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Any *early* Pink Floyd fans? (67-72 era)


Rooster_Ties

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26 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I'll put it on the list, then, thanks.

How does this early, pre-'Piper' version of "Interstellar Overdrive" float your boat, Jim??  This was recorded a good six months before the version from their first album (which I'll also include in the second YouTube clip below).  But this first one (16-minutes) is the early one...

 

And here's the version most people know (if they know any version), from Piper At The Gates of Dawn...

 

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That sounds ok, but sorry, not really a boat here to be floated...I got deep into Hendrix when I was, like 12-13 or so, and had dug the garage bands before that. Would have dug it then, for sure.

They do sound "ahead of their time", though, for sure. VERY.

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I lost interest when Dark Side came out partly because it got overplayed, especially in my college dorm. The two I play most are "More" and "Obscured By Clouds." "Ummagumma" was my intro so I always enjoyed the more avant garde PF. PF with Syd was kind of like the Beatles with Pete Best in that the core PF was Gilmore, Waters, Mason and Wright. Any deviations from that line-up weren't Floyd to me IMHO.

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43 minutes ago, Jazzmonkie said:

I lost interest when Dark Side came out partly because it got overplayed, especially in my college dorm. 

Now THIS I completely get! 

While I’ve been a huge Floyd fan since the late 70’s, I dismissed Dark Side for at least two decades and only came to truly appreciate it in my early 30’s. I simply found it overplayed, and overhyped. It wasn’t until the “it’s been on the Billboard albums chart for the last 5,137 weeks!”, and I stopped listening to Rock radio, that I was able to come to appreciate the genius of it on my terms. 

It’s their Sgt. Pepper, IMO. A true masterpiece that was forced down the throats of a rebellious lot as a masterpiece. 

I mean, PLEASE! Don’t fucking TELL me what is and isn’t a masterpiece. FUCK YOU! 

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I was a big fan of the Floyd up until and including Atom Heart Mother. I saw them live around 1970 (the set was similar to the live side of Ummagumma) and they were absolutely amazing. Much "jazzier" (ie improvising) than in their later stages. Not too surprising considering Nick Mason's proclivities to jazz (cf Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports with Carla Bley et al). I went off them after that. However, like Scott, after all the hype had died down a bit and I actually heard DSOTM (having resisted even hearing it) I was knocked out. This was most definitely their masterwork and will probably endure far longer than anything else they did.

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8 minutes ago, RogerF said:

I was a big fan of the Floyd up until and including Atom Heart Mother. I saw them live around 1970 (the set was similar to the live side of Ummagumma) and they were absolutely amazing. Much "jazzier" (ie improvising) than in their later stages. Not too surprising considering Nick Mason's proclivities to jazz (cf Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports with Carla Bley et al). I went off them after that. However, like Scott, after all the hype had died down a bit and I actually heard DSOTM (having resisted even hearing it) I was knocked out. This was most definitely their masterwork and will probably endure far longer than anything else they did.

You know, I'm going to make it a point to go back and revisit their early live material. When I heard it back in my late teens/early 20's, I just don't think my ears and mind were trained enough, open enough, to let it in. So I found it to be utter garbage and dismissed it right then and there. This was well before I even knew what Jazz or improvisation was about. So a revisit is definitely in order. 

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3 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

You know, I'm going to make it a point to go back and revisit their early live material. When I heard it back in my late teens/early 20's, I just don't think my ears and mind were trained enough, open enough, to let it in. So I found it to be utter garbage and dismissed it right then and there. This was well before I even knew what Jazz or improvisation was about. So a revisit is definitely in order. 

Suggest you start with the live album half of Ummagumma.

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40 minutes ago, felser said:

Suggest you start with the live album half of Ummagumma.

Especially the incredible live version of Astronomy Domine

But really all 4 long tracks are wonderful - plus they aren’t even the best live versions of what we’re often played pieces during that time. In my view as great as the classic mid-70’s trio of albums are, the earlier music is by a large margin more exciting to these ears and I felt the same way in the late 70’s when I first listened to Pink Floyd. I bought The Wall the week it was released and liked it for a few years. As time passed I really didn’t retain any interest in that album or The Final Cut.

I bought 3 of the 6 portions of the big box and this thread has me determined to spent more time with those releases. I need to focus more on the earliest of those which contain the more raw Syd Barrett stuff.

 

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I bought Ummagumma when it came out (I was always attracted to those "two for the price of one" packages; also, there was a big "buzz" about them from Rolling Stone and similar); really liked the live disc, rarely played the other (I remember an endless drum solo).  Never got to see the multimedia shows, which I've heard were great (Carnegie Hall, anyone?).  Also had the soundtrack to "More" and the earlier Syd Barrett releases.  This all obviously changed with DSOTM.  You couldn't get away from that in the college dorms, and I can't picture the music without an accompanying haze of pot smoke.  DSOTM was OK as a listening experience; I remember that was the album that people used to show off their stereos.  When WYWH came out, I saw the formula: reeeeeely slow songs (the better to get high to), stretching out the more minimal melodic ideas.  I lost interest in them after that, even though you couldn't get away from The Wall, as it was everywhere.  Roger Waters's politics...yecch (although David Gilmour's isn't much better).

