Where (not) to Start: Pink Floyd

[@Steve-q6l4v]

Start at the beginning, its danmn near allgood.

[@albarton7189]

Back in 1970 or 1971 at the age of 15 I bought Atom Heat Mother because I liked the cover, even though I never heard anything by the band at that time, and was immediately hooked. To this day AHM and Meddle are in my top ten favorite albums of all time. I never really got into the Waters era albums. I prefer Gilmour’s and Wright’s solo debuts over the Wall and the Final Cut. I really like the Endless River and listen to it often. I enjoyed listening to your perspective on the band.

[@Youraveragejoe2004]

I started with “in the flesh?” “Another brick in the wall pt 2” “comfortably numb” and “waiting for the worms” a few years ago when my dad played them in the car and I fell in love with the music immediately. Especially with “in the flesh” man I love the instrumentals in that song

[@agenticmark]

IF you are anti war and anti corruption - Animals - The Wall - The final cut.

[@jasoncampbell3955]

Start with Dark Side or Wish You Were Here.... Piper or Barrett material, Atom Heart later... My favorite is Animals, Meddle is quite good as well.

[@stvartak7164]

Animals was the peak of all their talents: Waters the master of cynical poetry and bluesy grooves, Gilmour the guitar virtuoso and musical genius, Wright flavoring everything with unparalleled hypnotic weirdness, and Mason just being his perfect self. They were never better.

[@TaxPayingContributor]

Several species of small animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict. You will want to know how See Emily Play turns into the Great Gig in the Sky.

[@paulkyriazopoulos9052]

Do Not Start any Pink Floyd Live, must start studio Versions.

[@stvartak7164]

Absolutely right. No live performance captures their sonic brilliance. But once you know their catalogue, hearing their live performances becomes very interesting.

[@willstooksbury1477]

Idk i feel like live at Pompeii would be a good start

[@joannetelling]

Have you actually compared the studio version of Careful With That Axe Eugene with the live version on Umma gumma?

[@willstooksbury1477]

@@joannetelling yeah honestly Pink Floyd are a better live band than studio they have so many songs that just go in such unique directions live that would not be possible in the studio. Astronomy Domine, set the controls, cymbaline, green is the color> careful, set the controls, scaucerful, one of these days, fat old sun, ahm, (embryo), echoes, time, money, any color you like, shine on, have a cigar, dogs, pigs, sheep, another brick, comfortably numb, run like hell, marooned, and high hopes are all better live than there studio versions. Tho they still have great studio songs

[@brianjames5685]

I agree Meddle is a great start. Maybe Animals comes pretty close? Still loving the channel. The "where not to start" ship already sailed for me as I have all of it up to and not including momentary lapse of reason. Definitely don't start with the song "several species of furry animals gathered...". Unless you've been eating special shrooms lol.

[@MicrophonicFool]

Some would say perhaps Mushrooms is the place the start no matter what you start listening to

[@agenticmark]

@@MicrophonicFool amen brother, amen

[@jimhitchcock5837]

Many moons ago, me with three of my cousins, (somewhat under psychedelic influences) parked our car in the middle of the Wawona Tunnel in Yosemite, put a couple of home speakers on top of the car, cranked up 'Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict' and started walking up the tunnel, the song echoing behind us. It was glorious 😎

[@joeywisedrums]

@@MicrophonicFoolmushrooms are dangerous, do dmt

[@MicrophonicFool]

@@joeywisedrums I do

[@agenticmark]

Waters was the best led floyd Animals The Wall The Final Cut Followed by DSotM and WYWH (the two where the whole band was working together) Followed by Dave's era (post wall) Followed by the Syd days...

[@manonthemoog]

I think you are a bit off by saying On the Run was their first example of Space Rock. You are talking about the band that was hired by the BBC to jam along with live footage of the moon landing. How about ASTRONOMY Domine? Saucerful of Secrets. The middle of Echoes....just to name a few. You missed Atom Heart Mother entirely. Say what you like about the suite, the other side is very nearly as good as Meddle. The band doesnt agree however. They call it a "detour." They took a few of those. I witnessed some of the last tours, what I call the Pink Floyd on Ice era. There were too many musicians, too many backing tracks to sync the playing the video too. Gilmour's solos were often note for note similar to the albums but what could he do? Play a better solo in Comfortably Numb?. My favorite parts were the spots reserved for Rick to do his thing. They turned off all the machines, turned off the video and let him improvise. It dawned on me that this band went from wholly improvised sets in clubs to enormous shows with no ability to stretch out otherwise something will fall out of sync.

[@zippgunn1091]

Your point is well taken; what I meant was that On The Run was the first example that I could think of that was on a massive hit record which the earlier Floyd albums weren't really. I'm sure if I think about it I can think of earlier ones but whatever...

[@gbsailing9436]

Hopefully the next time you view your analytics (which you admittedly said was a rare event - unfortunately) there will be a bump in the graph or a standout numerical digit that indicates that I could NOT get past the 02:00 minute mark and/or WHY!!! FFS man get to the point!!!

[@willstooksbury1477]

Albums not to start on are umma gumma, Final Cut, momentary lapse of reason, and endless river

[@joeywisedrums]

Meddle is the way

[@michaelayliffe7238]

Play Observed by Clouds and side A of Meddle. Get them to lay on the floor and play Shine on you Crazy Dimond as a 20-minute track. Show them the live8 reunion video.

