So here's one to ponder, perhaps.
I first heard these songs around the same time, 1988, when I was simultaneously getting into both groups for the first time ever -- first heard "Echoes" through Live at Pompeii and then Meddle, first heard "Curtain Call" via The Light at the End of the Tunnel compilation, then via The Black Album. And it only just struck me how similar the two are.
There's a general circumstance drawing the two together as well -- while Pink Floyd had already experimented with sidelong songs before, thus "Atom Heart Mother," whereas this was the Damned's first and last effort along those lines. In both cases, though, you've got a noted band of a predominant scene of its time seeking to settle its identity following the departure of a key songwriting member, a sense of increasing comfort with both the studio and what its audience might expect or tolerate. And while both have different musical approaches, there are interesting similarities -- a core keyboard motif, a parallel 'framing' around a musical midsection where nearly everything drops away aside from a new, suddenly intrusive element (seagull squeals versus crazed violin), an extended conclusion. Not to mention fairly cryptic and imagistic lyrics, though of course a totally different delivery.
The Damned's PF fandom is well known, of course -- the desire to get Syd Barrett to produce the second album, working with Nick Mason instead, the obvious psych/pop jones on Machine Gun Etiquette (plus the very specific Floyd harmony homage at the conclusion of "I Just Can't Be Happy Today"), etc. -- so it's pretty easy to argue that the one song couldn't exist without the other to a certain extent. I don't think I could rank one above the other as well, honestly, but I think you could unpack them and their significance to the bands in question for quite a bit. Certainly the Damned didn't give up on their song -- when I saw them in 1991 it was one of the closing numbers, in slightly abbreviated form.
Anyway, talk as you like.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 19 January 2007 22:30 (seventeen years ago) link
First! Never heard anything by The Damned, so I'll have to track that down before I can give you an answer. I will say that Echoes is jawdropping. It took me a while to get it cuz at first it was like, OK, another pink floyd epic, but when you realize the vision that must have gone into it...
― Surmounter (rra123), Friday, 19 January 2007 22:40 (seventeen years ago) link
sixteen years pass...