My predictions:
Wish You Were Here: alright
Obscured by Clouds: hated
A Momentary Lapse of Reason: really liked
The Final Cut: alright
The Division Bell: really liked
Ummagumma: hated
More: hated
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn: sort of disliked / alright
A Saucerful of Secrets: sort of disliked
The Endless River : hated
I predict that he will like the Final Cut, and go on to listen to solo Roger Waters. Maybe.
Coming late to this thread, but I’m starting to follow it, because Idle Thought’s process is very much like how I was introduced to Pink Floyd many years ago. Back then a friend made me listen to Animal’s Sheep. I was only faintly familiar with PF and thought I didn’t like it too much because I thought them weird. However, Sheep blew my mind. I was baffled by how the vocals bled into the guitar music. I listed to the rest of the album and loved every second of it.
After that I tried other albums, and almost uniformly hated them. It took me a few years before I tried them again, and slowly started to appreciate them. These days I absolutely love almost all of them. Especially the ones with the grandiose soundscapes (or the ones that paint colors in your mind, as IT calls them). My suggestion: after listening to them, forget them for a few months and revisit them. I’m sure they’ll start growing on you (especially since you like Seamus, which is just… odd). My PF albumns somewhat in order of preference, although that changes on my mood:
Animals
Meddle
Wish You Were Here
Dark Side of the Moon
Atom Heart Mother (esp. Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast)
The Wall
Saucer Full of Secrets
Momentary Lapse of Reason
Saucer Full of Secrets
Division Bell
Obscured By Clouds
Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Final Cut
This has been a super interesting thread. I’m in my mid thirties and I’m certainly aware of Pink Floyd, but never really dove in (meaning I don’t personally own any of their albums). This thread has made me really want to dig in, though mostly for the reasons Idle Thoughts finds unappealing. Long instrumental intros/builds with limited lyrics? When in the mood for it, that’s the good stuff.
Useless piece of information: the dog in Seamus was borrowed from Steve Marriott (of Small Faces/Humble Pie fame). Not many people know that!
One thing that this thread has reminded me of is that we all have different rules when it comes to listening to music. To be honest though, I haven’t come across Idle Thoughts’ ‘instrumental - bad/instrumental sandwiched between two singing bits - good’ thing before. Do the singing bits affect the instrumental bit so strongly?
As others have intimated, I doubt that there will be many whole Floyd albums that meet with his approval. One of the beauties of being able to assemble playlists nowadays is that it is easy to put together an ‘album’ of all your favourite bits. On that basis, I think that he could compile a fairly lengthy playlist that would satisfy.
Piper and Saucerful have several short catchy songs. But, whatever you do, for your own sanity, avoid Interstellar Overdrive and the title track from A Saucerful of Secrets.
More has some very short, silly, movie fillers, but Cymbaline and Green is the Colour are beautiful.
Umma Gumma (Cambridge slang for having sex) is a double lp. The first is full of lengthy, mainly instrumental tracks from their psychedelic era - so probably not your cup of tea. The second comprises of individual tracks from each member - with varying degrees of success. Lots of noises.
Their other albums have been precis’d by others. From what you say, I guess that the Division Bell should be quite satisfying. The sound effects are kept to a minimum and there are only two instrumentals.
Is there anything that ISN’T slang for sex? 
I can see that every PF album is actually slang for sex:
A Saucerful of Secrets - a woman’s heart may be a deep ocean of secrets, but her girly bits are a saucerful.
Obscured by Clouds - refers to sex during menstruation
More - obviously more of youknowwhat
Dark Side of the Moon - the perils of anal
Wish You Were Here - about masturbation
Animals - rough sex, maybe BDSM
The Final Cut - you must be circumcised
Atom Heart Mother - refers to an obscure rural British term for beastiality
One thing about getting into Pink Floyd (or any music from “the past”, really) is new listeners weren’t there when it all happened. We can recommend songs left and right but there’s something about experiencing the music when it was brand new and nothing like it had ever come before. For those of us that have been on the Pink Floyd “ride” since the early days, the band–the music, the tours, the stories are all kind of embedded in our DNA now.
One might joke about Pink Floyd or classic rock fans being too stoned at the time to really remember anything, but I sure remember hearing “Several Species…” for the first time late at night on KSAN and wondering “what the hell is that…I need to get that album!” In the intervening years PF has put out music that I love and some that I can do without. A new listener’s experience will certainly be different from mine, but hopefully they’ll come away with an appreciation of at least some of Floyd’s work and their place in rock history.
