Steven Wilson: "Home Invasion" and "Regret #9" (live)
By Michael J.W. Stickings From a Yahoo! / Live Nation broadcast, here are Steven Wilson and his awesome band performing "Home Invasion" and "Regret #9," two songs that work as one, both on Wilson's 2015 album Hand. Cannot. Erase. (to me, the Dark Side of the Moon of our time, and, like Pink Floyd's masterpiece, one of the greatest albums ever made -- perhaps the pinnacle of Wilson's career so far, including his time with Porcupine Tree), at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on June 13, 2015. I saw Steven Wilson in Toronto on that tour, and "Regret #9" was certainly one of the highlights of what was a truly incredible show from start to finish. The back-to-back keyboard and guitar solos by Adam Holzman and Dave Kilminster, respectively, were simply astonishing, as they are here. Enjoy!
By Michael J.W. Stickings Here's a great video from another of Kscope's great acts, The Pineapple Thief, a fantastic band that released the truly fantastic album Magnolia, which includes this song, last year. This isn't the first time I've mentioned them here. For The Pineapple Thief admirably covering Pink Floyd's "Money," see here. For the song "All the Wars" (one of my favorites of 2012) by The Pineapple Thief, from their album of the same name, see here. For the song "Frozen North" (one of my favorites of 2013) by The Pineapple Thief's Bruce Soord and Katatonia's Jonas Renkse, see here. Enjoy!
By Michael J.W. Stickings As you may know, I love Pink Floyd. Like, a lot. More than anything else in music. But what I don't like, probably because I love Pink Floyd so much, are covers of Pink Floyd songs. As a general rule, I loathe them. Mostly it's because I'm an originalist, a purist. If I want to hear Pink Floyd, I'll listen to Pink Floyd doing a Pink Floyd song. Period. But it's also because most of the people who do Pink Floyd covers just don't seem to get Pink Floyd. And for someone like me for whom each and every Pink Floyd song is loaded with intense meaning, for someone like me who respects Pink Floyd so much, that's just not acceptable. But there are exceptions. Not many of them, but a few. And one of them is by a band I like a lot, The Pineapple Thief, one of Kscope's awesome roster of post-prog acts along with the likes of Porcupine Tree, Anathema, and Gazpacho, three bands that for me are in that next tier after Pink Floyd (along with The Beatles). And I think this works, this respectful but also distinctive cover of "Money" (admittedly, not one of my favourite Pink Floyd songs, not even close), because the guys in The Pineapple Thief also love and admire Pink Floyd, because, yes, they get Pink Floyd. And I like them even more for that. (If you don't know The Pineapple Thief, you're really missing out. I highly recommend you check them out, including their new album, Magnolia, set to be released on September 15.) So here it is, Pink Floyd's "Money" as covered by The Pineapple Thief, from a Mojo magazine cover version of Dark Side of the Moon. Enjoy!
Today is the day for a new Bruce Springsteen album
By Michael J.W. Stickings High Hopes, Bruce Springsteen's 18th studio album, comes out today. Am I excited? Yup, crazy excited. Why? Five reasons: 1) It features a lot of Tom Morello and that wicked guitar-playing. 2) It's an E Street record that amazingly includes contributions from Clarence "Big Man" Clemons and Danny Federici, both of whom have sadly passed away. 3) It includes new studio versions of two of my favorite Springsteen songs ever, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "American Skin (41 Shots)." 4) The last song on the last Pink Floyd album was called "High Hopes." Springsteen's High Hopes includes a song called "The Wall." Call me crazy for reading into that, but it's allowing me to connect two of my musical loves. 5) It may be mostly a collection of older songs he's been performing live for a long time, but it's a new Springsteen album!!!!! And I love Bruce Springsteen!!!!! So, without further ado:
And while we're at it, because there's pretty much never a bad time to play some Springsteen, like this one, another of his very best:
Images of the Dark Side: The BBC's Darkside teaser
By Michael J.W. Stickings Last month, BBC Radio 2 aired a play (with visuals on the website) -- Darkside -- based on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, in my view the greatest album of all time. It also released a teaser video that you can watch below:
Legendary playwright Sir Tom Stoppard has penned this drama, which features Bill Nighy, Rufus Sewell and Adrian Scarborough, with the lead roles played by Olivier Award-winning Iwan Rheon (Misfits) and stage actress Amaka Okafor (The Garbage King). The visuals have been created by Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromit fame.
