The Mighty Pink Floyd (Pink Floyd in general)

Member Name: bagoproverbial

Product:	Pink Floyd in general
Date:	01/10/07 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Utterly original, groundbreaking music

Disadvantages: None to speak of

Well, this could take some time. Of all my favourite bands, the Floyd are the one who've been around the longest, and have been in my music collection the longest, and their back-catalogue is extensive to say the least.

Unlike most of the bands I've been reviewing lately, I doubt that this one needs much of an introduction or an in-depth description of their music style. For one thing, their musical style varies wildly from album to album, incorporating elements of funk, blues, jazz and gospel into their trademark prog-rock soundscapes.

The only way to review Pink Floyd properly is to do so chronologically, highlighting each studio album, personnel change and other landmark along the way. To do this we have to go back to the mid-60s, when Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Rick Wright formed the band, initially playing standard blues-rock before, in 1967, widening their sound and becoming much more ambitious, effectively turning the band into a psychadelic pop act which produced a few classic singles such as "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play". This year also saw the release of their debut album, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn", mostly penned by the eccentric Barrett, who was already showing signs of the drug-enhanced mental problems that would eventually take over his life and ruin a promising career.

This is a bizarre, ambitious and highly original album, full of quirky pop songs that go exactly where you don't expect them to go. A gem, but a very strange one and not to everyone's taste.

By the time they brought out their second abum, "A Saucerful of Secrets" in 1968, Barrett had been replaced by guitarist David Gilmour, who would along with Nick Mason eventually become the mainstay of the band. This album was a more progressive effort, especially on the title track which evolves from chaotic, experimental noise into a soaring, ascending anthem. There are some beautifully melodic songs on this album, notably "Let There Be More Light", "Remember a Day" and "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun".

Their 1969 album, "More" was a soundtrack to a French film of the same name, and is one of their weaker efforts, the songs uncomfortably juxtaposed with a number of noodling mood pieces that never quite fire the imagination in the way that the celestial wonders of "Saucerful of Secrets" did. 1969 also saw the release of another album, "Ummagumma" which was a combined live set and studio album featuring some experimental songs by each of the band's four members.

By the turn of the decade, the band were becoming more and more interested in taking an epic, progressive approach to their music, as is shown on "Atom Heart Mother" (1970) and "Meddle" (1971). The title track of the former album is divided into a number of sections, each of them instrumental, and at the end of it all it's difficult to know what to make of it all. In fact the entire album is something of an oddity, ending with what amounts to little more than an extended spoken-word piece entitled "Alan's Psychadelic Breakfast". It appears to be some bloke going on about how much he likes marmalade, amongst other things. I've still yet to figure out what "Atom Heart Mother" is all about.

"Meddle" from 1971 is a the album that in my view features the first of the Floyd's truly outstanding works- a lengthy song called "Echoes" which builds from fragile, tremulous beauty and mlody into a funk jam which then melts into truly disturbing and nightmarish noise, before gradually returning to even more beautiful melody. This is a song that somehow sounds ahead of its time even today. It doesn't sound like anything else Pink Floyd wrote, let along anything by any other band. You will simply have to listen to it to understand what I'm trying to describe...

In 1972 the band brouht out "Obscured by Clouds" which also doubled as a film soundtrack, before in 1973 releasing what for many fans remains their greatest ever work, and the one that was for deacdes the biggest-selling album of all time- "Dark Side of the Moon".

This was actually the first album of theirs I heard- a teacher played it in art class at school (I still don't know why, but I'm grateful for it!) and I was instantly hooked, so much so that I went out and bought it the next week. It really is one of those albums that has everything, including soulful blues ("The Great Gig in the Sky"), driving prog-rock (the brilliant "Time") and the funked-up "Money" which sums up the jaded view of the world that this album presents.

This was the album that made Pink Floyd into international rock superstars. Throughout the remainder of the 1970s they produced more ambitious works- "Wish you Were Here" from 1975, partly a touching tribute to former bandmate Syd Barrett, and then in 1977 "Animals". Pink Floyd's desire to be ever more ambitious culminated in 1979's "The Wall", a double album chronicling one man's descent into madness, which also became a film starring Bob Geldof.

As the decade turned, and Pink Floyd enjoyed singles chart success for the first time in almost thirteen years with "Another Brick in The Wall (Part 2", it began to become evident that the band members were growing perhaps a little further apart. Each had already been involved in various solo projects, with varying degrees of success, and there were concerns amongst the other band members that singer Roger Waters was exerting too much influence over the songwriting.

And so all grew quiet in the Floyd camp until the release of 1983's "The Final Cut", a sparse, stripped-down album of quiet acoustics and sudden louder passages, whose themes were rooted purely within the World Wars. The almost joyous experimentation of "The Wall" stopped it from being too depressing- "The Final Cut", I warn you, has no such gloss, and is probably one of the darkest and most depressing albums ever written.

Dissent within the band came to a head following this album's release, partly because it was effectively little more than a Roger Waters solo album. As a result, Waters and his bandmates parted company.

Four more years passed until the next Pink Floyd came out. 1987's "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" is very much of its time- an 80s mainstream stadium rock album- a *very* good one for its kind, however. There are some excellent songs here, notably the tranquil opener "Signs of Life", the anthemic "On The Turning Away" wich was just made for upraised lighters, and closing, doom-laden monster "Sorrow".

It would be seven more yeas before the next- and probably final- Floyd album emerged, during which time Roger Waters would write two albums of his own material with wildly varying results. Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell" album from 1994 is very good- slightly modernised, and dragged from out of the eighties, with some thoughtful production and lyrics.

My personal favourite album of theirs has to be "The Wall". I've still yet to hear anything like this- beautifully original music with lyrics pouring forth not only vitriol but a good dose of dark humour.

There are far more bootlegs, live albums, compilations etc. than I could begin to go into here. The best I can do is recommend to you the albums which you should explore, if you haven't already got them:

The Wall
Dark Side of the Moon
Meddle
Animals
Wish You Were Here
Saucerful of Secrets

All the others are good, but the ones above are probably more accessible and certainly contain some of the finest music ever written.

Pink Floyd changed the music world, and certainly changed mine as well. A great band and a pleasure for me to revisit their history.

Thanks for reading this far!

Summary: One of the premier rock bands of all time