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The_Jester View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 30 2010 at 16:28
For me, the fall of Pink Floyd began when they became more comercial. It began to become comercial when Dark Side of the Moon was realesed. Even if there were good albums including Dark Side of the Moon after it, the band started to make comercial things and lead to the fall of Pink Floyd.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 30 2010 at 19:25
Floyd's got ups and downs and they started too bad by four or five bad albums one by one at the beginning.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 03:14
Artistically the fall started when Syd lost it. From then on, what we got was a watered-down version - And don't point out to me how successful they were in selling albums. If you're going to say that commercial success equates to artistic value, then I won't believe another word you write.

I still really like what the band did after Syd by the way, but it pales by comparison to what would have been possible had the Barrett mind not flipped to the dark side.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 03:23
Originally posted by ferush ferush wrote:

Floyd's got ups and downs and they started too bad by four or five bad albums one by one at the beginning.
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 03:41
Originally posted by someone_else someone_else wrote:

Originally posted by ferush ferush wrote:

Floyd's got ups and downs and they started too bad by four or five bad albums one by one at the beginning.
 
QuestionConfusedWacko

If I correctly understand, Ferush means

The Piper At The Gates of Dawn
A Saucerful of Secrets
More
Ummagumma
Meddle

Five bad albums? 
I stand with Roger Waters, I stand with Joan Baez, I stand with Victor Jara, I stand with Woody Guthrie. Music is revolution
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 05:05
It really depends on what you call "a fall" - if we consider A Momentary Lapse Of Reason as being the nadir of their entire career (as some here suggest) then we have to take into account that it was a multi-platinum album that spurned tour that grossed £60M and a multi-plantimum live album (Delicate Sound Of Thunder). Critically and artistically it is not "up to the standard" of previous Floyd albums, but that standard is remarkably high for a band that had been in existence for 20+ years and had recorded 12 studio albums up until then - no other psyche/prog band had achieved that feat with that sustained level of success, 17 years after their first No.1 album (AHM). However, the relative success of AMLoR wasn't carried solely on the Floyd name either (unlike The Final Cut) - it was an album of its time and for that time it was actually a good one when compared to what else was being produced in 1987 by any band with Prog credentials (Rush, Marillion & Tull). It is easy to sit here in the relative comfort of 2010 and say it was a weak album, but from the perspective of 1987 it wasn't ... that we on the PA can rate Savatage's Hall Of The Mountain King as a "better" 1987 album is frankly laughable (and I love Savatage and HotMK) and is more a reflection of how we view AMLoR with respect to previous Floyd releases than how it stands up against releases by any other band in that year. We must remember just how dire 1987 was from a Prog perspective - Tull won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal album in '89 for their 1987 album Crest Of A Knave (not a bad album in itself either, but a long way short of being a good Tull album) - Marillion and Rush were being held aloft by "pop" singles success, not "prog" album sales (Hold Your Fire spurned three top 20 singles in the US, Clutching At Straws three top-30 hits in the UK) - Floyd sold AMLoR without radio airplay and without "hit" singles.
 
Many regard it as a solo Gilmour album, but musically it is a completely different product when compared to his previous solo albums and one that is more than worthy of the Floyd name (more so than the undeniably Water's driven Final Cut) - while Wright and Manson are present on the album practically in name only is somewhat irrelevant given that their presence in the studio was enough to motivate and inspire Gilmour and Ezrin to make it more than just a solo album, (especially in light of the ensuing legal battle with Waters during the recording).
 
 


Edited by Dean - December 01 2010 at 12:42
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 06:15
Originally posted by JeanFrame JeanFrame wrote:

Artistically the fall started when Syd lost it. From then on, what we got was a watered-down version - And don't point out to me how successful they were in selling albums. If you're going to say that commercial success equates to artistic value, then I won't believe another word you write.

I still really like what the band did after Syd by the way, but it pales by comparison to what would have been possible had the Barrett mind not flipped to the dark side.
...so you're saying they "fell" part way through Saucerful Of Secrets and that Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is the only ablum of any artistic merit.. It's a curious notion that's for sure - quite how Barrett would have moved the band forward into the 70s and beyond is something we cannot even begin to guess at - juding by his solo albums it's evident he wasn't moving in a Prog, Space-Rock or even Psyche direction at that time. Personnally I think that a Barrett Floyd would have been a casualty of the late 60s just like so many other Psyechedic acts where at the time and they would have been just a footnote in the history of rock.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 06:37
Two great posts Dean.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 06:49
yes they fell , with the fall of Berlin Wall !
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 06:54
Originally posted by The_Jester The_Jester wrote:

For me, the fall of Pink Floyd began when they became more comercial. It began to become comercial when Dark Side of the Moon was realesed. Even if there were good albums including Dark Side of the Moon after it, the band started to make comercial things and lead to the fall of Pink Floyd.
Another curious notion. Commerciality has always been the "bane" of Progressive Rock and "serious" musicians, but commercial success isn't the same as "selling-out". If what they produced was of little or no artistic merit, or failed to progress, be ground-breaking or experimental then I would have no alternative but to agree with you. But that isn't quite the case with Floyd - it is hard to describe a nine-part 26 minute "song", or an album with three tracks over 10 minutes, each as being in any way commercial. The Wall may have produced Another Brick In The Wall Part 2, but as an album in its entirety is it far from being commercial (musically or critically) or even that accessible. If you want to measure Floyd by the radio-play of two hit singles then so be it, but I struggle to see how that can reflect on the albums that they were lifted from.
 