I was on vacation and missed the play, but apparently it's going to be aired again this year. I suppose I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also skeptical. Pink Floyd's music speaks to me in ways that touch me deeply, more so than any other music I've ever heard, more so than The Beatles, Porcupine Tree, and Bruce Springsteen. I don't really need, or want, to hear anyone else's "take." However interesting it may be, I would undoubtedly find it lacking, including as a play.
And while there have always been visuals to go along with the music -- I've seen them in concert, which are multimedia events, they've produced videos (of sorts) for many of their songs, and of course The Wall is also a movie (if one not nearly as good as the album) -- the music has always come first, inspiring thoughts and feelings, and images in one's mind, that cannot adequately be captured visually, just as they cannot adequately be captured narratively. But if this amazing teaser is any indication, it's a worthy and respectful play, and maybe something that can be added to the list of essential artworks about, or inspired by, Pink Floyd. Enjoy!
Storm Thorgerson, the brilliant graphic designer who is most famous for creating the iconic covers of almost all Pink Floyd albums, and for providing most of the band's visual artwork generally, has died at the age of 69. Indeed, while he worked (both as a founder of Hipgnosis and as the head of Storm Studios) with many musicians over the years, including Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Wings, Genesis, and Muse, and while he did other work besides, he is, to me as to so many others, inseparable from Pink Floyd, so much so that it's hard to imagine our beloved band without him. I was certainly very sad when I heard the news yesterday. I encourage you to take a look at his great work. You probably know what the covers of Dark Side of the Moon and Animals look like, but there is so much else. Check out his website (click on "Work," then surf by artist -- he did much more than just album covers, and so much of it is incredibly beautiful), and his books (Taken By Storm: The Album Art of Storm Thorgerson, For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis, and Mind Over Matter: The Images of Pink Floyd, among others), and read this November 2011 interview with him at Brain Damage, the leading Pink Floyd fan website. Amazing, amazing stuff. I've been thinking about what images to post. Dark Side's prism? Animals's flying pig? Wish You Were Here's burning man? Atom Heart Mother's cow? A Momentary Lapse of Reason's beds? The Division Bell's giant steel head(s)? Well, here are some others, a few of my favourites, some non-covers taken from his website.
First, the gloriously sexy poster for the release of Pink Floyd's remastered back catalogue (1997).
Second, the poster for the 25th anniversary of Wish You Were Here (2000):
Third, the "Picasso Heads" version of the Division Bell cover (1994):
Margaret Thatcher – "free" market extremist, neo-imperial authoritarian jingoist, and BFF to any number of right-wing military dictators – is dead. I once admired her a great deal, back in the stupid haze of my youth, and, yes, I still think there are a few things to recommend her (e.g., her Euro-skepticism, even if it was overly cynical; her unabashed love of country, particularly early on in her premiership, at a time when the present was hopeless and the future looked bleak; her personal political determination as a woman struggling to succeed in what was (and in many ways remains) a male-dominated world), but for the most part I now consider her to have been, in politics at least, a vile and grotesque figure who did far more harm than good. Oh, is it not polite to speak so ill of the dead? I suggest that you read Glenn Greenwald's piece at The Guardian on "misapplied death etiquete," which includes this:
This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts.
