Kevin's Watch

Lord Mhoram wrote:I bet those other songs are great too. "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" is such a great song. I am a huge Ferry fan, and Gilmour apparently worked well with him. I'm pretty sure Gilmour also appeared on Ferry's album Bete Noire.

Speaking of Brian Ferry, Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music co-produced Gilmour's last album, played on it and also played on David's recent tour.

...and Graham Nash and David Crosby added vocals to a couple of songs.

Now, Y'all know I'm firmly on the Gilmour side of the battle....

That note.....That huge bass note on Yet Another Movie after the line, "....he's not the worst, he's not the best". That note has wrecked more speakers than I care to count.

One of these days when I'm more sober, I'll recount my first listen to A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Truly a great album, and prolly an experience that y'all will enjoy living vicariously through me.

i'm sure we will buddy!

I love Gilmore, but have to fall on the Waters side.

You know, I have Final Cut someplace. Cuz I cannot make myself throw out CDs. But frankly it sucks.

But I think that the reason it sucks is not Waters spiraling talent, but the fact that the band was busted. Half the tracks don't even have a guitar in it... there must have been some bad blood.

Now, I also have a rickety old cassette tape of a live Waters concert broadcast on FM in 1983 or so... after the breakup, before any solo albums (I believe). And it just totally rocks. He does a lot of Final Cut material, but it sounds NOTHING like the album. He's got a good guitar player, a mighty sax, piano, and oh, he's got those sweet girls doing backup vocals. It totally kicks A.

Here's my tribute to RW proving he is a god. These are some lyrics, as arranged during that broadcast - this comes out as one long song, if you will. (I wish you could hear it!) And ththpp! to anyone who says he's all about being depressed and insane.

• Brezhnev took Afghanistan
  And Begin took Beirut;
  Galtieri took the Union Jack.
  
  And Maggie over lunch one day
  Took a cruiser with all hands
  Apparently, to make him give it back.
  
  Ooo, Maggie what have you done?
  
  They disembarked in '45.
  And no one spoke and no one smiled;
  There were too many spaces in the line.
  And gathered at the cenotaph;
  They all agreed with hand on heart
  To sheath the sacrificial knives.
  
  But now she stands upon Southampton dock
  With her handkerchief and her summer frock
  Clings to her wet body in the rain.
  In quiet desperation, knuckles white upon the slippery reins
  She bravely waves the boys goodbye again.
  
  Ooo, Maggie what have you done?
  
  And still the dark stain spreads between
  His shoulder blades -
  A mute reminder
  Of the poppy fields and graves.
  
  When the fight was over
  We spent what they had made -
  And in the bottom of our hearts
  We felt the final cut.
  
  Floating down through the clouds
  memories come rushing up to meet me now.
  in the space between the heavens
  and in the corner of some foreign field
  I had a dream.
  
  I had a dream.
  
  Goodbye Max.
  Goodbye Ma.
  After the service when you're walking slowly to the car
  and the silver in her hair
  Shines in the cold November air,
  you hear the tolling bell
  and touch the silk in your lapel.
  And as the tear drops rise
  To meet the comfort of the band,
  you take her frail hand
  and hold on to the dream.
  
  A place to stay,
  Enough to eat,
  Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street,
  Where you can speak out loud
  About your doubts and fears
  And what's more:
  No one ever disappears,
  You never hear their standard issue
  kicking in your door.
  You can relax on both sides of the tracks
  And maniacs
  don't blow holes
  in bandsmen by remote control
  And everyone has recourse to the law
  And no one kills the children anymore.
  And no one kills the children anymore.
  
  Night after night
  Going round and round my brain
  His dream is driving me insane!
  In the corner of some foreign field
  The gunner sleeps tonight;
  Whats done is done -
  We cannot just write off his final scene.
  Take heed of his dream.
  
  Take heed of the dream.

Finally got around to buying WYWH this past week, and I love it. Absolutely love it! So now I have DSOTM, The Wall and WYWH. What should I buy next?

Get either Momentary Lapse Of Reason or Division Bell for typical Floyd music.
Off the wall (no pun intended) sounds... Animals, Meddle, or Atom Hearted Mother.

Check out some solo recordings also:
David Gilmour - About Face or On An Island
Roger Waters: Radio Kaos and The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking

Animals!!!!!! There is no doubt!

Yep, I second that. Animals is pretty great.