If you are simply slating the chart success of DSotM as indication of their commercial saleability then that's also appears curious, since it was not their first bite at album chart success either - Atom Heart Mother got to No 1 in the UK (DSotM never did). With the exception of Ummagumma all Floyd albums upto and including DSotM contained short "pop" songs together with longer experimental tracks. Dark Side Of The Moon wasn't such a radical departure for them (compare it to the "soundtrack" albums like More or Obscured By Clouds for example).
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 07:00
Originally posted by octopus-4 octopus-4 wrote:

Originally posted by someone_else someone_else wrote:

Originally posted by ferush ferush wrote:

Floyd's got ups and downs and they started too bad by four or five bad albums one by one at the beginning.
 
QuestionConfusedWacko

If I correctly understand, Ferush means

The Piper At The Gates of Dawn
A Saucerful of Secrets
More
Ummagumma
Meddle

Five bad albums? 
 
Almost correct. Atom Heart Mother was released one year before Meddle. But that does not stop me from being flabbergasted ShockedOuch. I guess that Ferush's statement was meant to be just a provocation. I would give 3 to 5 stars for these albums.


Edited by someone_else - December 01 2010 at 07:05
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 12:22

They fell? Why just they fell? Abandoned members... Regret... Betrayal... Anger... Guessed, you might have just when.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 19:17
Every album before Dark Side of the Moon is, as I think, much more good than the rest of what they've made.
La victoire est éphémère mais la gloire est éternelle!

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 20:04
Originally posted by JeanFrame JeanFrame wrote:

...
I still really like what the band did after Syd by the way, but it pales by comparison to what would have been possible had the Barrett mind not flipped to the dark side.
 
You didn't finish the sentence ... dark side of the moon ... because Syd WAS the original Greatest Gig in the Sky ... go listen to the bootlegs that are around from before the release of that album!
 
And when you do, you will know that "Wish You Were Here" is total and utter ... disgusting ... crock ... mandated by the record company.
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 21:59
Originally posted by Tapfret Tapfret wrote:

In all honesty, I would have not really enjoyed The Wall had the movie not gone along with it. The Final Cut just sounded like outtakes from The Wall. 45 minutes of continuous whining by RW. Come to think of it, Animals doesn't do much for me. Wish You Were Here has the 3rd best campfire song ever. Dark Side would be fine if it wasn't so freaking overplayed. Meddle is the only one that I can't live without.
Overplayed? That's the understatement of our times. All the Philadelphia DJ'S playing the later Pink Floyd endlessly. The trippy dippy conspiracy mind driven hippie DJ'S with their cool and soft spoken syrup voice. You've got a friend in P.A. on their license plates. The FM becomes AM, then years later, no one remembers? Huh? What is their deal? Sick. Very sick because the next time you see these DJ'S who promote only the later Floyd, they are representing AC/DC. They don't care about the honest interest of the public. They only care about promoting what is already been contrived. Roger Waters is lucky that his songs which describe the agony of the British school system attracted all the airheads of western culture. Otherwise, he would have the financial status of Ron Geesin. So they leave an impression on the people of the eastern U.S. that Pink Floyd are icons of Prog or the ultimate Spaced out thing for the common drug influenced American kid to get into. If they played Ummagumma on a Philadelphia radio station during the daytime broadcasts, they would not only loose their job but probably get arrested by the art police. Plus, they just wouldn't get it anyway. Just because it feels like an album where one takes acid before listening, that doesn't mean it couldn't be taken as a pure experimental project.  

 Everybody has to come up with a description of the early Floyd. That description is DRUGS. As if to say that every musician or composer that wrote 20th century Avant-Garde HAD to have taken drugs. What's up with that? Don't you see how that influence has dragged society down and pushed them so far from the arts they can no longer see the light? It's the same as Jim Jones brainwashing to me. If most people are going to think the same then they might as well take the plunge right? After close to 30 years of this garbage,...it really feels that extreme. When Edgar Varese heard the traffic in the city through his window, he was inspired to write music. He created those car horn sounds and city noise through instruments. Roger Waters did the same on Ummagumma with unorthodox methods that created sounds. or sound effects. He didn't have to drop LSD to accomplish that. Christ, most people have it all wrong. You can blame that on the radio.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 01 2010 at 23:11
I think they started to go off the rails a little with The Wall.  Still like the album and the movie though.  And I'm still pissed that when I went to see the band on their Division Bell tour that it was an outdoor show it was raining we weren't allowed to bring in umbrellas and they were all basically confiscated.  I think the band did it personally. Angry
Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 02 2010 at 00:48
Floyd Never Fell and without The Floyd we would never had prog as we know it.!! All their albums are quiet fantastic.

Edited by darksideof - December 02 2010 at 00:50
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 02 2010 at 02:59
Originally posted by darksideof darksideof wrote:

Floyd Never Fell and without The Floyd we would never had prog as we know it.!! All their albums are quiet fantastic.
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I stand with Roger Waters, I stand with Joan Baez, I stand with Victor Jara, I stand with Woody Guthrie. Music is revolution
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 02 2010 at 09:44
Originally posted by octopus-4 octopus-4 wrote:

Originally posted by darksideof darksideof wrote:

Floyd Never Fell and without The Floyd we would never had prog as we know it.!! All their albums are quiet fantastic.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 02 2010 at 10:09
Great posts by Dean (as always).  It should be mentioned though that all members of Floyd had their sights set on commercial success (though maybe not Barrett, but we'll never know that for sure now).  However, they seemed to aim for that mostly in the business side, while the music remained completely in their control (they made sure of this fairly early on).  As Dean points out, you need to compare their albums to what was being released at the time.  This puts The Wall, and especially the Gilmour led era, into proper perspective.  As I've said, I wasn't crazy about those albums, but there was certainly very little as good as them at the time of their release (that I was aware of at the time, or that was considered "popular" music).

So, no, they never fell.  Also, Floyd is the best blend of commercial success and experimental music that there has ever been, in my opinion, and I'd challenge anyone here to name a better one.


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