PINK FLOYD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3ZheFc7MgM

New Gilmour album out, it's probably his best full solo outing since his debut, in that it has no skippable tracks even if it's not always the most memorable thing

THis however is a thing of beauty. Does Romany Gilmour have the greatest singing voice ever? No, it's a little flat and extremely english, but she sounds really good here anyway. Also it is completely insane to me that she is doing a song by someone who was in gnac. I didn't think the Montgolfier Brothers were listened to by anyone other than saddos like me in the '00s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qdvkx9E3o

this reminds me a lot of HAAi "Baby We're Ascending"

Ice-T: "Hey David Gilmour, can Body Count cover Comfortably Numb with new lyrics?"
Gilmour: "Sure. Do you need a guitar player?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl8zhYA0BHU

live for today, gone tomorrow -- that's me

Any Colour You Like C/D

Of all the Gilmour interviews out right now, I thought this one was the best
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/oct/03/david-gilmour-the-rich-and-powerful-have-siphoned-off-the-majority-of-music-industry-money

Also I noticed that in the $400 million deal, the band members still retain songwriting rights.

Countdown to officially licensed Floyd Laserium shows in 5...4...3...2...

Gilmour's new album is pretty good, I enjoy it.

But today I'm more blown away by Live in Gdansk, which I'd never heard before!

Gilmour rules! Pink Floyd rules!

Of all the Gilmour interviews out right now, I thought this one was the best
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/oct/03/david-gilmour-the-rich-and-powerful-have-siphoned-off-the-majority-of-music-industry-money

― Elvis Telecom

I gave this a read this morning and I was surprised at how genuinely inspiring I found it. It's this... he's thoughtful, and kind, but he's not soft. When I was young Pink Floyd was doing _The Division Bell_ and I thought it was boring, and Pink Floyd were boring. And now that album is a classic with younger generations. I haven't really listened to it much. Probably it's held up. Roger Waters... I was into Roger Waters around this time and it was always bad. It was. _Amused to Death_ was fucking racist and I made excuses for it because... because I was ignorant. Is all I can say. _The Division Bell_ may or may not be boring but it's not racist. I was angry and resentful and Roger Waters, he was a lot more angry and resentful than David Gilmour. And he'd go out there and talk shit about David Gilmour at every opportunity. Just an utter miserable bastard, and at the time, that made him a role model for me. The best I could imagine being.

People ask Gilmour about Roger Waters and he says what he needs to be said. He doesn't mince words, but he doesn't overstate the point. Next question. Another question about Waters - what's his favorite Waters lyric - and he says "Walk With Me Sydney". That impresses me a lot. Just... the utter _contempt_ he has for Waters. That's the best way to treat someone who's said and done the things Waters has said and done, I believe. Not anger. Not sympathy. Contempt.

"walk with me Sydney" is such a prototypical Waters lyric, it's almost comical... it's like if you printed it out on a transparency film and overlaid on top of the lyrics to Comfortably Numb, there would be plenty of spots where it perfectly aligns.

I also could never really get into the Division Bell because it's too boring, but the album cover is amazing, iconic, so instantly classic that it still makes me wanna like the album a lot more than I do. Even reduced to a simple illustration/graphic, it's really great, you know, it seems to signify something pretty powerful. It's worthy of Pink Floyd even though the record itself isn't so much.

kate, I've never listened to a Roger Waters solo album. What's with the racism in Amused to Death?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-70mGm8Ry_4

the David / Roger vocal switch on Time is pretty cool

...there are younger generations who think the division bell is a classic?

does anyone?

It seems to be a millennial favourite.

it’s the floyd i reach for these days

smh

smdh

ok whatever haters

if it's too soft you're too old :)

it's a really beautifully recorded album. the music, too, is like insanely beautiful ("poles apart"! "take it back!"). the lyrics are a laughable attempt at watersian conceptual grandeur but who cares

momentary lapse truly sucks. division bell is way better than it should be

the instrumentals on The Division Bell are the best tracks

in this house i believe in two things:
1. PINK FLOYD RULES
2. Divsion Bell blows

Cluster One particularly

I've never heard Division Bell, except for whatever song got radio airplay when it came out, but ivy and I are pretty much poles apart in our tastes, so I think it's a safe skip for me.

i listened to dark side of the moon yesterday! before i opened the store. had a clean 1st u.s. pressing. sounded good. haven't played it in a million years. there is something in every song that i really like. "on the run" deserves more proto-techno credit.

