While discussing the Rolling Stone “magazine” prog debacle (below), a mini thread on the Floyd opened up, as these things are wont to do – nearly turned into a “best album” debate, so I thought I’d throwaway log on that particular fire.
Not much interest expressed in what I would call the “pastoral” Floyd, eg, the other side of Atom Heart Mother; big chunks of the “More” soundtrack; Granchester Meadows, etc – when I started listening to them, these were at least as important as big progressive pieces like Echoes – and I would still rate songs like Cirrus Minor and Fat Old Sun very highly.
“The big three”? DSOTM and WYWH – fair enough: but The Wall just turns me off these days (the live show was a whole different ballgame, I’ll admit). Final Cut – I almost approach it like a different band, although I appreciate it a lot more now than I did when it came out. Animals? As brilliant now as it was then and as angry as Anderson.
But, given the choice these days, I’d rather listen to Meddle – truly classic Floyd. Anyone got any love for Ummagumma?
Apologies – I meant to leave a wee tune….
I’m with you on pastoral Floyd. That and Syd era is my preference. I also have a huge soft spot for Ummagumma (remaster any good ?). Cirrus Minor, Julia Dream, Grantchester Meadows, Fat Old Sun, all superb. I think Floyd had a subtlety and craft in this period that, for me anyway, is superior to the better known Waters dominated later albums. Rick Wright’s waning influence was a certainly a detriment.
I think the only thing I have in common with Stuart Maconie is that our favourite Floyd LP is ‘More’.
Never properly heard DSOTM and all those afterwards. Never going to neither.
It really is about time I got ‘Atom Heart Mother’ as most of the fans of the later stuff seem to hate it…..almost the perfect recommendation!
It’s certainly worth it for side 2. I’m not overly gone on the orchestral side 1.
In the right frame of mind……
I know the Floyd themselves have always given it a bit of a kicking: but did I hear that Gilmour took part in a live performance in the last year or two?
I really like AHM. It went to number one, y’know – rather knocking on the head the idea that prior to DSotM they were just this little cult band.
With AHM itself, I think there was some problem with setting up the recording which means that Nick Mason and the orchestra are slightly out of synch. I can only just hear this but the people on the record probably can’t hear anything else.
More surprising that DG has dissed it – Fat Old Sun is one of his best tunes. Autumn 68 might be Rick W’s very finest.
Moose, I think it was only the title track he had an issue with – so did Waters, for that matter….at least partly on the quality of the orchestral playing & recording….I believe Ron Geesin was in tears at how bad the brass players were, and how flippant they were about playing so-called “rock” music (spoken as if handling the word with tongs…)
Wow! I’ve just read that its debut performance was at Hull Uni, just half a mile away from my house.
I would have gone, but I was minus 3 at the time. It’s a wonder my Dad didn’t go… but he did go to see The (real) Who at City Hall a few weeks later (ie the night before Leeds)
I agree with you both: I wonder, what with the recent fashion for acid folk and the Electric Eden genre, if the pastoral Floyd deserves a rethink (I think Bob Stanley is on to this when he discusses 60s PF in “Yeah Yeah Yeah”). I’d add to the list the extended version of “Green is the Colour” recorded for Top Gear, but it isn’t on Youtube.
Love everything up to (and including) Dark Side, which is probably my least favourite. Cannot understand the popularity of WYWH; a tired, bitter, and hollow attempt to follow up their most successful album. And everything after that is mostly ignorable. Frowners enjoy Animals, Final Cut, because bleak. Ummagumma was The Album To Be Seen With at the time, but not as good as we thought it was. Atom Heart is deliriously great. Dismissed as pretentious rubbish by Rog, which is some kind of recommendation. All the others, yup, yup, no problem, cue ’em up.
I hop off after Medal.
Medal – was that their Olympic theme?
Yes.
They’re good, too. Up to Relayer.
No. Up to and including Going For The One.
You would like that one because you’re a gayer.
(Actually I forgot about it. Better than Relayer, too.)
Nice meat baps.
I once got on a train carrying a battered copy of Ummagumma in one hand and a bottle of cognac in the other. I must admit I felt rather cool.
By the standards of a Regional Express service from Alsager to Derby, I probably was. These things are relative.
That’s me too I have to say – guess that makes me a pastoralist and not an angry old man. So everyone else can just fuck off OK?
I think pastoral Floyd certainly does need re-evaluating. I’ve never agreed that it was somehow an inferior period compared to the later bombastic stadium era, which I can do without and never play.
This far down the thread & no dissent? Mellow……
I like early pastoral Floyd, but have always felt there’s a bit of painting by numbers with them. You can hear them finding their way, but they were helped by the studio. Tracks like Grantchester Meadows are pretty basic. Alan’s Psychedelic breakfast is just a few simple ideas stiched together nicely in the studio. In fact, that track is probably my favourite of all of theirs. It’s got some Syd style musical whimsy, lots of sampled chat and studio trickery, and then languid, spacey ‘classic’ sounding Floyd to finish off. But AHM is let down by a weak and thin sounding production. Meddle is where the songs and the sound really got epic. After that, things got pompous.
