![]() The thing is, it's not that I see the band's pre- DSOTM period, which contains its lesser known albums, as better overall then the albums made in the band's commercial peak ('73-'79). I agree with the love for Pink Floyd, but I most certainly do not always agree with the reasons that most people and establishments give for loving them. Given that the guide makes it a point to denounce the remainder of the band's catalogue as experimental garbage, it confuses me how a set of four albums can somehow merit this much praise. A look at the Rolling Stone Rock and Roll Album Guide shows that DSOTM and WYWH get 5 stars, Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Wall get 4 a piece, and all the rest 2 or 3. Given the fact that the band has its own wing in the R&R Hall of Fame (run by Rolling Stone), you'd think that would mean that RS loves their catalogue, throwing out stars to them in a way reserved only for the Beatles and the Stones. This doesn't affect me directly, of course, since I never listen to the radio anymore, but when a "big Pink Floyd fan" says they aren't even familiar with Animals, I always have to take a second to bite my tongue.Īlong those lines, Rolling Stone is just as culpable in the distortion of the band's history as presented to the general public. ![]() As great as "Time," and "Money," and "Comfortably Numb," and "Wish You Were Here," and "Run Like Hell" might be, it doesn't seem right for them to completely overshadow "Astronomy Domine," or "Cymbaline," or "One of These Days," or far too many others. It's not that the songs that get played most often are bad (though some of the ones off The Wall are a mite overrated), but rather that it just doesn't seem like an unreasonable request for other great songs from the band's lesser known albums to get play once in a while. Furthermore, it would happen more often than not that said typical classic rock fan would identify themselves as a "big Pink Floyd fan." Years and years after first getting seriously into the band, the distortion of the band's history by the classic rock radio community as a whole continues to greatly bother me. If one were to ask a typical classic rock fan off of the street to name albums that Pink Floyd had done, 95 times out of 100 the answers would be restricted to Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall and Wish You Were Here. Yet despite their massive success and following, and despite an ever-growing number of people who have a strong familiarity and love for the band's whole history, the % of music fans who really know the group is pretty small. Critics, by and large, absolutely love them: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame not only elected them in 1994, but also has an entire wing devoted to the band's history. ![]() ![]() Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall are both easily in the top 5 of albums whose tracks are played most on the radio, and Wish You Were Here is probably somewhere up there too. On the one hand, anybody who has ever listened to a classic rock station has had some level of exposure to them. History has done a really strange job of treating the band's legacy, though. This is a band that makes no freaking sense, and I love them for it. Their greatest commercial successes were with a concept album that shoved classic rock and smooth jazz styles into a prog rock format, a tribute album to their original frontman (whose main feature is a 25-minute synth-based art-rock suite, split in two), and a double-length rock opera released after the punk revolution. They were one of the most technophilian bands I've ever heard in my life, relying on sound effects like mad and featuring all kinds of processed keyboard and guitar noises, yet it is extremely rare to find somebody nowadays who considers a classic Pink Floyd album "artificial" sounding. ![]() They were a band that regularly engaged in lengthy, "self-indulgent" instrumental noodling, while almost never displaying raw chops on the level of the instrumentalists of the more popular prog rock bands of the day. They were a rock band that did great songs despite melodies that were usually very good but not stellar (and I stand by that), and despite having very few "classic" riffs. They were one of the best representatives of the underground psychedelic London scene of 1967, yet unlike so many other good bands that originated in that era, they were able to successfully evolve into something better and WAY more popular, even after losing their frontman and main creative force after one album. Of the great enigmas in the culture of classic rock. Is This The Life We Really Want? (Roger Waters).The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking (Roger Waters).Pink Floyd Completely confused by the rating system? Go here for an explanation. ![]()
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