Women tend to dislike Pink Floyd for the same reason girls liked The Beatles’ early work but disliked their later stuff. As someone on the first page said, it’s got “guy music” written all over it.
Next up: “Why did women outnumber men at Spice Girl concerts?”
As did I. They’re my favorite band of all time (woman here)… I’ve only met a few people, like… ever, who don’t like Pink Floyd. I know they exist, I just haven’t met many of them. I never noticed a male majority, either. And yes, I’ve seen them in concert.
You women may not have heard about it, but I sure have. I have a bunch of guy friends who wear Pink Floyd shirts, never seen a girl wear a Pink Floyd shirt. Obviously, my anecdotal evidence regarding shirt preference is definitive.
I’m female and I was never into jumping up and down and screaming at concerts. Among my group of peers that would have been very unkewl, indeed. We affected the laidback 'tude.
I didn’t care for PF when they first appeared on the scene. Music did a swift change about that time and I had difficulty making the leap.
Their music seemed pretentious and gimmicky to me.
When my son was in his teens he listened to a lot of Pink Floyd and I was reintroduced to the band through him. Having something in common was a pretty good thing while he was going through his teen stuff. He even gave me my first PF CD.
Now I enjoy them as much as I did when I first began to like them. And who says Gilmour isn’t swooning material? He looks fit and plays with style. Something about survival is pretty attractive to me. (He is still alive isn’t he? 
)
Incidently I’ve always thought of PF as progressive rock, also, but the current Wiki article calls their music "psych (adelic?) folk. And I think that’s a pretty good moniker.
LOL. I have about 10 Pink Floyd T-shirts… I am usually wearing a PF shirt at least 4-5 days out of 7 
Come down to Phoenix and wear 'em and I might reevaluate my evidence. Until then, my stance is unchanged!
One of my former students turned me on to Pink Floyd many years ago. Gee I’m glad he took a chance that I might not fit some stupid stereotype.
I have about sixty-five years of loving music inside of me. But there’s not much that beats Clare Tory’s “Great Gig In the Sky.” That is the most soulful piece I’ve ever heard. You think women don’t feel that way? You are wrong. You are so wrong.
If you’ve never gone out at midnight on a cool night when the moon was almost full, put the top down on the car and taken to the highway with “Great Gig In the Sky” playing again and again, I would not consider you a real fan. I am a fan of the music. To hell with the rest of it!
Do any of you know what I mean when I talk about walking around inside the music?
EVERYTHING is presented from a male perspective. Look at the top 100 films of all time, the great novels, the political scene, the Straight Dope itself – most of it is from a male perspective. We are used to it. We can identify with male protagonists much better than males identify with female lead characters. “I am not afraid of dying…”
You make me want to throw my Bose headphones at the wall. Why do you think men feel isolated more than women?
Are you familiar with this song? At Seventeen
Are you all old enough to remember when PF played when the Berlin Wall came down?
To quote Zoe- “I have about sixty-five years of loving music inside of me. But there’s not much that beats Clare Tory’s “Great Gig In the Sky.” That is the most soulful piece I’ve ever heard. You think women don’t feel that way? You are wrong. You are so wrong”
I asked my wife (huge floyd fan) about naming our daughter Clare tory and was shot down.
Wrong about what? Are you asserting that the Pink Floyd fanbase is 50/50 men/women? If you are, you are wrong. You are so wrong.
If you’re simply asserting that it’s possible for women to enjoy Pink Floyd, well, duh. Nobody ever thought any differently.
We’re discussing the fact that even though it’s possible for women to be Pink Floyd fans, as a general rule they aren’t.
You got me there, I don’t currently own a PF T-shirt. Mine is a Roger Waters shirt from his In the Flesh tour.
ETA: Here I am wearing it: Lilith5 | vamdpa42 | Flickr
Jucifer’s “L’Autrichienne” is a concept album about Marie Antoinette, who was called “L’Autrichienne” by the French to deride her Austrian birth, and the French Revolution. She was female, of course. The songwriter/singer/guitarist G. Amber Valentine is female so presumably her perspective is female, whatever that means. Amber is a kick ass guitarist and assembles her multitude of amps and other equipment on stage. She also loads it all after a show. But she’s not at all masculine in appearance or demeanor, despite her take-charge approach to her music. Jucifer has a sound that is anything but girly, can’t be described well, has to be heard. They’ve been compared to a lot of other bands, the Melvins, P.J. Harvey, Black Sabbath, Portishead, to name a few, but IMO they’re sui generis.