*clutches heart* Weak?! Thin-sounding!? This is a classic Abbey Road recording. Open, organic sound stage ectect.You know, like Parachute, and, er, some other albums. I suggest you invest in your own high fidelity home audio centre, instead of pressing your waxy old ear to the party wall and relying on your neighbour’s choice of entertainment.
Yep, Parachute’s a good call for that classic warm sound, one that I’d have highlighted myself. To my ears AHM sounds nothing like it. There’s none of the warm, expansive bass you get on Meddle. It’s all a bit shrill and weedy, especially the brass. Got it on vinyl, yonks ago. Have a listen to this, and tell me, hand on atom heart, that the sound is as good as Parachute or Meddle (youtube limitations notwithstanding)
I think you might have chosen a better example, but of course you have a point, up to a point. Maybe our ears change, but AHM was much admired for its production (the production on that album’s amazing …) at the time. It still sounds fine to me, although mixing techniques and tastes have changed since then. It’s just that I will not tolerate any criticism of that album. It’s me, not you. AHM accompanied so many lying-stoned-on-the-floor-watching-the-test-pattern (or lighting zilches) nights I take all criticism personally. It wounds me.
Sorry HP. I agree that there are moments on that record where the sound is fantastic, but to me, many of the musical ideas are let down by a missing, er, dimension, to the sound. It’s not something I just thought up today. It’s a feeling I’ve had ever since I heard it.
But it’s funny you mentioned Parachute, because I’ve always held that in very high regard soundwise. It’s a real benchmark, and if I ever made a record, that’s how I’d want it to sound.
Parachute is possibly THE great forgotten UK rock album. Unusually, better appreciated in the states.
SF Sorrow has got a decent rep these days. Quite right too, even if it did invent heavy metal.
The Kinks invented heavy metal with the Really Got Me riff.
No, because Ray’s vocal is far too camp. On the verses of Old Man Going all the elements are finally in place – the idiot drumming, fuzz guitar and utterly stupid strangulated singing that can only mean the Evee Meckle.
Chooooooooon!
The campness of the vocal in no way dimishes (this is a play on words) the invention of the Power Chord which is at the root of heavy metal. So nyer. I’d also posit (because that’s the kind of nuanced person I am) that the Yardbirds ‘Shapes Of Things’ is a better example than the one you give.
Play on words depends on correct spelling of “diminishes”.
Pah! Singing like Keith Relf would get you expelled from the club, and the denim ceremoniously ripped from your shoulders. You might not even be allowed to wear a black t-shirt. He simply does not have the right kind of sense of acute digestive discomfort in his voice.
Much as I love Endless River, it seems to reference every side of Floyd’s past except their pastoral side (which I love). A nod to that sound might have worked well.
Here’s Roger doing Breathe. Except it’s not. Except it is.
Relics! Relics!
Sometimes I think it’s the only PF album anybody really needs.
…always have a copy to hand, just in case…
Just picked up my daughter from work….checked in the glove compartment….lo and behold! – a copy of Relics…
Left in the glove compartments of all 2CVs manufactured since 1971….
Also mandatory is a sticker in the back window saying “Atom Heart Mother? Ja Bitte!”
But to be fair, Moose, you don’t exactly have all your chairs at home.
snibbet snibbet
‘Relics’! What a terrific album – great variety of tracks, all for 99p. Loved it dearly. Though I enjoyed AHM, I think ‘Meddle’ was their first truly great, all killer, no filler, album. I splurged my meagre savings on ‘Ummagumma’ and ‘Morrison Hotel’ on same day. Have to say the former was a disappointment and a rather annoying waste of my pocket money.
I’m not a fan but I like Meddle. I’m extremely grateful to Mr H.P. for recommending the substitution of the *duff* track, Seamus, with Embryo from the Picnic compilation or Works. It, er, works beautifully.
On the subject of post hoc adjustments: I put together a playlist at one point, of Ummagumma as a double live – added a contemporary Interstellar Overdrive, Granchester Meadows, Cymbaline, Narrow Way part 3….shame it didn’t come out like that.
Having said that, I don’t find ALL the studio tracks as objectionable as the majority suggest…
As soon as the Americans get on board, 45s are all but abandoned, and the English groups start their assaults on American Football/Baseball/Basketball venues, I check out.
It means that I have Who, Stones, Floyd, Pretty Things, Kinks singles and LPs that I love (pre-Tommy, Altamont, DSOTM, 1970 and….erm…..1970) and that I absolutely despise Led Zeppelin, who seem to have joined the party as unapologetic American market worshippers from the very beginning.
The thing that gets forgotten about the Oo is that they carried on doing non-album singles well after anybody was buying them. Like Dogs, Relay and that queer one about smoking.