I was thinking about listening to that album today on the drive to the supermarket. Listened to Primal Scream instead.

I worked at Iceland in the early 90s, a frozen food supermarket in the UK. It's kinda grotty, and in class-war Britain it's a feature of blown-out high streets and known for stuff like prawn rings and cheap, shitty cider. A kid (he was short; we called him Short Boy) rose to assistant store manager and spent ALL of his money on stereo equipment for his Citreon ZX - filling it with absurdly powerful bass bins and the like. Anyway, out the back of the shop, among the cardboard piles and the wasp-filled wheelie bins, he would play *The Division Bell* at ridiculous, floor-shaking volume. He played a lot of shit purely to show off the bass and what I remember -despite not knowing Floyd at the time - is how pristine the thing sounded, like being out at sea and looking for familiar lights on buoys and other boats.

It's actually been a while since I've listened to _The Division Bell_ so I decided to listen to it again, without prejudice.

I think it sounds better today than it did in its original context. It was just deeply out of touch with its times when it came out. Like, this was a record that came out in the US on the day Kurt Cobain died. The general vibe I had at the time, a lot of people had, was oh, look, another shitty classic rock reunion album. It's like their old albums, but not as good. Also, it's an album by a band best that was known for their lyrics without the guy who wrote those lyrics.

The thing is that a lot of those "classic lyrics" haven't necessarily held up. A lot of them have, mind you, but some of them... See, again, one of the main things I can say in defense of The Division Bell's lyrics is that at no point are they racist or misogynist, which is something Roger Waters hadn't managed to do since, I don't know, 1975? And I do regret giving Waters as much slack for that bullshit as I did.

Does it sound a lot like '70s Pink Floyd? Well, yeah. It's, like, basically the same band? In '94, it sounded like an imitation of Pink Floyd... in '24 it just sounds like Pink Floyd.

I mean it's not a perfect album by any means. First off it's pretty long, by '24 standards. Not excruciatingly long, but it is a pretty big time commitment. Back in the '90 everybody thought filling up a 70 minute CD was necessary, it was "value for money". These days... Just a lot of five and six minute songs with a lot of "atmospheric" stuff thrown in. At the same time... as much as I love "Echoes" it's padded. So it's not necessarily a bad thing that there are all these five- and six- minute songs. Compared to "classic" Floyd they're fairly compact - but not so compact that Gilmour doesn't get to play guitar.

And Gilly, God, he is about at his peak as a guitarist here. Seriously, his playing is _so fucking good_ here. A whole album packed to the gills with absolutely top-notch Gilmour guitar playing is nothing to sneeze at. That said, nobody else in the band is quite on his level. Pink Floyd are working as a band here, and that means they're working within the limitations of the core trio. Nick Mason's drums are _very_ prominent, at least on the "360 Reality Audio" mix I heard (through decent speakers, not headphones like they suggested). Nick Mason isn't a great drummer. There's a lot of mid-tempo 4/4 here, because, well, that's what Mason could do. On tour they had, I think, Gary Wallis to complement Mason, but if Wallis is here, it is to _complement_ Mason. It's very obviously Nick Mason on drums.

Richard Wright... I mean, he writes a song here. His playing isn't as front and center and distinctive as it was in the '70s, he doesn't really _solo_ like Gilmour does, but he's _there_, which he just wasn't on _Momentary Lapse of Reason_.

I do want to talk about the songs. Gilmour isn't a great songwriter. By and large these songs aren't great songs, with the exception of "High Hopes", which is an all-time fucking Floyd classic, and has been recognized as such since day one. Even 30 years ago as a Gilmour hater - I mean yeah. Certified Floyd banger. The flipside is that by contrast the rest of the songs are very obviously _not_ certified bangers. None of them are _bad_ - which is pretty important, I think. It's a pretty consistent record. None of the others are great, though.

As much as Gilmour isn't a great songwriter, he _is_ a songwriter. Always was a songwriter. These songs aren't imitations of Waters-era Floyd (you could possibly make a case for "Poles Apart", but I'd call it more pastiche than imitation). They're PINK FLOYD songs, largely by a guy who, like, wrote a bunch of Pink Floyd songs. And there's a Rick Wright song. It's not bad. I don't think "Wearing the Inside Out" . I don't think it's up to the standard of his early Floyd compositions, like "Stay" or "Paintbox", but it's not bad.

