I’s funny to see hammers figuring in this thread, given that they are a major visual and lyrical metaphor in The Wall.
More substantively:
I think Pink Floyd is great and Waters’ contribution to it extremely important.
Waters’ modern political utterances are, to put it as charitably as I can, ill-judged and tin-eared, no matter his intentions.
That he might be prosecuted and even imprisoned for those utterances is grotesque.
But remember, Roger Waters has spent his entire life speaking out against oppression.
Well, I just looked it up on the unimpeachable Urban Dictionary and it seems to mean “authoritarian communist”, like a Stalinist. That definition appears on a number of other sites as well, based on a quick ddg search and preview scan.
I seriously doubt that the widespread definition of “tankie” does not really apply to G Roger Waters.
Tankies are communists who think mass murderers like Stalin and Mao are in the right, and communism failed because their counter revolutionary successors finish the job of putting all the bourgeoisie in camps and also something something cia countelpro.
Some people who get called tankies are more accurately “campists” who essentially always take the side of whoever isn’t the west. Campists are the ones who believe for example that insane right wing religious fanatics like hamas are actually fighting for the oppressed even though the conscious thoughts of the human beings who make up hamas are to oppress anyone who isn’t the right kind of muslim.
I deeply regret that my life led me to kearn about these idiots.
Roger Waters is overrated, a legend in his own mind. Pink Floyd really owes their success to the magnificence of David Gilmour on guitar.
…and before David, there was Syd overdriving the guitar…
What’s the SDMB coming to when nobody has linked to what the word actually means and where it comes from.
The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defence of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.
That’s why their called tankies, they literally supported Soviet tanks suppressing ‘counter-revolution’ in Soviet occupied puppet states. The reason the term is applied to Waters is his overt support for Putin essentially doing exactly the same thing in Ukraine in his bid to recreate the Soviet Union/the Russian Empire. It can be hard to tell the difference between the two sometimes when the tanks rolling into Ukraine were flying the Hammer and Sickle.
Well, the lead is playing over a bass/drum/organ groove that is decidedly funky.
Huh. Going from context, I leaped to the conclusion that it was a term for someone who was “in the tank” for Putinesque authoritarianism.
Admittedly, everything post-The Wall was garbage, but really? Everything before that?
This is like saying “I Want to Hold Your Hand” proves The Beatles were anodyne garbage
And “One of These Days” is amazing.
I would not say that The Final Cut was garbage in the same way that the PF reboot was. Gilmour is a brilliant guitarist, but he writes pap. Waters gave the band its edge, and without him, the other three are mostly just meh – excellent musicians, but not much in the way of fire.
And Rick Wright.
This is the part that confuses me, from my understanding the Tories were already doing this (cracking down on protest) and all labour has done has “gone along” with it mostly. (which in of itself is pretty shocking from them but I view the brits as kind of uptight even though most I know aren’t, thinking politicians and upper crusties). I see this more as labour trying to avoid even dealing with the issue and hoping it would “go away” as the tories had just left…
Not saying they’re not dropping the ball fully by not full reversing though. They should have gone oh yeah our bad , we’re legislating that out right now. But instead just stayed quiet then used it and now have increased it. Not cool… Definitely can’t call them lefties that’s for sure… They’re one stop from the tories now heh.
It could be the “Rush” effect. I despise the band Rush (I’m canadian… a sacrilege) admittedly amazingly talented band. Writing , music the whole bit. Visuals even. However I can’t get over Geddy’s voice. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. Yet I like Billy Talent (actual nails on a chalkboard screeamo) Same goes for Floyd. I’ll admit the talent but its just “not” for me. It genuinely makes me angry to hear it. No idea why. It doesn’t seem logical. Love Zeppelin but my misanthropic music buddy who hates everything I do despises them (its our only difference). Love , absolutely love 80’s schlock of every sort. (my childhood so all the adults were listening to it). So taste I have none… Take that as you will… I found the earlier comparisons of all the 80’s griping “insulting” in a fun way “hey I like asia boston etc etc etc”! OMG… Rick Astley… so glad he made a comeback… but… Im an industrial metal head… (yeah I don’t fit anywhere…heh).
This is valid distinction, though I’ve never known a tankie who was not also a campist, and would support any leader who was considered bad by the west, no matter how far right and nationalist they were (e.g. Milosovic)
I think it’s more that tankies are campists but not all campists are tankies. I personally recognize that it might not be right to call people who support anyone who is against the west a “tankie” if they aren’t a far left socialist, and I hadn’t heard the term “campist” before, but “tankie” is a more widely understood term, so I will continue using it.
Yeah I agree. I think the big thing with a big chunk of the far left is that they believe that the progression to communism has to involve a violent revolution by the proletariat followed by a “dictatorship of the proletariat” where they first take property from the bourgeoisie and then put any that try to resist in camps.
They basically see Lenin and Mao doing what the “theory” says. And it only didn’t work once successors allowed capitalism back in, so history remembers all of this senseless death and repression rather than the last time anyone had to be repressed before the disease was purged and we got a classless society.
Of course anyone with a brain could see that it kept failing because the theory was wrong, but the fat left is divided on whether all of these authoritarian socialist regimes were themselves implementing the theory wrong or were sabotaged by capitalism.
Oh also it’s really funny to me that the consensus on pink floyd is that roger waters rode Gilmour’s coattails but also that pink floyd without waters sucked.
It sounds like Roger Waters was always an asshole and all of his deep songwriting about fascism or something is really just his angsty bullshit but it works for sone reason. He also apparently wisely kept everything really vague so people didn’t have to find out how stupid his political beliefs were. Unless he was only radicalized to this stuff recently.
That’s a possibility. It fits in with my master theory of Emeritus Syndrome, where people once respected/admired in their fields descend into crankery, admiration of fascists or conspiracy theories (sometimes all three) in their later years, after the limelight has passed them by.
It also may explain the descent of Eric Clapton.
Waters and Barrett were Pink Floyd well before Gilmour arrived. Now the band in those years was really out there and and not for everybody (including me). When Syd left and David came in, they worked really well together.
Now I didn’t realize it until later, but having the both of them made Pink Floyd. It’s like Lennon-McCartney. Lennon without Macca was angry bitter and (IMO) mostly terrible; McCartney without Lennon was (in some opinions) pop pablum. But together…
So it was with Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon was obviously an album about hurt; someone (you couldn’t tell who from listening) died and the songs came from that. There was a lot of pain, but the songs were good.
Jump ahead to The Final Cut. In a lot of ways it is a Waters solo album. Someone died, but it’s totally obvious who. The entire album is “all you bloody politicians killed my daddy! And I’m mad!” Without Gilmour to balance Waters, it’s an angry screed, not a fun album.
Waters real solo albums were more of the same. The Water-less Floyd is not bad so much as it is incomplete. Without Waters bite, the albums are PF-lite. They are almost Floyd.
And I never realized that side four of The Wall was not a cautionary tale so much as what Waters actually believed!
Yeah, I look at it differently now, too. Although perhaps he pre-figured the self-satirical alt-right by a few decades, since he does have songs like “If” that show genuine introspection. He could be channeling his real authoritarian tendencies, but at the same time exposing some of its weaknesses and/or amping them up until they become flaws that are so clear that they border on the self-parodic.
The above apology aside, I still liked side 4 a lot more when I thought it was entirely fictional!