PINK FLOYD

ooh the Collectors. About to put them on a weird mix I'm making.

Nico and John Cale in 71. I can only wonder what any of those conversations entailed.

iirc that was cale's first solo gig! a tape of his set survives. whoever taped it didn't tape floyd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwGpwQXQ590

Somehow I knew Tyler would know where to find a copy.

Is this the gig where he played with Mike Heron? Or Mike Heron played with him?

yes, I think Heron is playing on a few songs here!

1971 Rolling Stone interview with Cale (& Nico) discussing the above show (barely any Pink Floyd content):

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/sep/25/john-cale-nico-interview

and yes Heron plays with him.

Pretty good evening's entertainment all round!

Mind you, it might have been a good idea for Mike Heron to learn the songs first.

Yeah sounds like they maybe had a 15-minute rehearsal beforehand. Pretty cool though! Interesting that Cale already had a few Paris 1919 tunes at this point.

Roger stirs things up even more

An announcement from me. And when I mention the @pinkfloyd website, I also mean the Facebook page and all the rest. pic.twitter.com/x9T8CIAAMp

— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) May 19, 2020

I got two friends who are all about Pink Floyd ruling, and I can’t seem to get them to listen to Can. What would you think would be the best connection point to get them into them. Future Days perhaps?

Roger otm throughout that message.

honestly fuck David Gilmour and his cosy family singalongs

I got two friends who are all about Pink Floyd ruling, and I can’t seem to get them to listen to Can. What would you think would be the best connection point to get them into them. Future Days perhaps?

If you think that's their best music. I don't think Can and Pink Floyd are all that similar, and they grow further apart as they go on.

Pink Floyd rules but I have never gotten hooked by the Can. I like "Vitamin C" a lot but otherwise I have found their music too slippery for me, more watery whereas the Floyd is more airy. I still give the Can a lotta time to try to get it to click given how many people here & in my life elsewhere rate them so highly.

Yeah I don't see much similarity between PF and Can for the most part. Not that you can't like both, but the Can that is most like Floyd probably isn't the most essential Can or like the best Floyd. Maybe stuff like All Gates Open, Animal Waves, Come Sta La Luna could vaguely be cross over points (?) but better to take the bands on their own terms.

Floyd for Can heads = A Saucerful Of Secrets, One Of These Days, Echoes, Sheep.

It's not that I think Pink Floyd and Can sound alike, its just something about a certain type of epic late 60s into the 70s thing, where there's equal parts song and expansion, noise and groove, it's like, maybe the things I think that make them different are worth comparing at times as they show the flaws of the other? I dunno.

Groove is not a property I associate with Pink Floyd tbh.

you gotta get down with it

prob easier to convert deadheads

Nick Mason is very appropriate for Pink Floyd as he doesn’t play too complex. It gives the Wright/Gilmour textures room to breathe. But I’d love to imagine what they would have achieved with a drummer like Jaki.

Xpost the Dead's drumming is maybe the worst part of the band outside of "Good Lovin'"

Two drummer lineups are so hard to pull off

But either way I kinda see Pink Floyd as the opposite of the Dead in many ways

it’s not like deadheads are gonna be all “oh man this would be good if the drumming actually sucked”... but yeah what a bonkers comparison

it’s not like deadheads are gonna be all “oh man this would be good if the drumming actually sucked”... but yeah what a bonkers comparison

― brimstead

as a floydhead-converted-to-deadhead the difference to me is that floyd's improvisation was usually more constrained than the dead ever were. even a song like "interstellar overdrive", on the face of it a totally freeform instrumental, was really a matter of finding out a number of things that worked and doing them. the dead on the other hand were so absorbed in the moment and, honestly, in their own heads that a lot more things were possible for them

Yep, there's an economy of means to Pink Floyd's playing that really shines in an improvisational setting, whereas I just get impatient with at least 50% of the Dead's jams, even the legendary ones. And I like aimless noodling.

I was talking about dead heads digging Can but I don’t know anymore

Moka asked: I got two friends who are all about Pink Floyd ruling, and I can’t seem to get them to listen to Can. What would you think would be the best connection point to get them into them. Future Days perhaps?