I agree that males and females tend to approach being fans in different ways but am not sure their musical *tastes *differ as much as the OP asserts. As a woman who came of age in the mid-late Sixties, I remember a burning question in the winter of 1964 was “Who is your favorite Beatle?” In “Still Life with Woodpecker,” Tom Robbins wrote that the answer to that question, from a baby boomer, was probably more indicative of their personality type than any psychological test. Mine was John Lennon, because he was intelligent and witty. Other girls would say “But he’s married”, as if they were ever going to meet their favorite single Beatle and have a relationship with him. I didn’t have those kinds of dreams about guys in bands, movie stars, etc. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an opinion about who was hot and who was not, it was just that I recognized that they were distant beings. Eye candy is nice but you can’t eat it. And the music mattered the most.
In short, I chose my favorite Beatle the way boys chose theirs and wasn’t interested in talking about which one was cuter. I was equally bored with some guys’ conversations about their sound systems or about what effect pedal was being used in a particular part of a sound. Play the damned music and let’s listen to it and not analyze it to death. We can dance if you want to.
I’m a very analytical thinker but analyzing pleasure doesn’t interest me. That doesn’t mean I can’t or won’t analyze music or artwork or books, but generally my foremost interest is in enjoying them. My musical tastes are eclectic and, yes, I like Pink Floyd. No one would have had to drag me to their show. I don’t insist that music must be good to dance to. Yet I am a woman.
I don’t know; I’m a woman and I love Pink Floyd.
Why is it that, just because the OP’s wife doesn’t like Pink Floyd, that he must necessarily generalize to assert that all women don’t like Pink Floyd? Since when does that make any sense? :dubious:
I don’t get it either. I enjoy Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, The Moody Blues, EL&P, Jethro Tull, etc. I like prog rock. I’m also into Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Queen, etc. I love the blues and hard rock. The first concert I ever went to on my own was Buddy Guy.
I can’t see how this is all that unique. I know lots of women who enjoy music like this.
Woman. Aged 39. Married. Am I missing the point, too?
Well, it doesn’t, precisely because that is not what I said. I said “it SEEMS to me…” as an observation, not an assertive generalization. I threw in my wife’s taste because as a couple, our musical tastes are extremely close. I was puzzled, not generalizing.
Geez, people, this thread is nuts! :smack:
I loved Pink Floyd in the 70’s but like a well worn toy have put them on a shelf. I don’t know about any other women but The Wall was about a kid who hated his Mother and today I don’t need to hear that. I prefer their earlier stuff. It also reminds me of being a gawky teenager somehow? All 70’s music does.
I like all kinds of different music today and am trying hard to find new music to keep me current. I like to listen to World Cafe. I don’t want to get stuck in a time warp.
Taking are of the elderly for the most part is great but to watch them cling to the past is difficult. At some point they stop growing and just keep reliving the old. One of my clients still watches Lawrence Welk and the other only watches circa 1940’s movies.
It’s not so much that men feel more isolated, but more like we’re more comfortable with isolation. I’ve been reading a lot lately about gender differences, and it’s fascinating stuff. It explains so much. It explains why women can listen to music, carry on a heart-felt conversation, do a crossword puzzle, and read a recipe at the same time. When I’m reading a recipe, I take the attitude of “Get the hell out of my kitchen or someone’s losing a finger.”
For me (and I suspect a lot of men) enjoyment of music is a solitary persuit. It’s not a social activity. Of course, I’m sure that there are a lot of women who feel the same way, but I suspect that as a general trend, women enjoy music more as a way of connecting to others emotionally while men enjoy it as a sort of adventure in turning inwards.
Disclaimer: I’m not fascinated by gender differences because I want to “put women in their place” or shoehorn anyone or oppress. I’m interested in it because I want to open up channels of communication and understanding.
No kidding. Some people are taking your observation as a personal attack.
Excellent observations and a damned shame that you even have to have a disclaimer, but that’s the board we live at.
How I wish you were here. 
Thank you! I’m reading a great book called Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps. It’s very informative as well as funny. I wish I’d read it a couple of years earlier. It would have saved me from a nasty argument with a girlfriend.
Yeah, I know.