For listening order, Idle Thoughts should really put Ummagumma last. It is either live versions of songs that he should listen first to the studio versions, or it’s a bunch of meandering mostly-instrumental experiments. At the time it was released, it was meant as a nod to their past work and a springboard for the future. Floyd never really went in that direction though and it quickly turned into a discardable curiosity.
braces for the inevitable backlash of the Ummagumma fans
blondebear: This is very true. I first came across them in London in early 1967 and became a huge fan. Everything they have done is, for me, coloured by the times surrounding their releases and performances.
Looking forward to his reaction to The Pros & Cons of Hitchhiking 
This thread suddenly made me remember that I had a HUGE crush on Rachel Fury back in the day (the backup singer on Delicate Sound of Thunder with the short dark hair and gap in her front teeth).
My real intro to PF was DSotM, and it blew me away on first listening. I’d heard Another Brick in the Wall on the radio years before, kind of liked it, and then of course I’d heard some of the single tracks from DSotM (Money is the only one the readily springs to mind, and, as a standalone, is underwhelming, IMO) and WYWH.
No, it was DSotM that I listened to beginning-to-end and said, “WTF?! Where has this been all my life?” I was 15. From there, it was on to The Wall, and then Wish You Were Here, and Animals. It’s taken me a while to warm to * Animals*, but I eventually did, and it sees regular play in my music rotation.
The Final Cut was just around the corner but not out yet; when I got around to it, I thought it was fine, but more like an afterthought of The Wall. Looking back, I think that was unfair; considering the Falklands Conflict and Waters’ issues with war and such, it was an understandable effort that I was too young and callow to understand. I get it now. Still, Two Suns in the Sunset resonated powerfully with me, what with The Day After and Threads haunting my dreams.
So then we backtracked to some pre-DSotM stuff, and again, I was, “WTF?! Is this even the same band?! Someone get me some acid so I can even begin to understand this stuff!”
A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell…don’t get me wrong, I love 'em to death, play 'em lots, but there’s something lacking in them. They’re fine (excellent!) Gilmour vehicles, but they’re just not quite PF.
Which is kind of odd, because Delicate Sound of Thunder is, to me PF. Maybe it’s the live sound.
But the pre-DSotM stuff still doesn’t appeal to me.
If he thought The Wall was like one long song, he is likely to think that even moreso of Pros and Cons, and miss out on its most classic lyric
I awoke in a fever
The bedclothes were all soaked in sweat
She said “You’ve been having a nightmare
And it’s not over yet”
(I got my hands on the album before the cover was baudlerized)
IdleThoughts, based solely on your comments about “songs bleeding into one another” and your dislike for that format (which many Floydians love), I am unsurprised as to your affection for Animals.
Many Floyd fans will disagree, but it is by far their most pure “rock” album that they have ever made, which is a deviation from the norm for them. I’m pleased you like it, it’s a very underrated album…mostly because it isn’t a lengthy, instrumental-laden, sound-effects driven album like most of the rest of them.
I was disappointed that you didn’t care for “Time” due to it’s indefatigable message, but hey…each to their own.
You mentioned* The Final Cut* or* Meddle*…based on your responses I strongly urge you to hit up Wish You Were Here instead. Way more “rock” structured songs, etc. I think you will like it at least as well as Animals.
Life is funny…most Floyd fans disregard Animals altogether, but here you are loving it. Good on you!
You have to remember (or realize) that the Floyd was first and foremost a spacey jam band from the beginning. The fact that they held true to their origins to a degree and still made some heavy hitting “actual songs” is a testament to their strength and longevity, IMO.
By the way, when you listen to Wish You Were Here, I urge you to be patient for the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” to develop. It takes some patience, but it’s their magnum opus as far as I’m concerned, and defines the band. It’s about the sadness/admiration they had for their former singer Syd Barrett, whom went nuts from drugs, ironically enough.
I think a large part of appreciating Floyd’s music also comes from enjoying or recognizing guitarists David Gilmour’s magic. If you don’t like it, it’ll be hard to like the band.
Perhaps you’d like them more if you saw them live like this: Pink Floyd - PULSE 1994 - YouTube
Also, the light show from this concert is just NUTS. So much money in the production, and it all works perfectly with the music. Check it out!
For your amusement, here’s a photo I took on a vacation to London years ago. My brother had packed a little toy pig hoping that we would get a chance to visit Battersea for just this kind of photo op. We were on the tube one day and as we passed by the power station he grabbed the pig and held it up to the window:Travel pig @ Battersea
Love it 
Ha, same here. Overloaded my poor teenage synapses.
Oh my gosh. Would you mind if I used this as a desktop background?