Pink Floyd, 'The Wizard of Oz,' and me

At first I thought you were making a joke about the moon landing being filmed on a movie set. Nope! This is actually a really cool fact I hadn't heard before. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-moon-landing/

> When viewers in the U.K. gazed upon their television sets on July 21, 1969, they were witnessing history. Man was setting foot on the Moon for the first time, and providing the soundtrack was legendary rock band Pink Floyd.

> The BBC recognized how historically significant the Moon landing would be and planned its programming accordingly. Over a 10-day period the network provided more than 27 hours' worth of material that was about or inspired by the Moon landing. These included news reports, children’s shows and Moon-centric entertainment.

Our high school did a showing of this in our theater when I was a junior, circa 1996-1997.

It was an urban legend. Slight disagreements about which lion roar to start the album on. Reasons why each song correlated to the events on screen, etc.

I thought there were some coincidences, but hardly worked as a soundtrack.

Amazing that this guy wrote an article about it and seems somewhat in the dark about it!

    This legend was already going around college dorms in the late 1980s.

Absolutely, yes.

I heard it from older stoner-type kids while I was in high school in the early 90s in the pre-web. While not entirely possible, there is close to zero chance they heard it through digital means.

I hope we never get a definitive answer. I hope it stays a myth like the origin of "420".

Also, from the article:

    Hardly anyone knew about it,

lol, this was fairly common knowledge in my high school. I swear to god probably five different people told me about the Dark Side / Oz thing.

Going to have to call bollocks there. I first did this as a kid, with my dad when I was 8. I joined a bunch of folks at a movie theatre on Bloor, in Toronto, in 1993, right after I moved there in August. Though, where I grew up we called it the Dark Side of Oz.

"When the record was finished I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me and I remember playing it for my wife then, and I remember her bursting into tears when it was finished. And I thought, "This has obviously struck a chord somewhere", and I was kinda pleased by that. You know when you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else. And at that point I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a pretty complete piece of work", and I had every confidence that people would respond to it."

-Roger Waters

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/roger-waters-revi...

With those visuals, pretty much any psychedelic sound will work.

On a tangent, it’s interesting to me that 2001 was made before the time of fly-bys from Voyagers (by nearly a decade) so the fuzzy images of Jupiter were probably some of the best available at the time. In only the 40+ years since, we’ve had Cassini and Juno bringing even more details than Voyagers, and all of that imagery is so entrenched now that 2001’s fuzzy images look fake

I don't see how this lines up. the shifts in the music don't correspond to the scene changes.

That one is mentioned in teh article as one that "didn't take" but I agree it works well.

Whoever worked out how to light a fire must have been very popular for a while, and then rapidly lost ground to the person who gave it a name.

> The TGV clip now has a couple of partially unskipable ads that mess up the timing

There is a Firefox addon that manages to skip most embedded advertising.

Comfortably Numb is my favorite song, of all types. For me, David Gilmour's amazing guitar solos are the best part. Psychedelic rock is the genre and I don't know anyone else that sounds like this band. https://youtu.be/x-xTttimcNk

Listen to Dark Side of the Moon start to finish.

If you have and still don’t like Floyd, that’s ok.

They are amazing musicians, pioneers of psychedelic rock, modern studio recording, and storytelling through long play albums.

Imagine buying this LP in 1973 when there was far far less entertainment options in general. Fast forward to now and it still sounds fresh and modern and transports me somewhere else for an hour.

Pink Floyd is best experienced through whole albums. Take 45 minutes and listen to "The Dark Side of the Moon". Or, "The Wall", which could be called more "theatrical". Those are probably their two most celebrated albums, but there's more.

If you're just looking for "part of a song" to get you hooked, then maybe it's not for you. You don't need to be on drugs and I'd say it's combination of lyrics and music (but probably more music part, because they do have some great songs with few or no lyrics).

I don't do any drugs, never have. I've also never had alcohol. So I know you can enjoy Pink Floyd without being under the influence of anything.

I just love the music, the lyrics, the points being made. And I am a big fan of whole albums. I dont like singles much. I want songs that blend into each other, an hour long experience. That is why I like Pink Floyd so much.

> Do you have to be on drugs?

