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":
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:
The Israeli parliament
[the Knesset] has passed a controversial law that will punish any Israeli individual
or organisation boycotting West Bank settlements.
Rights groups say the legislation stifles freedom of speech and compromises Israeli democracy.
After failed attempts to delay debate, it was voted through 47-36.
It follows several Israeli calls to boycott institutions or
individuals linked to Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
It's hard to believe that any country calling itself free and democratic would ever pass such a law, but then, this is Israel we're talking about, a country ruled by Likudnik thugs and other right-wing illiberals who have little to no interest in genuine freedom or democracy.
And I say that as a friend of Israel, as one who is saddened whenever Israel turns to the right, as one who wishes that Israel could just make peace not just with its neighbours but with itself, for good.
This law is simply ridiculous. Worse, its passage shows just how far Israel is currently willing to go to stifle dissent, how detestably defensive it has become, how it lashes out at its critics with venom. How, when it does such a thing, can we say that it has justice on its side?
**********
Roger Waters -- as some of you know, someone I love and admire a great deal -- has posted a clip on Facebook opposing the law. I'm with him all the way. Here it is:
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.
Good evening, everyone. After heading down to Buffalo for the Roger Waters concert on Friday, I decided to take a couple of days off from blogging over the long Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada.
Yes, it's Thanksgiving here, in case you weren't aware.
Anyway, I'll get back to blogging later today, Monday, on my day off.
In the meantime, here are some photos I took at the concert. I'll have a lot and I'll post more later. These are from the first half of the show, with the fifth one taken at intermission.
We had floor seats, 13th row. I've been a Pink Floyd fan for a long, long time, and I can't really explain how amazing it's been to see The Wall performed live after all these years. Twice -- opening night in Toronto and again in Buffalo. Of course, I wish it were with Gilmour and Mason (Wright, alas, died a couple of years ago), but it's still an awe-inspiring and deeply moving show. Truly and utterly incredible.
It's been a crazy busy last few days -- and, for me, simply amazing. First Pittsburgh over the weekend for the Steelers game, then a fantastic restaurant (Origin, a funky tapas place owned by a truly great chef, Claudio Aprile, the genius behind Colborne Lane, the best restaurant in Toronto) for dinner Tuesday evening, then...
Roger Waters -- The Wall!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just got home. It was AWESOME. I suppose I expected nothing less, but it seemed to surpass expectations nonetheless. It was deeply moving at times, with its anti-war message, and also mind-bogglingly transcendent -- as it always is with "Comfortably Numb." My wife and I took our 10-year-old daughter. She was skeptical going in, but she came away, I think, transformed. Yes, it was that good. (And the first show of the world tour -- we'll be going to see him again in Buffalo next month.)
And now I must get to bed. I'll get back to blogging later today.
Roger Waters, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd, turned 66 yesterday. I'd actually forgotten it was his birthday, but, curiously enough, I spent much of the evening listening to Pink Floyd and his solo work, as well as clips on YouTube.
Now, I'm not one to find connections or meanings where there aren't any -- surely this was a coincidence, right? -- but I couldn't help but wonder. Granted, I listen to Waters and Floyd a lot, but not so much recently. So why yesterday?
Anyway, readers of this blog -- not to mention friends and family -- know how much I love all things Pink Floyd, and how Waters is one of my musical heroes. So, to commemorate his birthday, here are two clips. The first is a wonderful montage of Waters and Floyd set to "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse" that I found at YouTube yesterday. It includes video from Floyd's Live at Pompeii, Waters's concert video from his In the Flesh tour, and Floyd's live Pulse video from the Division Bell tour. The second is Waters's "Each Small Candle," the last song on the In the Flesh album and video, and one of his finest solo efforts.
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