don't really care that much, I'm drunk, this is like that discussion about whether genre tags are important or not.
 
I'm pretty sure the moment I realised I wasn't cut out to be a proghead is when I realised every concept album ever made is really fucking lame.

Two words: Diamond Dogs.
One more: Arthur.
And another: Quardophenia
Two more, for good measure: Tomorrow's Harvest

The defence rests, your honour.

Here are some opinions most will disagree with:

Pink Floyd never made a good album after Wish You Were Here.

Dark Side of the Moon is their third best album and it's deeply flawed. Us and Them is far too long, and The Great Gig in the Sky...well, there's nothing to say about that atrocity. Couldn't they have used a sax, or synths, or a blazing guitar solo? Or literally anything else?

Meddle is their best album, and Seamus and San Tropez aren't filler. They're needed to add some levity, and to make Echoes hit that much harder. Pink Floyd were much better when they had a sense of humour.

Animals is the sound of people with sense of humour. Or ability to enjoy life. Or ability to write actual songs.

Piper is perfect and rocks like a motherfucker. Especially in mono.

The first three singles are the best things that Waters, Wright and Mason ever had their names on.
 
Pink Floyd never made a good album after Wish You Were Here.

Animals is the sound of people with sense of humour. Or ability to enjoy life. Or ability to write actual songs.


What? :confused:

Not that I could take your post seriously with the knock on Great Gig. One of the best songs of all time. Name any song with actual lyrics that captures feelings about death as well as that song. It's phenomenal.

And Us & Them is perfect in every way. I mean I'm kinda biased in that I think the whole album is pretty much perfect and the best ever, but yeah. Don't be knockin that song.


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Every song with lyrics on Selling England is about how the early 1970s affected preconceptions of British culture in some way - Dancing With The Moonlit Knight is about the death of patriotism, I Know What I Like is about the desire for pastoralism in the wake of developing modernity, Aisle Of Plenty is about the death of the local greengrocer and the rise of the supermarket, etc etc.

Selling England is my favorite Genesis album (I just bought it on vinyl), but somehow I've managed to tune out the lyrics for the most part. I will have to listen to it again with this in mind.

Wow... This is a great post. And coming from someone I mentally associate with haters of The Wall, too.

The Wall is my 5th favorite album by one of my top 10 favorite bands. Yeah, I'm no hater.

But here's the thing about The Wall: in 2015, age 24, I rarely feel the angst required to get the most out of the album. Though there is some levity, let's be honest, it's a great record for disaffected teenagers. One of the absolute best ever IMO. So now I pick and choose my moments to hear it and when I do, it usually does the trick.

It makes a lot of sense that The Wall is so divisive, especially among hardcore fans. It's a very good album, but it's not actually a very good Pink Floyd album. Gilmour's guitar, outside of Comfortably Numb, doesn't get to soar as highly. Wright's keyboards don't permeate the music the way they do on Dark Side and WYWH. Some songs sound like and probably were recorded by one guy (Waters) in a room by himself. And, in the context of an album about social isolation, that makes a lot of sense. But it's not a record I often turn to when I want to listen to Pink Floyd. It's not a good example of what they do best.

I think of The Wall as a monumental rock album that bridges the gap between prog, glam and the increasingly significant genres of new wave and post-punk. It just so happens to be recorded by Pink Floyd.
 
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You mean...like...I don't know...American Idiot?

6× Platinum 6,056,000 albums sold...:wink:


Haha. Well, the general music populace is full of idiots, sooooo we can't place too much stock in them. That is a bad album which amazingly was followed by another, even worse concept album.


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Feelings about death? Maggot Brain. No words though. With words? Try Not To Breathe. The only thing being captured in that song is the singers ability to blackmail someone in the band to get on the record.
 
I don't get your disdain for The Division Bell though. That has some duds, yes, but also some very good songs and stands well as a final album (The Endless River doesn't count). "High Hopes", what a track. I'd rate Division Bell as PF's fifth or sixth best album. Maybe I'm biased in that my first serious exposure to PF was from Pulse, so a lot of those songs have a kind of nostalgia value ("Sorrow" on Pulse is what made me realise that I needed to hear more of the band's work), but I think that Division Bell stacks up even without that.

I sympathize with the nostalgia factor for Division Bell, because I played it endlessly when I was a teenager. I now find it has aged terribly, though, and as Gilmour has dabbled with solo stuff and side projects in the years since, you realize Division Bell is the kind of shit he can turn out in his sleep. For me, it's comforting to hear his guitar in any form, and it's nice to have on, but it's almost the equivalent of smooth jazz for me in that it elicits little to no reaction. There's no spirit to that album.

There's something sickly and thin about many of these songs, as if they're in dire need of attention from their writer.

This is an apt description, especially on the second half, but I would argue that the decrepit feeling is intentional. Narrative-wise, the writer is leaving all of his work and priorities to fester. The run of Hey You - Is There Anybody Out There - Nobody Home is almost ghoulish, but damn it sets a mood with great effectiveness.

Well I think if someone was to release a rock opera now it would be met with much laughter. I'm not sure if that was the case at the time of Tommy, Quadrophenia, The Wall.

I feel like there have been a few as of late that have gotten all sorts of praise: some album by Fucked Up a few years back, and one released just a few weeks ago by Titus Andronicus. That's probably more a reflection of critics like Pitchfork finding value in anything retro or arcane, though.
 
No, it's the place where people who can't recognize that The Great Gig in the Sky is an atrocity get sent to and I'm the President and sole customs officer. See you soon: they're coming for you. Try to listen to Maggot Brain before you arrive.
 
I feel like there have been a few as of late that have gotten all sorts of praise: some album by Fucked Up a few years back, and one released just a few weeks ago by Titus Andronicus. That's probably more a reflection of critics like Pitchfork finding value in anything retro or arcane, though.

Oh you just reminded me of another great one:

 
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