And of course Glenn is right that her many admirers aren't keeping quiet but are rather bombarding us with their hyper-partisan praise. So why can't we push back a bit? Thatcher was a towering political figure. She is not above criticism, including today. This doesn't mean celebrating her death, which is certainly inappropriate -- it's one thing to celebrate the death of a tyrant, quite another to celebrate the death of a democratically elected leader who had been out of politics, and very much out of the public eye, for nearly two decades. What it means is being honest about who she was and what she did -- and that requires acknowledging the bad along with whatever good there was. Yes, there is impassioned disagreement with respect to how much good and bad, of course, but the point is that her critics must be as vocal as her admirers. I will leave it at that for now. Suffice it to say that I agree for the most part with Glenn's comments about her record, as well as Charlie Pierce's brief remarks at Equire. Thatcher was a right-wing ideologue. She did things that right-wing ideologues do, or want to do. The world of 1979, particularly in Britain, was ugly in many ways, but the world she left behind when she left Number 10 in 1990, while much nicer for the oligarchs who were her main beneficiaries, was even nastier and even more brutal, in large part because of what she did while in office. Such is her legacy. ********** And here she is – where she always belonged, with her own kind, among the "overgrown infants," "incurable tyrants," and "wasters of life and limb" who bloodied the 20th century, including her pal Ronald Reagan – at "The Fletcher Memorial Home" (from Pink Floyd's very much anti-Thatcher final album with Roger Waters, The Final Cut):
Away from blogging, as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon turns 40
By Michael J.W. Stickings My apologies for being away from the blog the past week or so. There have been a number of factors, including work, family, computer problems, and a fantasy baseball draft to prepare for. Thankfully, I have a wonderful #2 (#1?) in Richard, and he's stepped in to keep the blog going, writing and editing and just generally keeping watch over the whole enterprise. I'll be back soon at my usual pace, but for now I would like to mention that Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the U.K. release of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, in my view the greatest album of all time by the greatest band of all time. (It came out on March 1, 1973, in the U.S. and Canada, and on March 24, 1973, in the U.K.) To mark the occasion, the band released a new poster with variations of the iconic prism cover art:
And here's Pink Floyd (without Roger Waters, alas) performing "Time" at London's Earls Court on October 20, 1994, from the Pulse DVD:
Forty years old, and as amazing as ever. There's nothing quite like Dark Side.
By Michael J.W. Stickings I've been negligent in my Pink Floyd fandom recently, so much so that -- as Frank reminded me -- I missed David Gilmour's birthday last Wednesday, March 6. He turned 67. I wish him all the best, and of course hope that he is indeed working on new music. I've had the great pleasure of seeing Roger Waters perform The Wall three times over the past couple of years, and Dark Side a couple of times before that, but it would be great to have David back in the spotlight. It's been a long time -- seven years since On an Island (I saw him on that tour). Happy (belated) Birthday, David! From Live in Gdańsk, here he is, with his awesome band (including the late Richard Wright on keyboards), performing "Castellorizon" and "On an Island":
Pink Floyd turned professional today in 1967, signing with EMI. How will you celebrate this 46th anniversary? — Pink Floyd (@pinkfloyd) February 1, 2013
And the rest, as they say, is history. A long, wonderful, glorious history. (If only the remaining three -- David, Roger, and Nick -- would get back together, if only briefly. Alas. But at least we had Live8.)