It helps. ;-)

IMO here are some of the more "accessible" Pink Floyd songs:

Money from Dark Side of the Moon

Wish You Were Here (title track)

Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2 (AKA We don't need no education) and Hey You from The Wall

I suppose different people appreciate different things about them, but for me, it's just the experience (for lack of a better word). It's the musical equivalent of being in the flow state, and tickles my brain the same way. The crescendo of Echoes or Brain Damage/Eclipse makes me feel the same way as when I find the perfect solution to a problem I've been working on. You can't link to part of a song and say "this is the epitome of Pink Floyd." There are certainly certain segments that are better than others, but to fully appreciate it, you have to have listened to the previous parts of the album. The songs build on themselves.

Some people like the lyrics, I think Roger Waters bloviates too much. Weed certainly makes it more enjoyable, but it isn't necessary.

The obvious masterpieces are Another brick in the wall and Wish you were here.

But let's say you don't like those two. Another great whole-life-story-of-a-person song is Time. It sums up a majority of people's lives. You go through your life trying to figure out what you need/want to do in life...and then it's over, you never figured it out. Great introspection song. Makes you ask yourself...

The first thing to realize is that there are 4 main phases of Pink Floyd, and can be considered different bands:

1) the Syd Barrett era. They were a psychedelic pop / experimental band, led by charismatic singer / songwriter / guitarist Syd Barrett. They had 1 album (Piper at the Gates of Dawn), and several singles. I like this era a lot. Try listening to Arnold Layne, Lucifer Sam, See Emily Play...

2) Middle period - after Syd went nuts, they brought in Dave Gilmour to replace him. Everyone tried their hand at writing songs, and it took some time to get their footing. This is a more introspective, laid back period, and when they did those sound track albums people are talking about. They were in the top 40, but not really stars yet. The culmination of this era was the movie Live at Pompeii.

3) Roger Waters era - bass player Waters wrote an entire album of songs about madness and alienation, this was Dark Side of the Moon, their most popular album, which propelled Pink Floyd to the top of the charts. Waters had developed into a genius song writer, but with each successive album, became more domineering and difficult to work with. These albums tended to be ambitious concept albums, dark and disturbing, in contrast to the laid back vibe of the previous era. The last 2 Waters albums, The Wall and Final Cut were essentially Waters solo albums, and at the end, half the band had departed.

3) Dave Gilmour era - Waters went solo, and expected the band to end, but Gilmour decided to bring back the 2 ousted members of the band, and continue as Pink Floyd. This period isn't very interesting IMO.

So my personal tastes: I find The Wall and most of the Waters-era albums kind of overpowering and negative. I prefer the Barrett stuff, as well as Live at Pompeii. YMMV...

I think people suggesting listening to a whole album are going down the wrong track. If you aren't already inclined to like what you have heard on the radio then the albums probably won't do it for you. I would just suggest listening to a greatest hits album. They have some amazing, world class songs, and then there are a lot that are not my cup of tea that are sound collage-adjacent and instrumentals that I do not enjoy.

For me it's the guitar solos and also the driving rhythms. At the time in the 70s there wasn't and had not been anything called metal and although Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were both big. The lyrics are also non-trivial. A lot of the music is what used to be called growers, i.e. they grow on you the more you listen to them. DSOTM, Animals, Wish You Were Here and The Wall, Meddle.

This is a funny comment, given how the linked article ended.

I think it’s more likely for it to help find the origins in USENET and fan newsletters.

You restart the album. I was party to a screening this way back in college and while there are some things that line up with the movie pretty well but it doesn’t seem like a lost soundtrack to the movie.

Roger Waters has been wearing that uniform at least since 1980's [0]. He becomes a fascist to criticize fascism not to advocate. It's like trying to cancel Charlie Chaplin for becoming a Fascist.

Back then he wasn't a critic of Israel and therefore nobody cared.

I'm a Jew and I don't think he is anti semitic. That's absurd.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5K9z1AerQw

Trying to distil that into something coherent - the central argument would be that Waters' show, which employs fascist iconography in pursuit of an antifascist message, is a bit near the knuckle in Berlin due to the city's history?

I mean, I guess I can see that but would point out it didn't seem to be an issue when he did a high profile, all-star rendition of the same piece in Berlin in 1990[0], and also he rejigged the show for recent Frankfurt gig, AIUI because he came to sympathize with the point in the paragraph above.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_%E2%80%93_Live_in_Ber...