pink floyd

tension_on_the_wire

2008-12-01 03:42:20 UTC

Which Pink Floyd album is the best?

Amused to Death! NO competition!
Now..... which one was Pink?

It is indeed a great album and a fave, but I would not have called it
a Pink Floyd album.
--tension (running and hiding behind the Wall)

t'is my view that Floyd were always heading in a certain direction.....
exploring the inner consciousness.... The direction that Roger's lyrics
took the band whilst he was the holding the pen is what's turned them into a
band unlike no other. Darkside opened them up to the masses - Amused to
Death is Darkside Pt2. No question about it. It's aimed at the deeper
thinker.... 14 years since getting my first copy, I can still hear / find
new depths! Just like Darkside!
ATD IS DSotM pt2! It just happens that Pink found a new Floyd in order to
make it........... whilst the Floyd pretended to be Pink......:)

I used to agree with what you are saying about this album because I do
think that it represents the best of Roger Waters cynical social
message, and there was a time when I thought that the Wall was the
epitome of Pink Floyd's work and the direction it was headed.

But long years after the split, I came to see something else. The
progression of albums after Dark Side showed the clear and heavy hand
of Roger Waters growing more influential, in the lyrics especially,
and in a certain morose atmosphere that pervaded the music. These
influences got stronger and stronger, and it is now my opinion that it
was (amongst other things, of course) one of the major forces that
tipped the scales into disequilibrium in that band. There was
becoming so much Roger Waters in the band, and not much of everybody
else, who did have good things to contribute (I give you Ummagumma as
the best example for demonstrating individual styles and influences)
that in the end, it was right for Roger Waters to leave and continue
his style solo, since he clearly did not need the others to express
his own self. What he left behind him, however, was the freedom for
the other three to explore their own styles which were infinitely less
melancholy, more optimistic, and more lyrical (in the musical sense,
not the lyrics sense).

If Pink Floyd incarnation number one had stayed together, it is my
opinion that we would have no Pink Floyd at all, but just one band
with a bunch of session players playing Roger Waters music, sort of
like he is now, as you pointed out quite correctly. Fortunately for
us all, however, they split, and in my opinion, a better decision was
never made in rock music. Now, we have three bodies of works: (God,
forbid, a list!!)

1) Incarnation number one, as the phenomenon it was.
2) Solo Roger Waters "creative genius of Pink Floyd", as his tour
styles him, has given us all the rest of what in him lies, and it is
good, and it is Roger Waters, just as the Wall was primarily Roger
Waters, not really all of Pink Floyd.
3) Pink Floyd without Waters, which gives us an entire body of work
we would never have seen if Waters had been permitted to continue
drowning it out.

And though Waters work is excellent, and socially uber-conscious, and
observant and all of it, I am really of the opinion that it was not
until after he was gone from Pink Floyd that they had the space to
work on, and perfect, that fantastic wall of sound which makes lyrics
almost insignificant. I much prefer to have the both, rather than
just the one. The only time rock was able to have its cake and eat it
too.

--tension