Yeah, I think this is the right answer Meddle is my favorite Floyd record, by far. It starts with the virtual instrumental, “One of These Days”, which still destroys. Then it goes into a mellow set that includes my favorite slow-tempo song from them, “Fearless”. There’s nothing bad to be said about the other songs in this part of the album, other than it’s evident that they were finding where they wanted to go. Ok, I can’t really explain “San Tropez” otherwise. But it ends with “Echoes”, which is pretty monumental.
If you’ve never heard Piper at the Gates of Dawn, you must. I don’t really like some of Syd’s songs. If I never hear “Arnold Layne” or “See Emily Play” again, I’ll be just fine. But “Bike” is wondrous. The instrumental “Interstellar Overdrive” and the almost instrumental “Astronomy Domine” are fantastic and totally worth the price of intermission. If you never hear The Red Crayola’s The Parable of Arable Land*, this is probably as close as you’ll come to it.
I’d avoid The Wall unless you have heard everything else except The Final Cut that includes Waters. I’ve never been a gigantic fan of either of them. The former has moments of brilliance, but it’s just too earnest and transparent for me to enjoy the way that I enjoy a lot of the other stuff. But then again, maybe you’ll love it. My taste is no indication of popular, or necessarily good, but I likes me some Floyd.
I’d also avoid anything after the split with Roger (after The Final Cut). It’s not nearly the same band at that point, IMHO.
*Seriously, if you like Piper and don’t know this record, give it a spin. It predates it by a couple of months and is wow, somehow way more more unhinged. Their label mates, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators are cool, but don’t approach this record. Sgt. Pepper’s was released a month earlier, but it sounds like a Dean Martin record in comparison.
That said, I would be pretty surprised if you’d never heard “Another Brick In The Wall (part 2)”. It was pretty ubiquitous back in the day.
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Two things, the first being something that is wrong and the second being my realization of it being wrong.
I know Another Brick in the Wall, of course. I read your comment and thought “Duh, I said I heard it…because I’ve heard all of Dark Side of the Moon, remember?”
I have just learned now, however, that Another Brick in the Wall is NOT actually ON Dark Side of the Moon. Wow. I always thought it was. I always seemed to remember hearing Another Brick in the Wall on DSOTM. I guess I’ve been remembering wrong all this time.
But yes, I’ve already known about Another Brick in the Wall long ago. Way long ago. And I thought it would be clear to everyone who read the OP that I had heard it since I had included the fact “I have heard all of DSOTM”.
Only as I’ve said, I now see it’s not even on that album. So yeah, I guess my figuring that people would go “Oh, of course he’s heard Another Brick in the Wall, because he’s heard Dark Side of the Moon” was all for naught. :o
So, in short, I should restate my OP as "I’ve heard all of DSOTM…and also “Another Brick in the Wall” (which I always thought was on DSOTM) and “Hey You” (which I always thought was called “The Wall”).
As you can see, I know almost virtually nothing about Pink Floyd.
No love for “Obscured by Clouds”? It has some cracking and accessible stuff on there. “Wot’s uh, the deal?”, “Free four” and the utterly sublime “stay”. the latter with another simple but eloquently perfect Gilmour solo, (a nice bit of wah-wah this time.)
Yeah, I would say that Comfortably Numb is a great song all around, in terms of capturing that internal conflict and alienation that Pink Floyd became known for, and for that soaring, majestic guitar solo. The contrast between the two is what makes that song so powerful.
That solo is held up in guitar circles as one of the greats - Gilmour’s most well-known and well regarded. (I think he played it on a '56 Les Paul Goldtop, with P-90’s, not his famous put-together black Strat with white pickups).
The dude has tone for days. He’s playing the simplest, most melodic stuff - very Santana in how straightforward the technical aspects of his playing are, but man, the phrasing and melody are so, so compelling.
As a rule, all of Pink Floyd’s songs are surprisingly simple. The chords and melodies are straightforward - they hold up to solo acoustic versions excellently, which is a sign of a great song.
No arguments on the recommendations - if you like PF from Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Meddle, The Wall - you’ll know if they are for you, certainly.
Just wondering, did you really mean “San Tropez” or were you thinking of “Seamus”? Because that’s the real WTF track on Meddle for me. I guess someone in the band really likes dogs.
It’s far far easier to list the ones you should skip past during your first venture into listening to Pink Floyd.
More or less chronologically,
Piper at the Gates of Dawn — fantastically excellent
Saucerful of Secrets —excellent
More — skip it; although it has a few nice tracks it’s a soundtrack to a movie
Ummagumma — very good to excellent
Atom Heart Mother — excellent
Meddle — very good to excellent
Obscured by Clouds — very good
Dark Side of the Moon —fantastically excellent
Wish You Were Here — excellent
Animals —excellent
The Wall —very good to excellent
The Final Cut — skip it; just not much going on there
A Momentary Lack of Reason — very good
Delicate Sound of Thunder — very good to excellent
The Division Bell — good
beyond that, no opinion
I love Wish You Were Here, the album and the song. I think Have a Cigar is also on that one which is excellent. I like Animals a lot, too. I find I enjoy Pink Floyd more when I’m slightly inebriated .
Nope, I wrote what I meant. A dog singing in a blues song seems to fit perfectly in the album for me. A kind of stiff, music hall-ish song about San Tropez? Not so much.
I came in to urge IT to give Echoes a full and free listen, preferably in some quiet place (in the woods say or in bed late at night), and just let it wash all over you, WITHOUT listening to side one first. [Tho the 1st 3 cuts there are all good understand, but you need to be in a contemplative mood to fully appreciate Echoes]
I have the following Pink Floyd albums, though I haven’t listened to them in a couple of decades:
Ummagumma
Atom Heart Mother
Dark Side Of The Moon
Wish You Were Here
Animals
The Wall
DSotM is the first one I bought, on a cassette tape in the early-'80s. (It was stolen out of my car with my other tapes when I stopped at a gas station for a snack, and I now have it on vinyl and DVD.) I’m going to say that DSotM is the best album in my collection, followed closely by The Wall. The other albums are also good. Nowadays I tend to listen to more Third Wave Ska.
Best song titles are on Ummagumma: Careful With That Axe, Eugene (in the early- to mid-'80s I worked with a guy names Eugene, and I’d often tell him to be careful with his axe), and Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.
I don’t care for either one (although Seamus is bloody awful unpleasant to have to hear, whereas San Tropez is at least ignorable). Side One is off to a great start with “One of These Days” but for a long time, back in the cassette tape days, I used to FFwd past the rest of side one and just hop to Echoes. “A Pillow of Winds” and “Fearless” are both nice enough pieces (although I always found the footballers singing badly from the bleachers to be offputting at the end of Fearless), but coming in after the hard-driving “One of These Days”, they just sound anemic. Then it gets worse with San Tropez followed by that damn dog.
The main problem with Obscured By Clouds — which has some really nice pounding rockers and some good mellow stuff too — is the last two and a half minutes of “Absolutely Curtains”, which is out there in WTFland somewhere to the north-north-WTF of “Seamus” and just jesus-fucking-christwards from “Several Species of Small Mammals in a Cave Grooving with a Pict”.
.