PINK FLOYD

I can't argue with that top 10 rushomancy, it rules and I love you have pillow of winds and fearless so high up in there. Meddle is the best.

one thing I'd disagree with on that list (well there are a few but this one is mystifying to me) is why When the Tigers Broke Free is ranked so high. Do you really think it's that good? maybe because that song was basically unavailable to me until the past several years so I have little attachment to it, it just has always seemed like a trifle.

I'd normally be the last person on the planet that would defend The Wall, but...

107. Goodbye Cruel World - Waters closes side two of his two-album rock opera by having his protagonist kill himself.

...wut?

i never read that as Pink killing himself, more that he completely removes himself from the world and reality.

Yeah, that's pretty much the correct reading - the "wall" is completed at the end of side 2, and is torn down at the end of side 4 - everything in between takes place "behind the wall" ...

that was a great read rushomancy

PINK FLOYD RULES

the only ranking i took issue with was goodbye blue sky at a mere #59. i think i might be the only one who rates it here (this is the first mention of it in the thread) but i love that song. your description of it ("A strange, strange song. The vocal line is particularly odd here. Gorgeous vocal harmonies doubled by dissonant synth, until the chorus, where it's doubled by consonant piano. Almost sounds like a sketch or a demo given the benefit of immaculate production. I can't really tell if it was meant to be so fleeting.") is apt, and all of those things make it one of my faves! but maybe i'm also conflating the song with the animated sequence from the movie. the part with the real bird that transforms into the animated mecha-giant bird, swooping down and clawing up a part of a city and flying off, leaving this dripping bloody patch behind, always sticks with me.

If anyone is dumb like me and is tempted to the end to see what rushomancy thinks about the best Pink Floyd songs, STOP. Reverse course. Start at the beginning. These are golden eviscerations.

otm

the bottom's where all the good chewy goodness is

Indeed. Much admiration for how the tone gradually changes from condemnation to high praise. Also thrilled how I didn't have to click to read each song review!

Also thrilled how I didn't have to click to read each song review!

god, this. one almost forgets how deeply sunk we are into the monetized internet until you run across something like this that just wants to be read as easily as possible

(i think that's why i end up spending most of my time on ILX too)

yeah co-sign -- bless u rushomancy

Not having to click to read the next message is exactly how ILM got so popular.

(lol - i meant the non-monetized part, although an ILX where the next message instantly appeared without refreshing would be fun)

Very glad y'all are enjoying it, loving reading everyone's feedback about it.

Re: Fearless: There were a couple pairs of tracks where I didn't feel I could separate them and I just numbered both of them jointly, so "Pillow of Winds" and "Fearless" are numbers 7 and 8, in whichever order you please.

Glad to hear people are liking the simple, text-only format. It's the only way I know how to write on the Internet; I grew up on Usenet and I still use underscores to indicate italics. I sort of feel like it's a disadvantage, and that younger people are going to look at a plain, unadorned wall of text, roll their eyes, and say "tl;dr". I don't understand how requiring people to click more makes content more likely to be read, myself, but I'm probably old and out of touch.

I do regret leaving off MLOR and TDB. It gives the false impression that I'm with the camp that don't think of them as "real Pink Floyd albums", whatever the fuck that means. Because of the circumstances I grew up in, I just never grew to love them the way I did the rest of their stuff. I think they're great records with a lot of stuff to like about them, and I feel my writing about it would wind up being more negative than positive. I also feel like Dave Gilmour is a decent guy who means well, and I'd take no pleasure in picking apart the flaws of the last two records.

Inspiring disagreement is most of the fun of putting together a list like this. After all there's no real "best" or "worst" Pink Floyd song and the format is just made for people to read and say "I can't believe that asshole ranked "Pow R Toc H" below "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"!"

I'm also pretty happy with the way it does wind up running the critical gamut without becoming repetitive or tedious. I couldn't have possibly written it in the order I posted it. I just wrote little blurbs on every song, album by album, and only after that threw together a ranking and reordered the blurbs to fit (using a little bit of creative latitude so what the reader wouldn't have to plow through ten songs from "The Wall" in a row). Trying to write thirty Pink Floyd track disses in a row would have finished me!

Pink Floyd are a good band for this sort of approach. First because there is such a wide range of quality in their songs - there have always been those people who insist that the worst song by their favorite band is "better than 90% of the other crap that passes for music today". I have never been convinced by, or respected, this point of view. Second because while they have "good albums" and "bad albums" it's possible to write about them without sticking an entire album's worth of material at the bottom - I couldn't do a write-up like this on Zep, much as I love them, because the bottom of the list would be pretty much nothing but "In Through The Out Door", which is no more fun to write than is to read.

