UMMAGUMMA

I first heard this album sitting in my buddy's basement as an impressionable 17 year old pot and acid head. The only Floyd album I had heard prior to that evening was The Wall - that was another night when I walked into his house tripping on acid and The Wall movie was playing on the television. The movie moved me so deeply that I went out and bought every Floyd album (on cassette) that had been made and listened religiously and exclusively to Pink Floyd for the next couple of years. And the first one I picked up (because it was the first one I saw in the music store), was Ummagumma. I had never heard anything like it before. As I listened I pictured a band of long haired, drug induced, f@8*n crazy people standing on a stage in a small club in the sixties, with the lights turned down and starry, mellow lighting accompanying the spaced out music. I was blown away. Music has always been very central in my life, but nothing I heard prior to this had such an impact on me. They were the band that inspired me to look into the many different genres of progressive rock music. I would have rated this cd much differently all those years back, but after having heard so many other brilliant albums from other progressive bands like the Alan Parsons Project, Genesis, PFM, VDGG, etc. I now tend to compare it to other albums which were just as experimental but which were arranged and performed much better. This is definitely a band trying to find a sound. It would be about another 2 albums before they would find that sound that they became famous with - the background female singers with the oohs and aahhs, the soaring, melodic guitar solos, the hummable riffs, etc. Here is a young band experimenting and noodling with psychedelic soundscapes in smoke filled music halls. Not yet rich and famous. The live album is totally f#@n laid back. If you're gonna smoke a joint and listen to this cd, make sure it's at the end of the day and you have nothing to do. No energy kicks here. Just spaced out, mellow-ass shit. You won't want to get off the couch except to take the kids to the pool. The studio cd is weird. Broken into four parts, each part written by a different member of the band. Waters' and Gilmours' parts are the best (tracks 9 thru 13). The Sysyphus songs (from Rick Wright, the keyboardist) have a medieval quality to them, would have been a good soundtrack for the movie 300. And Mason's (the drummer's) songs, the Grand Vizier's Garden Party, could have been played by a three year old kid with no hands. Maybe this is a bit harsh, and I do like Nick Mason as a member of Floyd, but he's no Bill Bruford, that's for sure. Between 1973 and 1979, Pink Floyd made music that had not up till then, and still has not been equaled by any other band, in my opinion. If you love Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and the Wall, I encourage you to check out the earlier stuff from Floyd also, including Ummagumma. But I would start with their first, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. 3 stars. Essential for Floyd fans, not essential if you don't like Floyd's well known stuff.