[@agenticmark]

ok so you are just a dave gilmour fan and dont even know about pre waters era....

[@flatwave99]

There is no pre-Waters era in Pink Floyd.

[@jakejito2123]

"I don't consider The Wall to be a Pink Floyd Record" That's the end of the video for me. Not going to be able to take anything else you say seriously. "The Wall is a Roger Waters solo album". Yeah? Well that doesn't look too good for the rest of the band, because Pink Floyd has released 3 albums since their split with Roger Waters, and The Wall alone has sold more copies than all 3 of them combined. You said The Wall "only did well because it had the name Pink Floyd on it". Really? Why didn't the band ever even sniff the same success after Roger was out? They kept the name, didn't they? You've really got this all twisted. You say The Wall relied on the Pink Floyd name to boost it's sales, but in reality it's the 3 albums released after Roger left that needed a boost from name recognition to sell even decent numbers. The real reason The Wall has outperformed all 3 of those albums combined, is that is has more great songs than all three of them combined. Simple. Many people have bought into the narrative that Roger Waters was an insufferable ass, and as such he was entirely to blame for the way things went. I only know that I wasn't there, and things are usually not as cut and dry as that... One thing I know for sure about this, is that Roger Waters was a musical genius in his prime, and we absolutely would not even know who Pink Floyd is if it wasn't for him. Maybe he was a jerk, but I'm too busy appreciating the art he gave us to concern myself with speculations about his relationship dynamics. To anyone else out there who might happen to read this, don't listen to this pretentious snob. The Wall is an amazing Pink Floyd album, and there is absolutely nothing else like it. If any album under the Pink Floyd name is a "Roger Waters solo", then it would most definitely be The Final Cut, which is an extremely underrated album. I'm guessing this genius thinks it's garbage...

[@paulkyriazopoulos9052]

I agree "The Final cut" is a Roger Waters album, The Wall has too many David Gilmore influence and great guitar solo's for it to be just Roger Waters album, "Comfortably numb" and "Hey You" guitar solo's to name a few.

[@agenticmark]

@@paulkyriazopoulos9052 sorry, but the final cut had a lot of dave, just not his lyrics or singing (except the last track) - it also has some of the best piano work from Wright. But he was just a "contractor" at the time. And it has some great mason drums (although he couldnt play the odd time signatures and was replaced).

[@flatwave99]

Roger Waters couldn't tune his own bass.

[@stevejohnson2021]

Illuminating, as always. I had no idea the Nick Mason record existed.

[@zippgunn1091]

It's basically a Carla Bley record in disguise with Chris Spedding and Robert Wyatt contributing as well. Probably my favorite Floyd solo disc...

[@Cyniq5Valenz305]

I think your take on The Wall is interesting. I've always loved it but I think it's overrated and ppl seem to be blind to its flaws. for one thing, it has too many songs where Roger is singing. I think some Roger-sang songs are really good, like San Tropez, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, and even a few songs in The Wall. Thing is, Roger is singing with a jazzy, cool voice in a lot of them, he was younger in San Tropez and Shine, and he is often harmonizing with Gilmour and sometimes Wright. But overall, the dude isn't that good of a singer. At least nowhere near as good as Gilmour. Especially now that he's old. I mean the way the guy sings these days sounds like the dude has throat cancer or something. He isn't even optimizing or changing his style to suit is capabilities, like Gilmour, who still sings awesome, despite loosing some of his signature vocal gruffness. Roger sounds like a British Barney sometimes. There are a few songs on The Wall that should've been cut or sang by Gilmour, or Gilmour and Waters should've harmonized like in Another Brick In The Wall Pt.2. Songs like Vera should not be on the album. It's just boring and doesn't add much to the album. Songs like the cut version of Empty Spaces shouldn't have been cut either. The guitar solo on Mother should've been a bit longer, like it is when they perform it live. It's also a shame that Wright was fired, because I'm sure if Wright wasn't fired, the album would've sounded a lot better, even though it still does have some of his timbre in it. But although this is pretty much a Roger album with hardly any influence from any other band member aside from Gilmour (but only when it comes to his singing, his guitaring, and the writing of only a couple songs). And even though it's a really good album, it has alot of problems. The Final Cut is a dramatic album that's just too sad for my liking. I also can tell just my listening to the lyrics and how it beats you over the head with its ideas by being too direct and not-so-subtle, that Gilmour had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the writing of any of the songs and the whole thing was just written by Roger. I'm not saying that all the good songs from Floyd in the past were written by Gilmour, but I'm just saying there's a reason why songs like "Dogs" in the Animals album were rewritten ahundred times and the album credits both Gilmour and Roger as its writers. Roger wrote the basic lyrics and Gilmour critiqued and likely edited the lyrics around.

[@doscwolny2221]

All opera's have too many songs. If you view it as an opera and not a rock album it really is brilliant. It's not even close to my favourite Floyd Album, it's dour and burlesque in places but not over rated. I don't go to theatres for the same reason. I hate musicals..

[@diamonddavefuller6136]

Gilmour refused to sing many of the songs on The Wall because he felt they were too personal. It’s probably very autobiographical on Roger waters life. Great band none the less.