Personally I think some of my favorites (both songs, and write-ups) are in the middle section. Savaging something like "Seamus" is relatively easy and fun, but the stuff in the '70s and '60s typically presented more of a challenge for me. Hardest of all to write about for me were songs like "Shine On" and "Echoes", which really are worthy of unqualified and hyperbolic praise. I have a tougher time explaining why something is great than explaining why something is bad. Also tough: Avoiding overrunning my reviews with trivia. I was definitely trying to write this for the benefit of people who weren't necessarily obsessives. No idea if I succeeded.

not an obsessive but this is easily one of the best things I've read about Pink Floyd, thanks for doing it

the glaring illumination of bad tracks and band member weaknesses made me laugh a lot and also clarified why Pink Floyd rules

Corporal Clegg is the only tune I see way, way too low. I'd put that one above anything off The Wall except Comfortably Numb.

I had fun last fall doing some mixed playlists of live/studio post Wall Floyd by both Gilmour and Waters mixed up together. Some good synchronicity happened at times. Division Bell is pretty decent I think. I'm kinda thinking that Rick Wright was the glue in that band both vocally and with his playing on the keys.

I do like Rick Wright's songs more than you. But glad to see something of a corrective to that first list which really seemed like it was written by someone who didn't particularly care for Syd Barrett. I think you undervalued his contributions to, but not as bad as that first list. Of course I'm a Syd fanatic.

Might be because I love Meddle and it's still in constant rotation for me, but I don't think Seamus and San Tropez are deserving of hate, they're very charming and quite memorable in their own ways.

rushomancy just wanted to let you know that i'm listening to a lot of pink floyd recently because of your giganto-post. i've been a pink floyd fan since i was a kid, but i have lots of terrible blind spots because i've probably listened to dsotm, the wall, meddle, and atom heart mother 10x more than all the others for various boring reasons. wish you were here and animals still sound relatively fresh to me because of that, and things like obscured by clouds sound like new releases when i'm reminded to listen to them.

i love having a resource like your megapost to refer to, and as i sit here listening to "welcome to the machine" my first instinct is to go check to see what you said about it afterward. that's really cool, i think, and i wish something like that existed for...everything. to me, that's what the dream of the internet was back in the day. ned's list of his favorite 90s albums functioned in a similar way for me back when in the mid 2000s. sometimes i don't want to read a perfectly curated list of published writers reforming a blurb for the millionth time, but instead read what a big, big fan thinks. that's probably not what you want to hear because someone who has so many thoughts about music probably aspires to be asked to contribute a blurb to a published megalist and get paid for it, which i get. but just saying that i get a lot out of what you wrote and i'm sure others do too. thanks for taking the time to do it and publish it yourself.

I get what you're saying, Karl. Honestly if there's any regret I have about my putting together something like my post on a purely amateur basis it's that I worry that it undermines professional criticism. I believe strongly that people ought to be paid fairly for their work, and worry that by providing a free alternative to that work I'm undermining an already precarious discipline. My need to write far outweighs my interest in being paid, or even being recognized, for that writing. When I see lists like Wyman's, which, no disrespect meant to the man, I just don't think are very good, I just feel like I have to offer a counter narrative.

i really enjoyed reading your post rushomancy! great stuff

er, blog

the worst song by their favorite band is "better than 90% of the other crap that passes for music today"

yeah, one of the things about that type of worship is that it puts the band beyond the human plane, which in the end just isn't that interesting. your clear recognition of the limitations and failures of the band - as musicians and as human beings - makes their successful bids for transcendence actually affecting, rather than just inspiring a generic awe.

I've been a casual at best Floyd fan since I was in 7th grade (and, fittingly, perhaps mostly while I was in 7th grade). But this was great. Demonstrates that one can be perceptive without being fawning, and can recognize a band as great despite a huge percentage of its music being ... not great. And, for that matter, a weird percentage of its great material being not that great, too. It really is quite remarkable that for such a hugely popular group you have to get pretty high up on the list before the quality of the music becomes un- (or less) debatable. Proof that the idea of Pink Floyd is better than its execution? Its parts are bigger than their sum?

Or in other words, Josh, Pink Floyd RULES.

We need more of this rushomancy! Part 2 where you rank albums or their solo work (I suppose ranking all their solo work mixed together is better but if done separate Syd Barret's solo work is probably the most interesting imho) Maybe a part 5 where you rank the work of collaborators like Alan Parsons or Manzanera hehe.

Gilmour and Waters said pretty much everything they needed to say in their PF years. Syd Barrett was cut short and his very charmig songwriting continued delivering the goods now and then after he was kicked off the band.

We need more of this rushomancy! Part 2 where you rank albums or their solo work (I suppose ranking all their solo work mixed together is better but if done separate Syd Barret's solo work is probably the most interesting imho) Maybe a part 5 where you rank the work of collaborators like Alan Parsons or Manzanera hehe.

― dance cum rituals (Moka)

hahahaha oh god no, one of the great secrets of writing is _knowing when to stop_. get back with me in a couple years and i might consider it!

(and if we're talking songwriting collaborators you know the first thing i'm going after is the entire slapp happy catalogue. i still don't understand how one gets from "some questions about hats" to "dogs of war" but the latter gets my grudging respect for demonstrating moore's, uh, range.)

