By The Way, Which One's Pink?
So, my thoughts this week have been returning to that which is less painful and more of the philosophic and musical.
In particular, my thoughts have been surrounded by the music of Pink Floyd.
I am a big fan of Pink Floyd and have been since I was in junior high. I got into listening to Pink Floyd late in their career - my first tape of Pink Floyd's catalog was A Momentary Lapse of Reason. This was followed shortly by The Dark Side of the Moon. And while they both came from the band Pink Floyd, they weren't the same band in the sense of members or of attitude.
Yet I love them both.
I will admit that I am a fan more of the music that comes from 1971 and forward than I am of the music that came before. Not that I dislike the even older stuff, but the music from Dark Side and forward (with a touch of "Echoes" from the previous album, Meddle) captured my attention and my imagination in a way few other bands ever would.
Some of that came from the open ended musical style of songs such as "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" or "The Great Gig in the Sky". Some of that came from the power of songs such as "Run Like Hell" or "The Gunner's Dream." Perhaps, though, what spoke to me most was the deliberate abstraction of subjects found in their lyrics. While many of the songs can be talked about thematically, sometimes it is hard to pin down what a Pink Floyd song is about because it is just obfuscated enough to be about both whatever it was the band had in mind at the time and what it communicates to the listener.
For example, "Crazy Diamond" is about Syd Barrett, but it doesn't have to be. That's the power of their music to me. Something about the music and the lyrics creep in to your psyche and speak. They draw your mind into a variety of images that border on the fantastic and frightening the way Lewis Carrol's Alice experiences in Wonderland. Surreal, abstract, fanciful, frightening, and yet real in the same fashion you and I experience dreams. That is the power of Pink Floyd's music to me. It pulls me into another realm of thinking.
And their music really doesn't need any drug enhancement on the part of the listener to be that powerful (neither does Hendrix, for that matter). It just overwhelms. And that overwhelming nature doesn't have to do with power chords or blistering guitar solos. Sometimes the more overwhelming songs are because of the weight of the composition itself, such as "Sorrow" from Momentary Lapse or the overall strength of The Wall, which is also a great example of not needing to know exactly what the band had in mind for it to have power and meaning.
While the band did have success and their live shows were phenomenal, they weren't shooting for popular success. Some people argue they were shooting for this with Momentary Lapse, but I never felt it was crafted for the radio so much as it was crafted to be a new Pink Floyd album to push the band in a new direction after the turbulent years of the early 80s. Perhaps they were radio friendly in the fact that they weren't all long songs, but I think (in retrospect) they might have been radio friendly because it was exciting to have a new Pink Floyd album out that echoed some of the old musical styles with a fresh and strong sound.
I can't explain why Pink Floyd is so important to me effectively or why their music creeps in and pushes me into strange and wonderful moods and moments of reflection. But it does. And as I have written some time ago, their final album The Endless River may not be a new studio album, but it sure was nice to hear Pink Floyd anew one more time. And what a sublime sound it was.
In particular, my thoughts have been surrounded by the music of Pink Floyd.
I am a big fan of Pink Floyd and have been since I was in junior high. I got into listening to Pink Floyd late in their career - my first tape of Pink Floyd's catalog was A Momentary Lapse of Reason. This was followed shortly by The Dark Side of the Moon. And while they both came from the band Pink Floyd, they weren't the same band in the sense of members or of attitude.
Yet I love them both.
I will admit that I am a fan more of the music that comes from 1971 and forward than I am of the music that came before. Not that I dislike the even older stuff, but the music from Dark Side and forward (with a touch of "Echoes" from the previous album, Meddle) captured my attention and my imagination in a way few other bands ever would.
Some of that came from the open ended musical style of songs such as "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" or "The Great Gig in the Sky". Some of that came from the power of songs such as "Run Like Hell" or "The Gunner's Dream." Perhaps, though, what spoke to me most was the deliberate abstraction of subjects found in their lyrics. While many of the songs can be talked about thematically, sometimes it is hard to pin down what a Pink Floyd song is about because it is just obfuscated enough to be about both whatever it was the band had in mind at the time and what it communicates to the listener.
For example, "Crazy Diamond" is about Syd Barrett, but it doesn't have to be. That's the power of their music to me. Something about the music and the lyrics creep in to your psyche and speak. They draw your mind into a variety of images that border on the fantastic and frightening the way Lewis Carrol's Alice experiences in Wonderland. Surreal, abstract, fanciful, frightening, and yet real in the same fashion you and I experience dreams. That is the power of Pink Floyd's music to me. It pulls me into another realm of thinking.
And their music really doesn't need any drug enhancement on the part of the listener to be that powerful (neither does Hendrix, for that matter). It just overwhelms. And that overwhelming nature doesn't have to do with power chords or blistering guitar solos. Sometimes the more overwhelming songs are because of the weight of the composition itself, such as "Sorrow" from Momentary Lapse or the overall strength of The Wall, which is also a great example of not needing to know exactly what the band had in mind for it to have power and meaning.
While the band did have success and their live shows were phenomenal, they weren't shooting for popular success. Some people argue they were shooting for this with Momentary Lapse, but I never felt it was crafted for the radio so much as it was crafted to be a new Pink Floyd album to push the band in a new direction after the turbulent years of the early 80s. Perhaps they were radio friendly in the fact that they weren't all long songs, but I think (in retrospect) they might have been radio friendly because it was exciting to have a new Pink Floyd album out that echoed some of the old musical styles with a fresh and strong sound.
I can't explain why Pink Floyd is so important to me effectively or why their music creeps in and pushes me into strange and wonderful moods and moments of reflection. But it does. And as I have written some time ago, their final album The Endless River may not be a new studio album, but it sure was nice to hear Pink Floyd anew one more time. And what a sublime sound it was.
Comments
Post a Comment