Posts Tagged ‘Pink Floyd’

PINK FLOYD – ” Ummagumma ” Released 25th October 1969…. 46 Years Ago Today

Posted: October 25, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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“The Narrow Way (Parts 1-3)”

Of anyone in the band, David Gilmour had the most trepidation about creating an individual experimental piece for the studio disc of Ummagumma. And he ended up with the best thing on the project. The three-part suite repurposes an existing tune for the rustic opener, but Gilmour’s guitar steamrolls through the middle portion before landing on a George Harrison-ish bit of space-twang for the climax.

The official video for ‘Careful With That Axe, Eugene’ by Pink Floyd recorded live in Brighton and originally released on the ‘Ummagumma’ album.

From 1969, Ummagumma was the band’s first double album and has one of their most iconic cover images. Ummagumma is an eclectic mix of both live and studio recordings.

Ummagumma

The album was re-mastered in 2011. Go to http://www.whypinkfloyd.com for more details.
UMMAGUMMA, the 1969 album from Pink Floyd celebrates its 46th anniversary today.
Using a unique concept, the first disc is a live album taken from their set list at the time and the second contains solo compositions by each band member. A double album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It was released on 25 October 1969, through Harvest Records. The artwork was designed by regular Floyd collaborators Hipgnosis and features a number of pictures of the band combined to give a Droste effect.

Although the album was well received at the time of release, and was a top five hit in the UK album charts, it has since been looked upon unfavourably by the band, who have expressed negative opinions about it in interviews. Nevertheless, the album has been reissued on CD several times, along with the rest of their catalogue.

Although the sleeve notes say that the live material was recorded in June 1969, the live album of Ummagumma was recorded live at Mothers Club, Erdington Birmingham on 27th April 1969 and the following week at Manchester College of Commerce on 2nd May of the same year as part of The Man and The Journey Tour. The band had also recorded a live version of “Interstellar Overdrive” (from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn) intended for placement on side one of the live album, and “The Embryo”, which was recorded in the studio before it was decided that the band members each come up with their own material.

The studio album came as a result of Richard Wright wanting to make “real music”, where each of the four group members (in order: Wright, Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason) had half an LP side each to create a solo work without involvement from the others.Wright’s contribution, “Sysyphus”, was named after a character in Greek mythology, usually spelled “Sisyphus”, and contained a combination of various keyboards, including piano and mellotron. Although initially enthusiastic about making a solo contribution, Wright later described it as “pretentious”. Waters’ “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” contained a variety of vocal and percussion effects treated at various speeds, both forwards and backwards, and was influenced by Ron Geesin, who would later collaborate with both Waters and Pink Floyd. Waters’ other contribution Grantchester Meadows was a more pastoral acoustic offering and was usually played as an opening to concerts over 1969. Gilmour has since stated he was apprehensive about creating a solo work, and admits he “went into a studio and started waffling about, tacking bits and pieces together”,although part one of “The Narrow Way” had already been performed as “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major” in a BBC radio session in December 1968. Gilmour said he “just bullshitted” through the piece. He asked Waters to write some lyrics for his compositions, but he refused to do so. Mason’s “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” featured his then wife, Lindy, playing flute, and Mason playing a seven-minute drum solo

The cover artwork shows a Droste effect featuring the group, with a picture hanging on the wall showing the same scene, except that the band members have switched positions.The cover of the original LP varies between the British, American/Canadian and Australian releases. The British version has the album Gigi leaning against the wall immediately above the “Pink Floyd” letters. At a talk given at Borders bookstore in Cambridge on 1st November 2008, as part of the “City Wakes” project, Storm Thorgerson explained that the album was introduced as a red herring to provoke debate, and that it has no intended meaning. On most copies of American and Canadian editions, the Gigi cover is airbrushed to a plain white sleeve, apparently because of copyright concerns; however, the earliest American copies do show the Gigi cover, and it was restored for the American remastered CD edition. On the Australian edition, the Gigi cover is completely airbrushed, not even leaving a white square behind. The house used as the location for the front cover of the album is located in Great Shelford, near Cambridge.

On the rear cover, roadies Alan Styles (who also appears in “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”) and Peter Watts were shown with the band’s equipment laid out on a runway at Biggin Hill Airport. This concept was proposed by Mason, with the intention of replicating the “exploded” drawings of military aircraft and their payloads, which were popular at the time.

Song titles on the back are laid out slightly differently in British vs. North American editions; the most important difference being the inclusion of subtitles for the four sections of “A Saucerful of Secrets”. These subtitles only appeared on American and Canadian editions of this album, but not on the British edition; nor did they appear on original pressings of A Saucerful of Secrets.

