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Wot’s… Uh the Deal? Pink Floyd To Feature On UK Postage Stamps

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It’s official. The lunatics are on the grass and the counter culture is dead.

Pink Floyd, the band whose music was once synonymous with the underground movement, social revolution and mind-expanding drugs, will appear on a set of UK postage stamps later this year (6 LP sleeves and 4 live images).

The stamps look great, but I can’t help feeling a little sad about the whole concept somehow.

The Division Bell sleeve has already appeared on a postage stamp in 2010 of course.

http://i.imgur.com/xdr0ggl.jpg
http://www.mojo4music.com/24101/pink-floyd-stamps/

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Comments

  2. I fell out of love with the band whose music was once synonymous with the underground movement, social revolution and mind-expanding drugs when Volkswagen sponsored their tour that time, and badged-up a “special edition” Golf (I think).

    These stamps aren’t beautiful, and don’t reflect the status of stamps as currency (what they effectively are – miniature banknotes). They’re simple repros of album sleeves, not proper artwork. Bah. But everything’s the M-word these days, innit? Branding an’ that. Get with the times, Granddad! These handsome collectibles (maybe you get some free marbles if you buy the set) are not only ideal to display as part of your iconic Pink Floyd merch collection, but will have investement value, too!

    • Just wondering when the Dead first sold out to advertisers. I remember buying a Jerry Garcia tie in ’89 to stick it to the Man when I was still part of the multinational, fascist, greed head machine. Went very nicely with my suits.

  3. They may not be “proper artwork” but those LP sleeves work just fine as images for me. The other four stamps showing distinctive live images in an elongated rectangular format are perhaps more to your taste (click on the link above to view them).

    It’s interesting how, for me at any rate, the first five of those stamps produce a Proustian rush recalling warm, happy memories of bygone era when we had the world at our feet and anything seemed possible. Whereas the 6th image, The Endless River which is a recent half-arsed, cobbled-together record of leftover tracks from the post-Waters Division Bell (not a great album to start with), prompts nothing but a disinterested shrug.

  4. Who uses stamps these days? We used to get through a fair few every month for business but everything is emailed now and we make nearly all payments electronically. We don’t even have a fax machine.

    • There’s a lucrative sideline for the Post Office in philately I believe. First day covers and the like bring in a lot of business.

      But I think a lot of people still use stamps for sending cards. I visit the post office just about every working day and there are always customers buying proper stamps.

  6. Those stamps are a bit small to view the artwork. How about making them a bit bigger?

    I dunno, say maybe 12 by 12 inches. Perhaps include a free bonus record while you’re at it.

  7. Wot! No ‘See Emily Play’ promo sleeve.

    I’ll be Syd-ing it, only one purchase, via the postcards they normally put out with these things.

    Now comes the tricky part…..where’s the nearest Post Office?

  13. “Pink Floyd, the band whose music was once synonymous with the underground movement, social revolution and mind-expanding drugs”. Well, maybe, or was it careful and conniving planning. As discussed in the entertaining History of EMI on BBC4 recently, what was so counterculture about a bunch of nicely spoken middle class and, largely, public school boys, managed by a similar such? Ideal, really.

    • They may have nice middle class boys but in 1967 they were working in a medium which was brand new and completely at odds with the pop mainstream.

      The UFO club, the pioneering lightshows, the trippy psychedelic music, the 20 minute instrumentals, the revolutionary sleeve artwork. Come on, it was music to take drugs by.

      And when all’s said and done, who among us has not rolled a thousand joints on a Pink Floyd LP sleeve?

      • I always found that joints rolled on a Man album had far more depth and resonance – particularly Winos Rhinos and Lunatics. These lunatics really were on the grass.

        • I fail to understand how their middle class, privately educated background should automatically disqualify them from being part of an avant-garde and counterculture movement. The constant English obsession with class, yet again. All very tiresome and dispiriting.

          • Damn right, Nessie. But I talk of the past and 1967 when their accents and that of their manager reassured the establishment of EMI as was. And that had nowt to do with being part of the counter-culture, it was about them being signed to the then most effective and efficient arm of the english music industry. Trojan horses? Maybe. Savvy management and big bucks ahoy? More like it.

          • Yes it is very tiresome, this class divide thing. Every time I see a Eton-educated politician telling me that we’re all in it together, I have to accept the truth that their raw talent would have broken through regardless.

            OK…that’s nothing to do with music. Yet the class divide is everywhere. I listened to a radio show recently where Angus Deayton was challenged on the BBC’s Oxbridge bias. He accepted it totally, almost saying “and your point being…?” . Which is a far more admirable stance than saying it’s tiresome and it doesn’t matter.

            • Danny Baker is constantly banging on about the BBC being stuffed to the gills with Oxbridge types and how they’re holding back horny-handed sons of toil like himself. Quite honestly it makes him sound like Alan Partridge.

            • It’s not only tiresome; it’s rather pathetic that the Floyd’s educational background should be seen as any type of barrier to their being members of the counterculture.

              • It’s not where ones from it’s where ones at man.
                The most countercultural friend I ever had was the stinking rich, privately educated son of a Battle of Britain Wing Commander.
                Absolutely top geezer. Loved him then. Love him now.

                • And by its very nature the prog scene tends to be a little more better educated and middle class than those horrid rock boys from the slums. I’m thinking Genesis and the Cantebury Scene here

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