Here they are on that day -- Roger, Nick, Syd, and Richard in the pre-David days -- jumping for joy, 46 years ago today:
By Michael J.W. Stickings There's no way I can ever do a year-end "best of" list when it comes to music. I don't listen to enough new music for that, particularly in areas outside my specific tastes, and I don't pay attention to what I suppose we can call "the music scene." I generally know what's popular, what's "hot," but that's about it. Anyway, instead of a "best of" list, here are some reflections on my favorite music from last year, the music that I listened to and loved, the music that remains with me now:
1) Porcupine Tree -- 2012 was the year of Porcupine Tree for me, the year that a band I'd liked for a fairly long time became truly special to me, the year their incredible, magnificant music entered a realm previously occupied by just Pink Floyd and The Beatles. It is difficult for me describe this, to explain just what PT means to me, what their music does to me. If certain music -- a certain singer, a certain band -- touches your soul in a way that stirs your very being, you'll understand. It's one thing to like a band, or any artist, quite another for that band to be a central part of who you are as a human being. I never thought any music but Pink Floyd's would be there for me, even more than The Beatles'. And I was hardly expecting it -- you know, because you reach a certain age when you think you've heard it all before, when you're a bit too jaded to be open to new musical experiences. It's an amazing feeling. I listen to PT and realize that I've fallen in love again. That may sound crazy, but there you are. PT didn't release any new music in 2012, with its members all doing other work, but they did release another live album, and a great one, Octane Twisted. I wrote about it here. I cannot recommend it highly enough. 2) Steven Wilson -- PT's founder, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist will release his third solo album, The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories, on February 25. (And he'll be here in Toronto at the end of April.) 2012 broughta live concert video (with CD), Get All You Deserve, from the Grace for Drowning tour. It's fantastic. In fact, I have it on as I'm writing this. Read more »
This day in music - Sept. 12, 1975: Pink Floyd releases Wish You Were Here
By Michael J.W. Stickings That was 37 years ago. And it's still one of the greatest albums ever made. Perhaps it lacks the existential universality of Dark Side of the Moon and the sheer grandiosity of The Wall, but with the spirit of Syd Barrett hovering over its themes of loss and absence (Syd not there, the band not what it was, the music industry dehumanizing the music), it's an awesome achievement nonetheless. Here's David Gilmour performing the title track (from the David Gilmour in Concert DVD):
If you know me at all, you know how much Pink Floyd means to me, and also how much I revere Syd -- so much so, in fact, that two of my children are named after him (or his music) in some way.
Without further ado, three clips:
1) Audio only of my favourite Syd solo song, "Octopus" (produced by Syd and the man who replaced him in Pink Floyd, David Gilmour), off Syd's first solo album, The Madcap Laughs (1970).
2) David Gilmour performing Syd's "Dominoes" at London's Royal Festival Hall in June 2001.
Gilmour has included some of Syd's solo work in his concert performances. This show, for example, which is available on DVD as David Gilmour in Concert, includes "Terrapin" as well as "Dominoes." Remember that Night, filmed live at London's Royal Albert Hall in May 2006, includes "Dominoes" and "Dark Globe" on its bonus features disc -- he performed both songs on his 2006 tour. And he has frequently performed Syd-era Floyd songs like "Arnold Layne" and "Astronomy Domine."
3) Pink Floyd, with Syd Barrett on lead guitar (you can see him well starting at the 4:14 mark), performing "Interstellar Overdrive," taken from filmmaker Peter Whitehead's London 1966/1967 (CD/DVD reissued in 2005, featuring the full-length version of "Interstellar Overdrive" (of which this clip features just the first half) and "Nick's Boogie"). A shorter version of "Overdrive" appeared on Floyd's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Between Meddle (1971) and Dark Side of the Moon (1973), back when Pink Floyd was starting to sound more and more like, well, Pink Floyd -- at least the Pink Floyd that most people came to know, departing from the psychedelia of the Syd Barrett years and turning towards the epic and the existential -- the band wrote the soundtrack to a Barbet Schroeder film called La Vallée, turning the soundtrack into an album called Obscured by Clouds. Pink Floyd had previously written the soundtrack for another Schroeder film, More, released in 1969, with the album coming out that same year.
Both More and La Vallée are very much products of their counter-cultural time. In brief, More is about a young man who follows a young woman to Ibiza and ends up hooked on heroin, while La Vallée is about the wife of a French government official who travels to New Guinea, meets an isolated native tribe, and, while searching for a valley said to be a paradise (but "obscured by clouds" on maps), comes to question her conventional, Western notion of civilization. They're decent films, particularly the latter, but, needless to say, the soundtracks are much, much better and much, much more memorable.