I'm a huge fan of Moore (and Slapp Happy esp) and can even sense a bit of some precursers to Dogs of War on his solo stuff, but not a fan of that song, not at all! Lover of Mine is a wonderful bit of Syd pop.

I respect that even with the superstar status, Gimour can still pal around and collaborate with the likes of Moore, Manzanera, Robert Wyatt. Not that those guys are slouches or anything...

Hahaha didn't expect you too but I enjoyed the ranking so much I want to see more rankings done by you. Any other non-pf related ranking you'd consider making sometime in the near future?

To not too

If I had to guess your top five pink floyd albums based on your top 20 song rankings I'd say it's:

1. Meddle
2. Wish You Were Here
3. Piper
4. Animals
5. Dsotm

There's not that many Piper songs in the top 20 but arnold layne and see emily play and jugband blues are there and they're all Syd' so I suppose you place their only full album with him highly.

Am I completely off with your top 5?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6HCykbHtBM

moka - well, since my day job is data analysis i did a breakdown of songs by relative ranking, and the top five were:

wish you were here (101.5)
dsotm (101.4)
animals (95.25)
atom heart mother (87.4)
meddle (83 1/3)

piper ranked seventh, below obscured by clouds

obviously my methodology is flawed, since it gives equal weight to "seamus" and "echoes", but it's still interesting data.

what do i actually listen to? usually the less popular stuff. i basically never listen to dsotm or the wall, except in weird cover versions. i listen to "animals" a fair bit. i also listen to "more" a lot because it's some of the least demanding music imaginable. i listen to "piper" but only in mono. i listen to lots of bootlegs too. especially the bbc stuff, but also lots of shitty audience tapes, particularly from 1970-1971 (pretty much any performance from those years puts the live half of "ummagumma" to shame). i'll wax rhapsodic about the version of "main theme from more" played on jan 18, 1970 in croydon, even though the sound quality is unlistenably poor, or insist to you that the version of "the journey" played in plumpton is a much better performance than the better-known concertgebouw version.

i put together a comp cd of some of my favorite floyd cuts in, i don't know, 2013 sometime. tracklist:

a pillow of winds
pigs on the wing (8-track)
crying song
see emily play
the narrow way part 3 (bbc)
wot's... uh the deal
crumbling land
sheep
lucifer sam
point me at the sky
fearless
the embryo (bbc 1970)
rain in the country
comfortably numb (gilmour's demo)
morning glory (from "alan's psychedelic breakfast")

...which represents what i listen to decently enough.

fwiw, the 'trivia' you tried to keep out of your writeup would of course be very welcome here

^^^

Mix tape I put together in (probably) 1984 after getting the Dark Side of the Moo bootleg, the Holy Grail of then-unavailable non-LP Floyd tracks:

- Side 1
Cymbaline
Lucifer Sam
It Would Be So Nice
Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk
Ibiza Bar
Chapter 24
Point Me at the Sky
See Emily Play
Jugband Blues
Arnold Layne
Candy and a Current Bun
Corporal Clegg
The Nile Song
Green Is the Colour

- Side 2
The Grand Vizier's Garden Party, Part 1: Entrance
Astronomy Domine (Ummagumma live version)
Let There Be More Light
Embryo
Sysyphus, Part 3
Grantchester Meadow
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
A Saucerful of Secrets
The Grand Vizier's Garden Party, Part 3: Exit

Dark side of the Moo was life-changing for me.

That's is genuinely very interesting.

Correction to my Floyd tape above:

What I assumed was "Sysyphus, Part 3" when I wrote out the track list way back when (because the vinyl didn't show track separations between the 4 parts), turned out in the CD era to be the first 3 minutes of Part 4: quiet keyboard and birdsong which leads handily into "Grantchester Meadow."

Also, the "Grand Vizier: Entrance" excerpt is only the flute part.

(Because you're all going to fire up Audacity and recreate this mix. Don't forget to tighten up the gap between "Corporal Clegg" and "The Nile Song"--1 second at most!)

Made a Spotify playlist of this - it hangs together way better than you'd think! Shows the continuity between Syd-era Floyd and the next few albums. Nice one, HL.

Omayyad was my gateway bootleg LP. I never got hold of Dark Side Of The Moo until Napster.

pre-Opel I used to have a Syd Barrett bootleg that used the Robyn Hitchcock cartoon of Vegetable Man as a cover. I'd give anything to have it back if only for nostalgic reasons.

It also had Singing a Song in the Morning on it.

http://www.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk/photos/var/albums/Pink-Floyd-Photos/tour-programmes/Misc/Cartoon%20-%20Vegetable%20Man%20by%20Robyn%20Hitchcock.jpg?m=1391961282

yeah that's the one.

Hear Lost Recording of Pink Floyd Playing with Jazz Violinist Stéphane Grappelli on “Wish You Were Here.” Love this!https://t.co/PkqpGXRUfQ pic.twitter.com/l2VwhnU9K4

— Open Culture (@openculture) September 11, 2017