The thing is, it's not like Roger Waters was ever a great songwriter himself. He's way better as a lyricist as a songwriter. I'm not listening to this album and saying to myself "God, I wish this had the rich sense of melody of a song like 'Money'." So why are the songs not as good as '70s Floyd songs? I guess to me, what made classic (post-Syd) Floyd's songs great, I think, is the _synthesis_ of the three songwriters. Waters did contribute more than lyrics. To me, a song like "Poles Apart", which _does_ try to sound like Waters' writing, makes that clear. The songs are lesser for lacking Waters' contributions. They're not bad. It's just that he's missed.

-

That's the fucking thing, though, isn't it? He's _missed_. It's time for me to talk about those lyrics. On consideration, I _genuinely think these lyrics are good_.

When _The Division Bell_ was released, they came in for a lot of shit, of course, for not being "as good as" Waters' lyrics. Today I'm not really inclined to compare them to Waters' lyrics. I think the lyrics are their own thing. If they sound a little like Waters... they were in the same band. For a long time. Gilmour just isn't trying to say the same thing Waters is, though. _Dark Side of the Moon_ is a magisterial meditation on the darker side of human existence. Is Gilmour capable of that? Probably not. He writes a song about sociopolitical issues like "Take It Back" and the message is, uh... we should take care of the environment or we'll lose it? It's not exactly profound. Here's "A Great Day for Freedom", about the fall of the Berlin Wall. A great political statement? Not really.

Except it's not a political statement at all. There are superficial references to, like, lines on a map moving from side to side, but there's something there that just _isn't_ in Waters' lyrics.

Loss. Hurt. And recovering from it.

What the fuck _happened_ to Roger Waters? He was funny. He was caring. He was _hopeful_. Gilmour, Wright, Mason, they were there. 15 years ago. He became paranoid. He became cruel. He became abusive. He belittled them. Treated them like they were useless, like it was _his_ band, like it had always been _his_ band. And then he decided they were useless. Then he threw them away.

And, I mean, what if they weren't useless? What if they were a band, with or without Waters? So they tried, and Rick Wright, he was a wreck. When they tried to record an album, he could barely play two notes, but he recovered. He recovered and they went on this tour, on this world tour, and Waters sued them and mocked them and people _loved_ them. With or without Waters.

That's kinda the story I hear in _The Division Bell_. The way it reaches me. There was somebody they cared about, they liked, who started being abusive and treating them like shit and it didn't make sense why. And the things he said about them weren't true. As much as they missed him, they could stand on their own without him. They were more than Roger Waters' backing band. Always had been.

That just... that just clicks with me more than "Fuck You Margaret Thatcher". Doing an album about how terrible Margaret Thatcher is seems kind of... obvious. Unsubtle.

great post tyvm

jfc can’t we spray for this

There was a really cool lofi cover version of “learning to fly” playing at the record store I went to today, it was all modulated and weird.

I started listening to the 2011 Dark Side CD last night but fell asleep during “Great gig in the sky” :/ “time” just about wrecked me.

Compelling post. I'm 82% through my first listen. This is indistinguishable from a Gilmour solo album.

idk i’ve heard every gilmour album and i think it’s pretty distinguishable from those!!!

It seems pretty conventional, to me.

I started. I made it through the instrumental intro and "What Do You Want From Me" (which was the single; I remembered it pretty accurately) but then I got distracted and went off to listen to about a half dozen versions of the country song "In the Jailhouse Now." I'll try again later.

There was a really cool lofi cover version of “learning to fly” playing at the record store I went to today, it was all modulated and weird.

― brimstead

i wonder if it was anthony moore's demo, which was just released

OK, I'm listening to "Poles Apart" now and this is very bad. The groaning strings and the stupid carnival keyboard noises on top sound like an idea late-period Rush would have rejected, and the part where it almost speeds up but then doesn't, and the "just play a basic beat and we'll put in something more interesting later" drumming... oof. That might have to be it for today.

Ughh do I need to listen to the division bell again? it hasn’t been *that* long since I tried, I think less than five years. Peak Gilly Noodle is very tempting.

I found the “synthesis of the three songwriters” part of your post very persuasive but then again I’m pretty down to listen to this guy solo over a synth pad drone for ages.

i wonder if it was anthony moore's demo, which was just released

Oh that I wanna hear

Excellent post, Kate!

https://reflectionsonsound.bandcamp.com/album/home-of-the-demo

picked up a copy of Anthony More's World Service single yesterday, was free as the store was giving me a deal with everything else I bought. It holds up better than anything Pink Floyd's done in the same period of time.

