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| We Miss You Floyd |
In the past month, my family has experienced some serious losses. Neither of which were related to the current pandemic, thankfully.
In early April, my stepfather died. I've known that man longer and spent more time with him than my biological father.
He's actually met my wife. It was wholly unexpected and was very, very painful.
Before he died, I noticed my kitten, Randall Pink Floyd, was losing weight. He wasn't nearly as active as he once was. I decided I needed to contact the vet and get him fixed up.
Well, we couldn’t fix him up. He had a very rare disease and we had to put him to sleep that day. Then, a week or two later, I get the Facebook memories about my last cat we had to put to sleep.
Things have been very, very hard for me because of all of this. It's been wholly difficult to even put my fingers on my keyboard, much less thinking about things....
But thank you. It's time to get back into it; that's doubly necessary when I mention to you that I've been listening to so much Pink Floyd just to get through all of this.
David Gilmour
Moving onto a different manner....
It's time we head out onto a side road. The 70's has been the greatest decade for the band. During the previous three albums, Waters has begun to wrest control from the band. Considering the vitriol in his voice when he discusses this era in The Floyd...
It's no surprise he needed a break.
Gilmour takes this time to record a solo album...of sorts. The word on the street is that he reassembled a band he had in the old days.
He does write the entire record...presuming the lyrics too...well some of them anyway right?
This is an interesting record. It's like watching two wave patterns that disperse and rendesvous. There are songs that sound slightly Pink Floyd-ish and songs that sound wholly different.
It's an interesting mix of songs, mostly, that would never have flown under the Pink Floyd brand.
For me, this is the perfect sort of solo record to release. It has some of what we love about the band he comes from and some of what he could never do in that band.
It should be mentioned...personally... I am a fan of solo records in general.
To begin with, as has been mentioned, this is MY Pink Floyd. This is my entry point. My glasses are not clean.
My eyes are clouded.
This is the alpha and omega of rock theater.
I'm listening to this album today, with a more critical ear. The stereo mix here is something that's never been apparent to me. The doubling of parts has never been more obvious.
It's clear, they'd need that surrogate band to perform this live, but man. The power hasn't faded in the last forty years.
There's precisely zero hyperbole in saying that this album succeeds on every possible level.
Really, my friends, whenever I hear the opening tones of In The Flesh? I immediately return to the basement where that cassette tape helped me continue living in the face of my personal terror.
It should be mentioned...my vinyl copy was given to me by my wife for Christmas. She has purchased for me precisely one record as a gift.
It was this record. She knew precisely how much it meant to me. How I passed on buying the remaster because it was too pricey.
I wish I could say the story of isolation didn't resonate with me so much, but being an only child who was kept inside the house for days at a time didn't hurt feeling that way.
Well. After the success of The Wall, it would seem that Young Mister Waters had no intention of giving up the reins to THE Pink Floyd Sound.
This album though has been long left out of my personal psyche.
Far more knowledgeable fans of The Floyd told me it was no good, so I didn't really give it much of a thought. My cousin is the only person whom I'd known to even have a copy of the album.
Now, here's where I'm heading into Roger Waters Apologist territory, but being a left winger since before I knew the word...it's hard not to really feel this record.
But...the elephant in the room is significant. This is the first, and only, Floyd record that didn't feature the services of Rick Wright.
Not being a fan of keyboards in general, it never really seemed to me that it would matter, but I was wrong.
As mentioned previously, I've been listening to a lot of Floyd and Floyd Related records recently as a coping mechanism.
This album doesn't sound like a Pink Floyd album because Wright is missing. The keys, that are there, are generic. They're a brick in the wall, as it were, but in the past they were a part of the sound.
This record, while brilliant in basically every aspect, is less a Pink Floyd record than A Momentary Lapse of Reason. (Check my thoughts on that HERE.)
This record perfectly segues into the Waters Solo Career...which is up next.
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