How about "Millionenspiel"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMoxgb4TTFk

It's from 1969 so it pre-dates PF's "One of These Days"; but they seem to share a vibe.

Second pick would be the album "Monster Movie."

True, but this here is the PINK FLOYD (RULES) thread.

xp

(xp) It depends what era of Floyd they are interested in but, even then, I don't know why you assume Pink Floyd fans would like "Monster Movie".

If you're more of a pre-DSOTM Floyd fan I can't imagine you'd have too many problems adjusting to Can.

here's how to get pink floyd fans into can

tell them "listen to can, they rule"

since pink floyd also RULES obviously they should be interested

if they aren't for some reason that's fine, just make fun of them until they either go away or start pretending to like can

of course there is also the (great) piece can did on the old grey whistle test in '74 called "untitled (for pink floyd)", looks like the sendspace i threw up of it a little while back is still good

https://www.sendspace.com/file/qh3qo1

My dad loves Floyd's post-Syd, pre-DSOTM material, was into Ash Ra Tempel and Amon Düül at the time, and his favourite King Crimson album is Islands, yet he still finds Can too busy and weird, even on Future Days. That he discovered them almost thirty years later is likely part of the problem.

Fair enough though, Amon Duul II and Ash Ra Tempel fit more neatly with that era of Floyd.

CAN propose to take you on an adventure, to bear witness to the whole wild ride, slipperiness and all. it's immediate and exhilarating but might cause you to feel apprehensive or disoriented.

pink floyd have already come back from their adventures and propose to tell you about it in exaggerated if highly enjoyable detail. the achievements are towering but we're dealing with a more-or-less formalized storytelling, not wild and magical incantations.

it's maybe a bit like the difference between rabelais and racine.

I don't think Pink Floyd's music is ever as tightly wound as Racine's alexandrins, but in terms of sheer clarity I agree that the two intersect. The difference is that post-Syd, pre-The Wall Pink Floyd view optimization as a means of approximating a modest experience of transcendence, whereas there's a claustrophobic logic to Racine's plays that doesn't really point towards anything other than its own aesthetic and theological fatalism.

here's how to get pink floyd fans into can

tell them "listen to can, they rule"

since pink floyd also RULES obviously they should be interested

this is very otm

lol, could you even imagine what a CAN concept album would be about?

A can of vegetables?

mushrooms, to be exact, with heads

they use quantum physics to summon Mother Sky from the future days and bring the rain during the vernal equinox

It turns out that perhaps PF and Can's literal point of nearest confluence is that time when they each had a hit disco single.

lol sleeve

xp i wasn't expecting such a complex analysis of racine (or floyd), though i think you're spot on. my comparison was only meant to evoke a sort of classicist conceptual space vs. a more sprawling, piecemeal artistry that embraces dead-ends and absurdity

you raise the blade
you make the change

I'm finally reading Nick Mason's book Inside Out. Nick rules, even if there is roughly zero insight into anything.

― EZ Snappin, Friday, January 10, 2014 2:46 PM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

FYI - this is free right now if you have a Kindle and Amazon Prime

it's kind of fascinating, EZ is totally right, like his memory is very good and it's definitely shedding a lot of light of how the band fell together and the early days (just started) but he's WEIRDLY removed from it, like if this were written by just some rock journo (removing the first person) it would seem right, like this happened and this happened and this happened

he barely really touches on Syd or anyone else as a person -- the only thing is he has more than a few bitchy asides about Rick Wright being a cheapskate haha. Make a few comments about Roger's temper but yeah very odd tone, like he wasn't that connected to what's going on.

One thing that is very funny is that the era's premier psychedelic band were extremely extremely square upper middle class school boys.

but I mean...it rules, that goes without saying

definitely a good read just to learn a whole lot of detail about the saga

I didn't know Joe Boyd was involved in the early days and that their management company was also behind T-Rex, etc

Joe Boyd’s book white bicycles is a fun read

^^ yeah, enthusiastic co-sign there

and the accompanying Robyn Hitchcock concert/reading.

you lock the door
throw away the key

true story: joe boyd and trey anastasio are from the same hometown