Obscured by Clouds isn't widely known even by those who are generally familiar with Pink Floyd, and is sometimes excluded, if not intentionally, from the whole Pink Floyd story: David Gilmour took over from Syd Barrett, the band moved away from its psychedelic roots, Meddle was the transition album, and then there was Dark Side, and the rest was history. To be fair, it's hard to fit Obscured by Clouds in. Not only was it a soundtrack but it was recorded quickly, and, on the whole, its songs, while shorter and in a way more commercial than much that would come later, are far less memorable than the great classics of the band's run from Dark Side to The Wall (1979). In this way, it suffers just as other "lesser" Pink Floyd albums do, albums like The Final Cut (1983), another really good album lingering in the shadows of the giants.
And yet, looking back, and listening to it again carefully, as I've been doing this weekend (I've listened to it hundreds of times but not for some time), it's striking just how good Obscured by Clouds still is. Yes, it's also a product of its time, more so than most other Pink Floyd albums, with its combination of hazy instrumentals, mind-bending psychedelia, pastoral folk tunes, and blaring rock riffs, but both musically and even more so lyrically and thematically it clearly indicates the direction in which the band was headed, and in that sense it accompanies Meddle, which shares some of its sound, as a transitional album leading into Dark Side. Just consider the lyrics (written by Roger Waters) for perhaps the album's best song, "Free Four":
One two three four
The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime
You shuffle in gloom of the sick room
And talk to yourself as you die
Life is a short warm moment
And death is a long cold rest
You get your chance to try
In the twinkling of an eye
Eighty years with luck or even less
So all aboard for the American tour
And maybe you'll make it to the top
But mind how you go
And I can tell you 'cause I know
You may find it hard to get off
But you are the angel of death
And I am the dead man's son
And he was buried like a mole in a fox-hole
And everyone is still on the run
And who is the master of foxhounds
And who says the hunt has begun
And who calls the tune in the courtroom
And who beats the funeral drum
The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime
You shuffle in gloom in the sick room
And talk to yourself till you die
This is prelude to all that came later: not just the themes of life and death, sickness and existential gloom, but the specific references to an American tour (and stardom) and to Roger Waters's father (who died in World War II), both of which come up later in The Wall (with Pink, in a hotel room in L.A., thinking back over his life, including the loss of his father). It's quite remarkable, actually, that there's so much here -- here and throughout the rest of the album.
With the success of Dark Side and the band moving off in a different direction, particularly towards epic stadium rock, nothing on Obscured by Clouds got much play in later years. The band included the instrumental title track and "When You're In," as well as "Childhood's End," in some live performances in 1972 and 1973, but that was about it until Gilmour, amazingly, included "Wot's... Uh the Deal" on his 2006 solo tour (with Richard Wright and a wonderful backing band of familiar names to Pink Floyd fans). (There were only ten shows in North America and I was fortunate to be at one of the two shows in Toronto, but this song wasn't on the playlist that night.)
Without further ado, here are Gilmour, Wright, et al. performing "Wot's... Uh the Deal" at London's Royal Albert Hall in May 2006 -- from the video Remember that Night. Enjoy:
Sometimes you come across these little bits of information on the web, and you really have to make sure it's not an Onion-type send up. But, no, this appears to be real.
In December of 1987, a Kentucky teacher lost her appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court over her sacking after showing Pink Floyd's film The Wall to her class. The court decided that the film was not suitable for minors with its bad language and sexual content.
I found a very interesting discussion of the case at a website called The First Amendment Center. This concerned the Sixth Circuit ruling on the case, but the same legal principles no doubt applied for the Supreme Court.
The comment below was in response to a question asking if a teacher could be punished for teaching subjects school officials or parents deem unsuitable:
Probably. Teachers must remember that most courts consistently rule that teachers do not have a First Amendment right to trump the curriculum mandated by the school board. Furthermore, some courts take a narrow view of what constitutes "communicative conduct" that implicates the First Amendment.