Always like the early stuff. I could mount a genuine argument saying MORE is their best album actually. IMHO Green is the Colour is their finest hour. “The quickness of the mind deceives the eye” one of Roger’s finest lines.
Bah of course I meant ““The quickness of the eye deceives the mind” is one of Roger’s finest lines.
I very much like Cirrus Minor. It’s so terrifyingly……slow.
And it’s on Relics.
It’s years since I heard ‘Obscured By Clouds’. This thread has got me pastoral Floyd libraray mooching. Any whatnots (not Victorian jobs).
Ahhh, Obscured by Clouds – one could easily argue that it’s a better album all round than DSOTM…
…and all completed in about three weeks…
I’m going to revisit it on the strength of this thread.
EDIT facility PLEASE !
Typos doth not a Grizzly Bear attack duvet batman charge make.
( I read that. Much as I love them, they might eat you, slowly, so, if you not packing serious guns, get your duvet out and run at them like a screaming Dracula. Apparently it works because you’re the bigger bear).
On balance, pastoral probably just wins the day
that was Cymabaline by the way – no idea why it’s done that!
or why it shows up ok in updates but not here?
AHM (side 1) and Echoes will do me fine, with that Van Morrison song about Syd Barrett for afters. OK, and One of these days for old times sake.
Very interersting OP, Fitterstoke.
PF caught me early on: those first 2 singles, Arnold and Emily, introduced a sonically adventurous group, then we got the Barrett tour de force, Piper. More and Obscured were mediocre, in that they didn’t offer good melodies. Ummagumma picked up a lot of slack, but was rather too weighed down with concept, excellent but patchy. Love the good bits.
The next 2, Atom and Meddle, are the markII Floyd blossoming and probably include the the best examples of your “pastoral” above, meaning presumably still using some acoustic sounds and the adventurousness was back. So what if the horns are slightly ramshackle on the Atom suite. Maybe not literally in the studio but they’re vying for our attention with dripping water, motorbikes, and various other found sounds. Marvellous! My favourite PF album. Meddle features another side-long suite unafraid to go anywhere, abstract and far out even. Then the sheer meaty double-bass (not double bass) attack of One Of These Days still electrifies. A Peel favourite in his pre-punk days too.
Dark/Wish/Animals were their big mainstream albums, perfectly servicable albums where the group had discovered sequencers, so pastoral ade, but you just wish someone would hit something hard or do something surprising . Animals has stood the test of time better than the others IMO. Their last really good album.
They lost me on the monstrously bloated Wall, too much Waters, far too whingey (your “angry”, Fitterstoke, I imagine). Fantastic single though, Everything after that was an alarming dip in quality, bar none.
I’ve been checking through the albums a bit, the original issue LPs sound just fine. Suppose you can hear the Abbey Road sound if you strain very hard (absolutely love the references to Parachute above, what a brilliant album that is) but then again, this is the way the music was originally conceived and sequenced: as a side of an LP.
So, PF. When they were good, they were very very good. Pastoral for me please, the sound of 4 fellows together in the studio actually listening to each other. Those would be Atom and Meddle. Dark was, I guess, pivotal but their working methods and the group dynamic had obviously shifted.
Thanks, Declan. I may have overstated the case a bit: but I do love those two or three albums, which tend to be ignored by, eg, Rolling Stone (“that vile rag” (TM)) which prompted the OP in the first place. The Americans apparently being obsessed with the Wall, WYWH and DSOTM, these would be the so-called big three.
My own big three would be quite different – and the response to the OP would suggest that I’m not alone…..
In the early 70s, Gilmour and Waters had the best haircuts this side of David Cassidy. Why can’t we talk about the big things?
Gilmour I would agree with. But Waters could never commit to properly growing out that fringe. Lightweight.
DG was very much given in those days to performing without his shirt on. But he didn’t actually look that good. So he just ends up looking like a guy who has…. forgotten his shirt.
….which may, in fact, have been the case…..
Odd how in the 70s Gilmour was by far the most photogenic – wasn’t he a male model at one point – whereas now you’d have to say Waters has aged much better.
In later years Rick Wright looked a bit like a hippy version of John Major.
“And after all, we’re not inconsiderably ordinary men”
Before I check out the library website, are the recent remasters much cop ?
Good question.
Anyone know the answer?!
WYWH is certainly improved.
Wait. Atom Heart Mother is the one with the cow on the cover, right? When did Pink Floyd release Parachute? Is Syd on it? And where does A Saucerful Of Secrets fit in to all this?
*confused face*
?
Parachute ?
??????
My word, Tigger, you are a card & no mistake, sir (Sydney Greenstreet voice)…..
It’s a record by the Pretty Things – a popular beat combo, m’lud.
Yes. But is Syd on it?
No. Does he have to be on everything?
What about the recent remasters of Atom Heart Mother and Meddle?
Not heard those – only WYWH, DSOTM & The Wall (as part of the Immersion editions the other year) – would say only WYWH has significantly improved.