Dud Side of the Moon?

(Besides if firs claim were true, why did so many ppl buy it to fuck to?)

I am broadly speaking on Mark's side here but while googling this page was seized with a desire to hear the whole thing again.

Also, its an 'aspirational' alb, in that the lyrics are SO bad, the playing so mediocre, it can't help inspire/encourage sixth form proggers to give it a go for themselves. If it were any better it would be too daunting to emulate. Punk prog, too, in that there IS some kind of self-hating anger underneath it all that Walters is incapable of properly articulating or critically unpicking (and which becomes his 'rage' against the 'machinery' of the rec industry and the 'stupidity' of Floyd fans on 'Wish You Were Here', 'Animals' and 'The Wall'.)

I agree about the lack of coherence, the overall mood serves some tracks quite well (Time, On The Run), whilst others don't fit. Lyrically it's dire, but no worse most other prog. I quite like the fuggy sound, and the lack of flash soloing, time-changes etc, which set it apart from yer standard '70s brit-prog which I couldn't/can't stand. (PF were at the time, my toe in the prog water vs a diet of mainly glam, Stones, Beatles and chartpop).

Like many, I've read the PF articles in Uncut and Mojo this month, and I've felt like hearing some of the old stuff again. The only PF I own is a vinyl copy of Relics which is fairly ace, and I keep mainly for the wonderful Arnold Layne. Based on my 25 yr old recollections, I say that Meddle is the best PF album, with honourable mentions for the live side of Ummagumma, and selected trax from the Barrett era (Lucifer Sam, Astronomy Domine, Arnold Layne, See Emily Play, Mathilda Mother). I hated Wish You Were Here - too slick, more Waters whinging and then...... The Ramones, The Damned, The Pistols!

Always thought the appeal of The Dark Side of the Moon was as a social experience - it's the album that fourteen year-old guys buy because the fourteen year-old girls like the fifteen year-old guys who have it, Velvet Underground and the Violent Femmes. And because they are discovering dope at this point. The idea of listening to it for artistic merit alone strikes me as strange therefore - wouldn't you put on Echoes instead?

Roger Waters has, by the way, gone on record as saying that he thought the lyrics were a bit wishy-washy -- i.e. not direct enough in their attacks on religion, war, etc. However, I think a more overt venom would've sunk it.

I played the whole thing live once, in college, and sang leads on a couple songs. It was a blast.

I haven't heard the album as a whole but reading the lyrics I think I could find something to relate to in it, though it would be more reminding myself of the elements in my own character that I want to crush, than anything I like about myself.

xoxo

I suppose i was hoping that it could actually be defended eg by phil as EXHIBITING in some way that which the nu-pop is supposed to lack: ie actually rendering specific and concrete relevant elements of the great edifice of technics of necessary aesthetic understanding that is allegedly so foreign to [insert unfave current chart-bod here]. I don't think it can: that's to say, I believe it fails the test of phil's version of required aesthetic content (which I believe it wd like to have passed), and fails it pretty miserably. It's bad pop (nu or not-nu), bad rock, and rotten jazz or classical.

Tell me the story differently: convince me!!

That said, I'm not a particularly big DSOTM fan (probably because it had a lot of Gilmour wank) ... I prefer the Syd-era stuff, Ummagumma through Meddle, and Wish You Were Here and Animals (a nice bit of cranky, tuneful agitprop) to DSOTM.

There was an interview with David Gilmour in Q a few years ago where he said he'd run into Johnny Rotten one day, and Johnny confessed that he'd never really hated the Floyd, and was actually a bit of a fan. We always suspected as much.

I heard this yesterday in a friend's car. This album is still horrible and completely indefensible to me. It's like the worst jazz rock fusion shit. Also, WTF @ that awful sax throughout.

http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/scirev/Galileo01.jpg

I love Pink Floyd but I could never, ever get into this album.

luv this record. no alice coltrane til you agree, Turangalila! :D

Hahaha. Evil.

I feel a bit bad dissing the Floyd because I worshipped them so much when I was 10, I had one of those 'green pyramid' posters in my room as well as a t-shirt with the prism on it.