For example, the Sixth Circuit ruled that school officials did not violate the First Amendment rights of a teacher when they fired her for showing the R-rated movie Pink Floyd -- The Wall in her classroom. Even though the Supreme Court has determined since the 1950s that movies are a form of expression protected by the First Amendment, the Sixth Circuit determined that the teacher's conduct in showing the R-rated movie was not "expressive or communicative, under the circumstances presented."
And besides all that, we wouldn't want students exposed to themes like alienation, social isolation, drug use, marital infidelity, and violence. Best to keep shit like that out of the classroom and leave it on the street where it belongs. Better they should muddle their way through the really big questions in life without any help. They don't need no education like that.
This week has seen the release of new remastered versions of Pink Floyd's 14 studio albums (separately as well as in the "Discovery" box set), as well as a six-disc "Immersion" box set of Dark Side of the Moon, the band's greatest (in my view) album. There's also a smaller "Experience" version of Dark Side. In addition to the regular studio album, both feature a live performance of the album from 1974 (Wembley). Needless to say, the "Immersion" set includes a great deal more, including different mixes and unreleased early versions of some of the songs. Similar versions of Wish You Were Here will be released in November. The Wall is set for release in February.
I'll probably end up buying the "Discovery" set, if only because I need to own every Pink Floyd release (or re-release). What can I say, I collect Pink Floyd stuff. I have everything on CD, of course, but I also have a fairly large collection of books, magazines, (original) vinyl, tapes, and posters, as well as various items like candles, incense, drinking glasses, etc. No, I'm not the hardest of hardcore fans, but I'm up there for sure. But what's really exciting about these "Immersion" sets, all of which include collectibles along with the discs and books, is all the previously unreleased material that at long last is being made available.
Pink Floyd is notoriously careful, probably in a good way, when it comes to protecting its music -- the official releases are the official releases, Dark Side is Dark Side, etc. But this means that we haven't been able to get hold of early and alternate versions (as, for example, are in the wonderful Beatles Anthology), nor old live performances, except through bootlegs (which are generally of bad quality and hardly complete). The "Immersion" sets don't include nearly enough, in my view, to satisfy fans like me, but they're a great start. And, after such a long wait, I'll take whatever I can get.
I hardly need to recommend Pink Floyd to you... or maybe I do. Whether you don't know much about them at all or haven't listened to them in a long time, now is a good time to get to know them. Go listen to Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall, then other albums like Meddle, Animals, The Final Cut, and The Division Bell. Or go back to the beginning, to the psychedelia of "Arnold Layne," "See Emily Play," and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Or go find Pulse, the live concert album (and DVD) of their great Division Bell tour (which I saw in Boston). And, if you can, go see Roger Waters, the band's bassist and main songwriter, perform The Wall. I've seen it twice and hope that he comes back to North America for more. It's incredible.
(And check out their YouTube page, with all sorts of great clips.)
This hardly needs an introduction. Pink Floyd fans everywhere know just how significant this was. I am still in awe.
Last year, David Gilmour told Roger Waters that he would join him to perform "Comfortably Numb" on Waters's tour of The Wall. It was a return favour for Waters performing with Gilmour at a Hoping Foundation charity event. It was just a matter of when and where, but London seemed to make sense, and last Thursday, at London's O2 Arena, there was Gilmour atop the wall, and for a brief time, I'm sure, the world seemed perfect.
I heard about it on Twitter and quickly went to YouTube. A clip was up, but it wasn't the whole song. The next day, I went to Brain Damage, my favourite Floyd site, and found what I was looking for, a clip of the whole song along with a second of "Outside the Wall," the show's final song, performed after the wall comes crashing down, the most intimate part of the show. Gilmour was there again, and so was Nick Mason, Floyd's drummer.
These are the three remaining members of Pink Floyd. (Rick Wright, the keyboardist, died in 2008 -- see here and here. Syd Barrett, one of the band's founding members, died in 2006 -- see here.) I cannot really explain what it means to me, and of course to so many others, to see the three of them together again, if only for a short time, if only for a couple of songs. Live8 was incredible, and this... this was what so many of us had dreamed about for so long. Yes, of course, I'd love it if they would reunite for a tour, but that might be hoping for too much. These one-offs seem more likely, and they are amazing.