Animals is a really under appreciated album, but it's the PF album I find myself listening to the most. There are zero hit singles from it, but that really doesn't matter. The lyrics are great (nothing about Syd or Waters' parents!), and David's guitar work, particularly on Pigs(Three Different Kinds), is utterly breathtaking. A word of warning, Animals sounds nothing at all like the three PF albums you have....Don't expect WYWH Part II.

The Division Bell is very similar in style to WYWH, and "High Hopes" is probably the best song the band ever did. It's a very evocative, mature album, and I think it was a fitting way for the band to go out.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason has gotten a lot of criticism for being little more than a David Gilmour solo album and the sound is "too '80s". I'm a huge Gilmour fan, and I don't believe anything can be too '80s, so I like the album. It's really, really strong on guitar; arguably David's best work. I'd put both "Sorrow" and "Yet Another Movie" as two of the better PF songs.

About Face is one Hell of an album, but definitely not PF, and very '80s sounding. It still gets heavy rotation in my CD player.

Thanks for the recs, everyone.

Animals.

dlb...

get the Roger Water's In the Flesh dvd. awesome.

In The Flesh is decent, I suppose, but I guess it really depends upon where your loyalties with the band lie. Waters wrote some amazing lyrics, but he's not much of a singer or a musician.

The first thing that captivated me about PF's music was the music, the second thing was David Gilmour's ethereal voice. Now don't get me wrong, the lyrics are good too (and certainly important), but a song like "Wish You Were Here" would absolutely not be as good with any other guitar player or any other singer, period. Waters' lyrics are brilliant, but Gilmour gives that song life. Like Lennon and McCartney, Plant and Page, or even Roth and Van Halen, the sum are far greater than the parts. Again, for me, Gilmour is a far, far better musician, vocalist, and even a better songwriter. As much as I love "classic" Floyd, I don't think Waters has ever written anything nearly as good as either "Sorrow" or "High Hopes". Both songs can reduce me to a blubbering mess, nothing Waters has written has ever touched me so deeply ("Wish You Were Here" being damn close though).

For me, there is utterly no comparison between Waters' and Gilmour's efforts post-Floyd. I find Waters' stuff nearly unlistenable (with a few exceptions), Gilmour's work, both with and without Floyd is staggeringly brilliant.

IOW, you miss nothing listening to Floyd-sans-Roger....The lyrics are still there, and the rest of the band is intact. Listening to Waters' band doing Floyd songs seems more like watching a very talented cover band. I cringe watching other players butchering David's beautiful solos during "Comfortably Numb", and listening to some other singer trying to ape David's serene voice.

But hey, that's why they make 31 flavors.

For me, Wright, Waters and Gilmour are all great singers in their own way, but it's Gilmour that makes the band extraordinary.

Absolutely.

for me, i like them all. ok...roger waters is on my marriage list and david gilmour isn't but...that don't mean i don't like him. wouldn't've been floyd-oid without him.

i just have a thing for bass players.


(and i married a lead guitarist, go figure! )

Well, I'm not looking to marry anyone from Pink Floyd.

Then again, there was the hot backup singer with the short dark hair on the Momentary Lapse tour......

I agree that none of any of their solo work will ever add up to the chemistry of Pink Floyd as a whole. That being said, though, I think that (for me ), the fact that the Waters-led efforts are the best Pink Floyd recordings is a pretty good indicator of who is the better songwriter. The Wall, while having some very important Gilmour contributions, was entirely conceived by Waters, and his writing is what makes it what it is. The same goes for Animals, on which Gilmour only has one songwriting credit. Now, lyrics are to me more important than the music, so I think that Waters's solo efforts are superior to Gilmour's, which seem kind of lifeless to me in comparison to the energy and emotion of Waters's writing. As I've said before, I despise the post-Waters Floyd incarnations. Gilmour solo is pretty good, though. I actually have an album of his from the 1970s. Pretty dece.

Yeah, well that's the difference there. I've listened to post-Floyd Waters stuff, and I think his writing went way downhill. Hell, The Final Cut's writing wasn't as good as the stuff that came before.

But that's my bias. As I've said before, I've always found Waters' writing to be relatively simplistic; either about Syd or his parents, and that just gets tiresome to me. What saves those songs (and albums) for me is the brilliant musicianship around those lyrics, and Gilmour's delivery of them.

Now, this is not to say that I think Waters' writing is crap. Far from it. But I do think his style is a bit too.....obvious. Gilmour's writing is far more allegorical, more emotional, and (I know I keep using this word) evocative.