Wish You Were Here - The Pink Floyd + Solo Thread

[McParadigm]

I saw Waters in 2001 here in argentina. Stadium show but before he went huge with the Floyd shows. He did a lot of ATD, and it was awesome...felt like it was still a creative force.

Then i saw him playing Dark Side and i loved because its my favorite Floyd album but not the same. And i didnt went to the The Wall shows, but i had the feeling he become the parody he escaped for so long. Huge, huge shows. Very successful, but overall it felt like an old thing.

Was 2001 the In the Flesh tour? I saw that as well. Fantastic.

[McParadigm]

If someone told me they stopped Smell the Roses after 60 seconds because it was derivative shit, I'd believe it. If someone who stayed with it to the end said it was one of their favorite of the year, I'd believe that too.

[VinylGuy]

I saw Waters in 2001 here in argentina. Stadium show but before he went huge with the Floyd shows. He did a lot of ATD, and it was awesome...felt like it was still a creative force.

Then i saw him playing Dark Side and i loved because its my favorite Floyd album but not the same. And i didnt went to the The Wall shows, but i had the feeling he become the parody he escaped for so long. Huge, huge shows. Very successful, but overall it felt like an old thing.

Was 2001 the In the Flesh tour? I saw that as well. Fantastic.

yeah, that one. Amazing show.

[PHATJ]

Yeah, it reminds me of Amused To Death. Thats my favorite Waters album.

Yeah same

Amused to Death is a phenomenal album. Easily my favorite solo Roger album. I actually rank it up there near some of Floyd’s Best albums too. I didn’t get to see the tour, but the DVD has been played countless times in my house.

I haven’t listened to the new album.

[McParadigm]

Recommended.

[PHATJ]

The couple of songs that I have heard from the new album have sounded like boring retreads of songs from long past. I assume that hearing them within the context of the album could totally change that. And the songs I heard might just end up being my least favorites on a great album, that’s totally possible. But I can say that hearing them definitely didn’t make me excited to buy it. And then seeing Roger’s show last summer didn’t help. Therefore I haven’t.

[AndySlash]

I liked Water´s new album. Only listened twice but it was alright.

It's super derivative of his earlier work (its pretty literally Amused to Death doing a decent Dark Side of the Moon impression)

i like this description. biggest issue i had with the new record was the non-musical bits/effects didn't really add anything to any of the songs, making it even more apparent that there was an effort to recreate the 'sound' of a roger/floyd album rather than using those parts to add any sort of meaningful context or resonance to those songs. it's really the only album in his/their catalog that completely fails at this.

roger once called a momentary lapse of reason a 'pretty fair forgery' of pink floyd and, well, now his newest album is too. i like it a lot, and will continue to praise it whenever i can - it's certainly well worth many listens. but for the first time in his career, really, he wasn't bringing something different to the table. perhaps nearly 20 years of touring mostly on old material will do that to a person.

[McParadigm]

I agree that Roger’s history props up, and occasionally overwhelms, the new. And the soundbite transitions are almost comically self-parodying here. But I also think that those qualities which typically would bother me (the sometimes very literal recreation of past glories) ultimately bother me not at all, because…

1. The songwriting of these recreations is often nearly equal to the moments they borrow from, and…

2. ...because the album feels like an intentional culmination of those old stories….Dark Side, Animals, The Final Cut, and Amused to Death. Like, those records were warnings, and they went unminded, and now this one is a straight up call for revolution. The callbacks therefore generally feel appropriate to me, because those albums were about struggles that never reached closure. They’re like wounds that have now turned septic. The album works for me exactly because it uses Roger’s own history to anchor this moment’s struggles to the inhumanities and indifferences of the past 50 years. It refuses to divorce today from history. And it pairs that referenced history with an incredible amount of skin in the game…and a truly admirable amount of innocent rage…for an album by someone in their mid-70’s.

It also, purely in terms of production, sounds gorgeous, and the backing collaborators are fucking phenomenal. The playing, the tones ….there are moments here that are the most like Pink Floyd that any Pink Floyd alum has managed to sound since breakup, which oddly helps it feel less derivative and more remarkably fresh and exciting to me in 2017.

It’s interesting to me that Roger still so perfectly captures moments that haven’t quite happened yet…or which are embryonic, at the time of his writing. Is This the Life was recorded over a period of something like seven years. Even the absolute very last overdub recordings couldn’t have happened later than a month or so after the election. Listening to it on the walk to work today, it struck me that it all sounds like it was written in November, 2017 or so. It’s a pitch perfect historical document for a moment that happened after it was recorded.

I don’t know how anyone doesn’t fall into it, when that piano flickers across the opening of Wait for Her.

[AndySlash]

speaking of wait for her, he did finally debut that closing suite of songs from the new album at his last show of the most recent tour.

[McParadigm]

Picture a seat on a private plane.
Picture your feet nailed to the floor.
Picture a crew who are clearly insane.
Picture no windows. Picture no doors.

I'm curious what I'll think of this record when my context is divorced from the moment in history.

[Birds in Hell]

They're selling cheap(ish) tickets to Roger's show here next week, I guess sales are slow.

Thinking about going along.

[Sgt. Crackpot]

I went to The Wall tour he did a few years ago, it was amazing. Highly recommended.

[LetMeSleep]

I saw him in 2011. It was pretty great.

[McParadigm]

It’s fun to watch that gorgeously shot Wall documentary/concert movie and see Roger have every bit as much fire up his ass about the state of the world then as anybody does in 2018.

[bart]

You know, Animals is a pretty darn good album.

[liebzz]

You know, Animals is a pretty darn good album.

Yes! While I enjoy many Pink Floyd albums, this and Dark Side of the Moon are the two that stuck with me the most.

[Teeeeeekay]

Meddle > DSOTM / Animals

That’s all I need.

[i got bugs]

They're my 3 favs n all incredible

[evenslow]

Totally agreed. Those 3 are absolute top of the pops Pink Floyd.

[Jammer XCI]

I'd swap Dark Side for Wish You Were Here but those are my top 3 too.

Dark Side is a solid 4th though. Animals is always going to be #1 though, that one never gets old.