Pink Floyd has been my music since I was a teenager. I have fairly eclectic tastes and I like a lot of music, a lot of different singers and musicians. I have thousands and thousands and thousands of songs on my iPod. But Floyd has always been much different for me. I love them and their music in a way that goes well beyond anything else. It is deeply personal for me, an indescribable connection that seems to go to my very core.
I saw Gilmour, Wright, and Mason as Pink Floyd at Foxboro Stadium in Massachusetts in 1994. I saw Gilmour here in Toronto several years ago. I saw two of Waters's Dark Side shows, and, last year, two Wall shows, in Toronto and also in Buffalo. There were times at both Wall shows when I felt like I would just break into tears, so intense were my feelings. I could hardly believe it was real, that I was really there, and the sheer enormity of it all really got to me. This music, my music, the music that had been with me for so long, for so much of my life, the soundtrack of my life, that was what was being performed, and it overwhelmed me.
And that was without Gilmour. I can hardly imagine how I would have felt had I been there on Thursday in London. All I can say is that for all that Pink Floyd has meant to me, and for all that Pink Floyd has gone through over the years, it is so wonderful that at long last there is peace, that Gilmour and Waters can perform together, and with Mason as well, briefly reunited, reconciled, making us all so extremely happy.
They may not be all that well-known here in North America, relatively speaking, despite some recent Grammy nominations for "Best Surround Sound Album" (a technical category), but they're perhaps the most accomplished prog rock band of the past 20 years, a band that still dares to make concept albums -- "progressive," yes, but they defy easy categorization.
A few years ago, I blogged about their outstanding ninth album, Fear of a Blank Planet, a dark, gloomy, and deeply empathetic examination of technology, media, and youth.
They released their tenth, The Incident, in 2009. As singer, guitarist, songwriter Steven Wilson explained, "[e]ach song is written in the first person and tries to humanize the detached media reportage" of various "destructive" and "traumatic" incidents.
One of the stand-out songs on the album is "Time Flies." Porcupine Tree is often compared to Pink Floyd (although, to me, no band will ever be even close to the equal of Pink Floyd, except The Beatles), and understandably so (at least with respect to their earlier stuff). The band generally resists the comparison, but this song is thematically a lot like "Time," the Floyd classic from Dark Side, with guitar a lot like Gilmour's on "Dogs," one of the epic pieces on Animals. It's 11:40 on the album, but it was cut down for release as a single, and for a video.
And here is that video. Enjoy. (And if you don't know Porcupine Tree, do yourself a favour and get on it.)
You can find a lot of clips of Roger Waters' tour of The Wall at YouTube, but most of them are of pretty poor quality. Here's one of the best I've found -- "Mother," from the Sept. 20 show in Chicago (just five days after it got underway here in Toronto, when I saw it opening night).
In addition to how it fits into Pink's personal (and universal) story (the overbearing mother who provides so many of the bricks in Pink's wall), there's another level to what the song is about, a political one, an Orwellian one: "mother" as the state, the state having us under constant surveillance.
Given what's happening to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange (perhaps the essential political theorist/activist of our time), with the "state," including supposedly liberal democratic states like the United States, trying to suppress the truth and maintain its self-legitimizing authoritarian conspiracy, aided by an appallingly pathetic media establishment, a media co-conspiracy that advances the state's lies, it's deeply relevant to our current condition -- indeed, to the human condition generally.
And it's also, within the more personal context of The Wall, a simply incredible song, one of Pink Floyd's best.
Last Monday, I posted a few photos I took at the Roger Waters Wall concert in Buffalo on October 8. I'm still basking in the incredibleness of the show.
A blog on politics, philosophy, science, sports, and the arts -- featuring news, commentary, and analysis by Michael J.W. Stickings and the Reaction team.