The inner gatefold art shows separate black-and-white photos of the band members. Gilmour is seen standing in front of the Elfin Oak. Original vinyl editions showed Waters with his first wife, Judy Trim, but she has been cropped out of the picture on most CD editions (with the original photo’s caption “Roger Waters (and Jude)” accordingly changed to just “Roger Waters”). The uncropped picture was restored for the album’s inclusion in the box set

Pink Floyd
David Gilmour – lead guitar, vocals, all instruments and vocals on “The Narrow Way”
Nick Mason – percussion, all instruments (except flutes) on “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party”
Roger Waters – bass guitar, vocals, all instruments and vocals on “Grantchester Meadows” and all instruments on “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict”
Richard Wright – organ, keyboards, vocals, all instruments and vocals on “Sysyphus”

PINK FLOYD – ” Dark Side Of The Moon ” Released March 10th 1973

Posted: March 11, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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On this day March. 10th  in 1973: Pink Floyd released their 8th studio album, ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, on Harvest Records; it would remain on the American charts for 741 non-continuous weeks between 1973-88, longer than any other album in history; after moving to the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Chart, the album notched up a further 759 weeks, reaching a total of over 1,500 weeks on the combined charts by May 2006; with an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is the group’s most commercially successful album & one of the best-selling albums worldwide… Originally released in 1973, The Dark Side of The Moon became Pink Floyd’s first number one album in the US, The Dark Side of The Moon also introduced the iconic album cover artwork by Hipgnosis, after a request for a ‘simple and bold’ design. The new Discovery version presents the original studio album, digitally remastered by James Guthrie and reissued with newly designed Digipak and a new 12 page booklet designed by Storm Thorgerson. The band members spent three minutes deciding on the front cover. Designer Storm Thorgerson brought seven designs into the Abbey Road studio where they were still recording. “The band trooped in, swept their gaze across the designs, looked at each other, nodded, and said ‘That one,’ pointing at the prism. Took all of three minutes,” Thorgerson recalled in liner notes for the 2011 deluxe box. In an 2003 interview, the designer elaborated, “No amount of cajoling would get them to consider any other contender, nor endure further explanation of the prism, or how exactly it might look. ‘That’s it,’ they said in unison, ‘we’ve got to get back to real work,’ and returned forthwith to the studio upstairs.” 

“Money” was influenced by… Booker T and the MGs? Though the basis of the song is a blues progression written by Waters, Gilmour has said he brought an R&B influence to the song’s instrumental breaks. “I was a big Booker T fan,” said Gilmour. “I had the Green Onions album when I was a teenager. And in my previous band… we played ‘Green Onions’ onstage… It was something I thought we could incorporate into our sound without anyone spotting where the influence had come from. And to me, it worked. The opening “song,” “Speak to Me,” is credited solely to drummer Nick Mason, something Waters has insisted was an act of charity.

“Us and Them” was originally written and submitted three years earlier for the soundtrack of the film Zabriskie Point. Antonioni’s loss was Dark Side’s gain. “We wanted to put it on Zabriskie Point, on the sequence where they’re having the riots and the police beating heads on UCLA campus; the counterpoint between that slow, rather beautiful music and this violence going on was great,” said Gilmour.

“Breathe” emerged from a song of the same name that Waters wrote for the soundtrack of a documentary called The Body, also three years earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL5SEBdG5RQ&t=24

Torry’s main direction: sing for several minutes, and don’t sing any words. Waters recalled, “Clare came into the studio one day, and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying—have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ I think she only did one take. And we all said, ‘Wow, that’s that done. Here’s your 60 quid.’” (By Torry’s recollection, it was two and a half takes, and 30 quid.) It was engineer Alan Parsons’ idea to bring Torry in for the “Gig” vocal. Parsons claims he heard her singing a cover of “Light My Fire”—although she disputes that, claiming she never sang the Doors’ song in her life. At the time she got the call, the only Pink Floyd song she knew was “See Emily Play,” “and that didn’t really hit the spot with me,” she said. “They weren’t my favorite band. If it had been the Kinks, I’d have been over the moon.”

In 2005, the classic lineup reunited for one mini-set at Live 8. This one-time gig included three songs from “Dark Side (“Speak to Me,” “Breathe,” and “Money”) as well as two later choices (“Comfortably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here”). Shall we say this was a landmark album?