That's so cool.

fantastic album. lyrics are't brilliant, but are mostly decent (excepting the occasional "don't be afraid to care") and even affecting. always saw both breathe and time, for instance as directed at a "you" that includes the singer: we. the album doesn't draw a distinction between the concerns of working proles and rock stars - point is that we all struggle, all hope for more than we get, all eventually wither and die.

side 1 depicts life not as a cycle but as an arc - a universe of possibility that progressively narrows until death and i feel that. side 2 is more fragmentary with money, us & them, and especially brain damage, which steps entirely out of the omniscient mankind-seeing that defines the rest of the album. but brain damage and eclipse bring back some of the emotional resonance & yearning of side 1, so they make a kind of intuitive sense, even as they seem to interrupt the thematic continuity.

and i LOVE the production. love how immersive & womb/dreamlike it is, how much attention it pays to 3D space in the mix. it's not just an ordinary production reverbed-out and overcompressed. every sound is handled with care and given a distinct place in the sonic architecture, and the dark cavernous feel isn't a matter of thoughtlessly sticking reverb x on everything.

what i like best about it is that it treats the experience of listening to an album as a journey - a single, coherent emotional/sensual/intellectual experience. i love that approach, and though it was common in the 70s, few albums do it as well as DSotM. the sense of "dark foreboding" & cosmic uplift in the last couple track is just incredible.

this is my musical Room 101.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraphia

I Love Pink Floyd.

I have a friend that says they are not so suited for this attention deficit age.

Their dynamics are so subtle, you know...

Sometimes I think Radiohead is Pink Floyd sped up a good bit.

plus it's a mistake to criticize the musical experience for not matching/supporting the progress of the lyrics. the music here, especially the production, aims to create a place, an environment - a room in which the experience can take place. So the music is more concerned with creating and sustaining a mood than with narrative. only track that breaks the spell is money.

to many "experience" there - pretend it just says "music" up top

pink floyd is great but atm i am listening to sic alps which is different so currently hard to relate

I have a friend that says they are not so suited for this attention deficit age.

I am not sure of this, and I don't even like Pink Floyd. I think in a media saturated culture we will need to make space to decompress or whatever it is called. I mean this is how kids feel, we throw so much information crap at them that they need space. I think older people are having problems adjusting to information culture.

money is such a jam

gilmour solo shreds

Did not know Doris Troy was on this until I watched that youtube just now. Don't know anything about the other three backup singers.

god i wish i could hear anything the way i heard DSotM when i was like 13
I wish I could hear "Thirteen" by Big Star.

xp - Oh, he's talking about All Blues -- that's pretty interesting actually. Never would have caught that.

Still, I mean a few jazz chords don't make jazz fusion. I mean I think rock with jazzy touches is more accurate as said above.

The sax on "Money" isn't very jazzy at all--more '50s R&B.

"god i wish i could hear anything the way i heard DSotM when i was like 13"

THIS, man, THIS!

― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2)

Well I was more like 16, smoking w33d for the first time, but still. It was COMPLETELY AMAZING AND UNLIKE ANYTHING I'D EVER HEARD, MAN.

that might have sounded facetious, but it really was and i will love this album forever.

this was the very first CD i owned and i listened to it about 10 zillion with headphones on in the dark on my Sony Discman:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/barthez4/discman.jpg

i had no idea who Syd Barrett was, tho i had The Wall on vinyl.

that being said, i have absolutely no interest on hearing this again, maybe the weird electro running song or maybe the last song (technically 2 songs on CD)?

Why ya frontin', y0?

There was an interview with David Gilmour in Q a few years ago where he said he'd run into Johnny Rotten one day, and Johnny confessed that he'd never really hated the Floyd, and was actually a bit of a fan. We always suspected as much.

people bagging on pink floyd and the doors and whatnot are the most disgusting savages imo.

Pink Floyd, never; the Doors, I find pretty easy to bag on (even though I like some songs).

I'm a disgusting savage.

http://i36.tinypic.com/10csx8o.jpg

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x0/x4671.jpg

this is my musical Room 101.

― Pedro Paramore (jim), Sunday, November 22, 2009 6:27 PM (Yesterday)

well, maybe "great gig" has some nice slide guitar

people who haven't listened to it in a while might enjoy the super surround sound anniversary edition. like hearing it for the first time on CD after owning only 99 cent used vinyl

I wish the band would have changed their name after the Syd period

I wish the band would've deleted their back catalog after the Syd period.