At his worst, More's late 70s/early 80s pop/new wave records are like the bastard child of John Cale and Brian Eno, without sounding like John Cale and Brian Eno.

Flying Doesn't Help is a great album.

It's actually been a while since I've listened to _The Division Bell_ so I decided to listen to it again, without prejudice.
[…].

iirc there are a few YT essays about it, the lighting guys must have been in on it, I saw two of the nights at Earl's Court in '94 and both times the words appeared during an oil-projection section and were hastily scribbled out, very perplexing.

I would probably read a big book on Usenet lore in general lol

I agree with all of this. Also, interesting to recall how this album came out just at the dawn of online culture and gave birth to this really confused publicity stunt on Usenet called the “Publius Enigma”: basically the band or its management greenlighted some weird on-line treasure hunt that was never resolved (there were “clues” in concerts and on record covers, as I recall) — stimulating some really weird online fan behaviour, as I recall. Someone should write something on that, as it’s almost lost in history by now.

― johanlif

heya, good to know you're still around Johan. been a while :)

the thing that gets me about the publius enigma is how much the "weird internet mystery" youtubers get _wrong_, how much bullshit they talk about it.

the publius enigma posts came from anon.penet.fi, that was _the_ big anonymous posting server before scientology lawsuits shut it down (that's probably what it's best remembered for, if anything - its involvement in the scientology thing). that light show at that floyd concert, i guess that's what got people buzzing about it really. i guess somebody connected with floyd. i don't know if they ever talked about it or admitted it. there was a lot of ill-conceived online marketing. maybe douglas adams was involved. he was really big on the internet - really big on anything that allowed him to avoid actually writing. used to post some on alt.fan.douglas-adams, if i remember correctly.

anyway i was on amp-f (alt.music.pink-floyd, that's what we call it, to this day) from the beginning... i think it was founded around '94, with the tagline "Sold out shows everywhere." i'd been on the Echoes listserv before then. i didn't take the publius enigma seriously, and i was kind of a loud asshole about it. i pissed a lot of people off, back in the day. sometimes they even had good reasons for being pissed off. even when the light show came around at - what was it, giants stadium? - sometime in july, i didn't take it seriously for a second. it was a bunch of meaningless new-age mystical bullshit. "There is an Enigma. Trust." What the fuck? I'm supposed to trust some blithering asshole posting through a server literally anyone could post to? So there were a couple of words at a light show. It still didn't _mean_ a goddamn thing. There was no _substance_ to it, no purpose. Just like The Division Bell itself, really. Utterly superficial, utterly meaningless.

and then of course there were the crackpots. joe and sandy, who insisted that the publius enigma was about jesus, that they knew dave gilmour _personally_ and he was _very into evangelical christianity_. this was... not a credible claim. and then there was denise sharpe, who outright had erotomania. believed that dave gilmour was in love with her and was sending her messages through lucky charms cereal. gilmour was on a mission, she said, to spread the truth that carl palmer was homosexual. i mean on paper it's funny but it's also terribly sad. terribly sad. she wound up voting for trump, of course.

a lot of us still talk. mostly on facebook, though, so i'm not really part of it, not having been on facebook in ages.

I would probably read a big book on Usenet lore in general lol

― brimstead

usenet was great - i mean a lot of it sucked, it wasn't _that_ great - but it was great and i miss it. not sure whether mary ann horton writing uuencode doomed it or is the reason anybody knows about it all today. structurally it wasn't good. too much "trust", not enough "verify". usenet was where spam started out, if i remember correctly. serdar argic's denial of the armenian genocide, john gruber, the green card lottery. i heard a lot of people here came from alt.music.alternative. never my stomping ground. my main stomping ground was, well, alt.music.pink-floyd. anyone who spent any time at all over there ran into my posts one way or another. :) shittest part about usenet is that it's basically inaccessible... one is that it was ephemeral, it really doesn't make any sense going back and reading it, and two is that even if you did, there's no interface like tin or Agent to give it structural context. i consider all that stuff basically lost.

I was going to post that Usenet is archived on Google Groups, but I just learned that Google announced earlier this year they're no longer allowing new posts to usenet. Existing usenet posts will remain archived, but their search tools are supposedly awful so it's hard to find anything there. So I guess Usenet is officially dead now...