It is one of the best-selling albums of all time. The album has had numerous full-length cover versions. Phish and Dream Theater are among the bands who’ve covered the album in its entirety in concert, and the Flaming Lips released a studio version of their take on the album. There have been bluegrass, a cappella, and string-quartet album versions, not to mention the notorious, reggae-died Dub Side of the Moon.

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SYD BARRETT – ” The Madcap Laughs “

Posted: February 14, 2015 in MUSIC
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sydbarrett

Born 6th Jan 1946, on this day, Syd Barrett, guitarist, singer, songwriter with Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett, who was a co-founding member, left Pink Floyd in 1968. He released 2 solo albums before going into self-imposed seclusion for more than 30 years, enjoying life as an artist and a keen gardener. Pink Floyd wrote many tributes to him after he left, the best-known being “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”. Syd Barrett died, aged 60, on 7th July 2006 from complications arising from diabetes.

 

Mick-Rocks-shot-of-Syd-Ba-008

Mick Rock reminisces I was meant to go and shoot Syd Barrett upstairs in his flat, but when I saw this car outside I thought: “Fuck it – I need to take pictures of that, too.” It was an incredible prop to have plonked there. If I recall correctly, it was a Pontiac Parisienne, a push-button convertible, and it was pink. Mickey Finn, who became the bongo-player for T-Rex, had picked it up at an auction, and Syd Barrett had swopped his Mini for it. But he didn’t have a clue how to drive this massive American car, and it basically didn’t work anyway. You can see the back wheel is a bit wonky. Eventually, it got towed away.

It was autumn 1969, and I was over at Earls Court trying to get shots for the cover of Syd’s first solo album, The Madcap Laughs. He had an amazing look: a beautiful burnt-out rock’n’roller. I think he looked better than he ever did in Pink Floyd. He was probably the hippest thing out there, as far as England was concerned. He had basically just rolled out of bed, shaken his head, put a bit of kohl on, and gotten dressed. There were no stylists, no assistants – who had money for that? Iggy the Eskimo just did whatever makeup he needed around the eyes. I think that’s why lots of pictures from the 60s and 70s look so authentic: they weren’t styled by anybody.
Syd was a painter really. He’d been to art school. That’s why his music was so unique, because he thought like a painter – and he carried on painting for the rest of his life. One of the reasons why people love him so much is because they only know the bare facts of his life, since he gave so few interviews. I actually did the last one with him in 1971, after he had retreated back to his mum’s house in Cambridge. People think he went mad, but I never did. He was a total original,

pinkfloydearly

This day in 1968, at the University of Birmingham, fans saw the first of the handful of concerts which were performed by the five-piece Pink Floyd. This picture is one of a handful taken at the sole photo session undertaken when the band had both Syd Barrett, and David Gilmour, in their ranks.

PINK FLOYD – ” Meddle ” BBC Live in Concert 1971

Posted: December 4, 2014 in MUSIC
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Setlist:
Fat Old Sun 00:00
One Of These Days 15:27
Echoes 22:58
Embryo 49:30
Blues 59:36

Pink-Floyd-Colour-Pic-1971-300x196

Pink Floyd live in 1971 prior to the release of their forthcoming album “Meddle” with tracks presented (in his inimitable way) by John Peel. This was The Pink Floyd we loved, investigating sounds, jamming, mixing songs with extended instrumental pieces, creating atmospheres and in this set playing a song that didn’t appear on any of their studio albums, Embryo.  They were soft, edgy, inventive and tuned into the times lyrically.

This excellent quality recording is a real treasure for Pink Floyd fans and when a voice comes in at the end of Embryo, this is “WNEW FM 102.7 on your dial” you realise that you can never completely trust the info a bootleg recording gives you. This concert from London could have been broadcast in the US, it could have been a Floyd instigated overdub, who knows? If you know or have any information about this concert, please be sure to let us know.

The last track is listed simply as Blues and there is no information at all about it? It could be the middle of another song, it could be the soundcheck, it could be a different concert? Whatever it is there is energy and excitement, mood and adventure even though it is just a simple series of blues chords with guitar and organ taking it in turn to play the solos. (Cheers at the end are obvious overdubs).

PINK FLOYD – ” The Division Bell ” Reissue Deluxe Box Set

Posted: May 22, 2014 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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division-bell-box

PINK FLOYD celebrate 20 years of the DIVISION BELL by releasing a Box Set containing 7 discs with lots of nice goodies plus a 5.1 surround sound mix, David Gilmore produced the original album with orchestral arrangements from the late Micheal Kamen.

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