Sike, just challopin'.

challopin' off into the sunset

I don't think I've ever unconditionally liked this album. Even when I was a 15 year old acidhead, Money would come along and fuck up the flow of the album for me, and I only found more of it annoying as time went on. Still, I like the hell out of whichever one had the surfing imagery and Us and Them. The latter sounded really great in Dogtwn and Zboys.

I thought the true "challop" move at this point was to say that you don't like the Syd Barrett catalog and prefer the later stuff. When I was in college, only liking the Syd Barrett stuff was pretty much a standard cool guy move.

i like the syd catalog, but i prefer the later stuff. no challops intended.

True Floydian Challopsters would say that Ummaguama is their best. Either that or The Division Bell.

"Atom Heart Mother" ftc(hallops)

haha i DO think ummagumma (the live disc at least) is their best! either that or meddle

The live disc is great.

I love Pink Floyd but I could never, ever get into this album.

― mascara and ties (Abbott), Sunday, 22 November 2009 23:33 (2 days ago)

^^^this

yeah the live disc on Umagumma is pretty sweet. They were kind of a rad live band around that time. I have a BBC sessions bootleg (from 1970 I think?) that is super cool. All big and ominous.

ummagumma live is the floyd's best, yes, i grew up on that shit

Law school on the brain just made me come up with the sentence "Challops require at least a modicum of plausibility."

That is awesome.

haha i DO think ummagumma (the live disc at least) is their best! either that or meddle

― mark cl, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 11:52 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

AND the album has "GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS"!!

also i am probably the only person ever who thinks that 'the narrow way' is kinda A+

i don't think Atom Heart Mother is that challop-y though -- it's just really fuckin good, and different from all the rest. no?

ugh i can't believe i'm having a conversation about challops.

i mean even david gilmour has disowned it - witness the tedious splurge of 'tasteful' aor wanking his solo career has given us since then

erm xposts to self re: the narrow way

what's your fave part of AHM .. "breast milky" or "funky dung"?

True Floydian Challopsters would say that Ummaguama is their best. Either that or The Division Bell.

― tylerw, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 12:48 PM Bookmark

lol division bell got three votes in the floyd studio albums poll

haha yeah i saw that. whoever the hell voted for that album, I salute you oh ye challops masters.

I assumed they were 50-yr-old divorced men, who I think are that album's key demog.

http://teenormous.com/images/t-shirts/cdn.shopify.com/s-files-1-0009-5322-products-28378b_1.jpeg
A friend of mine had this shirt in high school. I begged him not to wear it.

so embarrassing

i forget how huge that album was, though. when it came out i heard that shit *everywhere*

yeah it was sort of a big deal! my friends and i actually saw them at the Rose Bowl that tour. We were pretty young, I don't even think we knew that it was a faux-Floyd, at best. Kind of a lame show iirc.

I have a BBC sessions bootleg (from 1970 I think?) that is super cool. All big and ominous.

if this is "rhapsody in pink" (or one of its billion repackagings) it is a totally recommended record A+++ etc.

also i am probably the only person ever who thinks that 'the narrow way' is kinda A+

AGREEDO

the bbc thing is my fave 70's floyd no contest:

do you know what i think my fave pink floyd thing is (post-syd)? i'll bet you never guess.

I have some tape of a BBC concert -- back when the FM rock radio stations used to sometimes play old concerts like that in their entirety -- and I'm pretty sure I have that Pink Floyd show as well. that I taped to cassette from my boombox. I also taped the Zeppelin one, way before they finally decided to release it on "BBC Sessions". I can't remember if it was WLLZ or WRIF or WIOT that used to broadcast these things.

also, King Biscuit Flower Hour. I have a sweet King Biscuit Flower Tape somewhere of Robert Plant on the "Pictures of Moments" tour (with Phil on drums) and also Yes on the "90120" tour. that tape of Yes touring 90120 was actually the first time I ever heard stuff like "Starship Trooper" and "Yours Is No Disgrace" -- now my two fave Yes epics. But at the time that radio show was broadcast, I only knew them from 90120

There's a huge thread on the Flaming Lips official message board with people fighting over whether this album is boring or awesome.