Oh yeah: I had a few live bootlegs which were great.  Check out this (supposedly from Rainbow Theatre, February 1972):

 

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11 hours ago, Shrdlu said:

I had never heard of them until Eric Prydz (Swedish house composer) made a house mix of their Brick On The Wall piece, which he called "Proper Education". It was a big hit. An earler attempt, called "The Wall", has a nice groove.

 

I have a hard time believing this.  You literally had never heard of Pink Floyd at all?  Until a niche DJ did a remix that wasn't anywhere near as much of a hit as the original song, that most people likely have no idea even exists in the first place?  Really??

If you were at all awake and aware in the 70's (and 80's) you had to have at least heard of Pink Floyd, and likely heard one or two of their radio "hits".

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On 4/3/2019 at 2:20 PM, JSngry said:

He was always pimping the album where they were on the cover with an AEC-like array of instruments. Is this like that? Part of that Filmore thing sounds not unlike the end of Pangea(?) where the guitar synth is looping in and out. That has always gotten to me, so...who is the guitarist here, and maybe Pete Cosey had ears there too?

I'm just not that much into anything "rock", haven't been for a good long while, since...1970 or so. But I got the impression that this was more than just that.

I'll put it on the list, then, thanks.

A lot of the pieces that entered Pink Floyd's "book" in 1967-69 were avant-garde space rock jams (though I'd say that only by 1969 did they start doing justice to them) - barebones set pieces that gave the band plenty of room to experiment with sound and noise in a non-melodic way.  These guys might have been influenced by free jazz, but the links that were explicitly cited were to Stockhausen and to European free improv (specifically AMM).

I'm not a huge fan of watching movies of concerts, but I actually think LIVE AT POMPEII (from 1972), and the lengthy versions of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and "A Saucerful of Secrets" - give you an interesting perspective on why they weren't just influenced by avant-garde music but by avant-garde performance art more generally.

Also, the guitarist is David Gilmour.  The same guy who is known for tasteful, melodic, bluesy guitar solos on their megahit 1970s albums.

11 hours ago, Steve Reynolds said:

Especially the incredible live version of Astronomy Domine

But really all 4 long tracks are wonderful - plus they aren’t even the best live versions of what we’re often played pieces during that time.

Yes!!!  The UmmaGumma live album is a convenient, "widely distributed" way to sample this music, and is far from bad, but that if you want the *best* live Floyd from this era, that's not the place to go.

 

On 4/3/2019 at 2:51 PM, Rooster_Ties said:

How does this early, pre-'Piper' version of "Interstellar Overdrive" float your boat, Jim??  This was recorded a good six months before the version from their first album (which I'll also include in the second YouTube clip below).  But this first one (16-minutes) is the early one...

...

And here's the version most people know (if they know any version), from Piper At The Gates of Dawn...

I like these versions fine, but they are both vastly inferior to the versions of this song the band was recording in 1969-70.

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To Aggie, I understand your surprise, but rock music is not my cup of tea, and I haven't listened to much radio since the late 1960s, and none of my friends were into rock. I have concentrated on playing and listening to jazz, plus, my late wife was a classically trained violinist and pianist.

Eric Prydz is scarcely a "niche" muscian. His mix of The Wall is just as big a hit as Pink Floyd's original. I am just as surpised that you have never heard of him as you seem to be that I had never heard of Pink Floyd.

Anyway, when I heard Eric's hit, my son, who plays rock guitar, told me about Pink Floyd. They are quite good, tbough that genre is not for me.

 

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yeah, that part seems provably untrue.

otoh, I have no problem believing somebody not having Pink Floyd on their radar at all. There's a lot of compelling music in the world, then and now, and people will have priorities as to with what they do or do not engage. I myself have still never heard DSOTM in its entirety (with or without the Wizard of Oz), and heard a full album side of The Wall only once - on a Saturday afternoon in a psychiatric hospital where I was working as an aide on a "young adult" wing. Saturday was "play the record player" day for the patients. When everybody in the room started softly singing along with that brick in the wall song, I figured, ok, yeah, so...let me soon get home  and into something else...

Not a knock against PF or any other "rock" band. Just saying, some people, for whatever reasons, have just not cared about all that. And again, plenty of other music. Plenty.

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Nope, no reason. But even now, when you tell people that Rock Band ____ is somebody you've either never heard or heard of, too many times the reaction is, whoa, how could you not have heard THAT?!?!?!?!

Well, it's quite simple actually.

And bad enough as that type of reaction is in real time, it's even more annoying as time passes.

Popular Culture can become too easily devolve into a myopia of the majority. Myopia is not particularly healthy, no matter the affected population.

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41 minutes ago, JSngry said:

...heard a full album side of The Wall only once - on a Saturday afternoon in a psychiatric hospital where I was working as an aide on a "young adult" wing. Saturday was "play the record player" day for the patients. When everybody in the room started softly singing along with that brick in the wall song, I figured, ok, yeah, so...let me soon get home  and into something else...

Yeah, I bet being in a psych hospital with a bunch of patients singing "... we don't need no education, we don't need no thought control.." or whatever would be just a BIT disconcerting.

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23 minutes ago, felser said:

Yeah, I bet being in a psych hospital with a bunch of patients singing "... we don't need no education, we don't need no thought control.." or whatever would be just a BIT disconcerting.

Reminds me of when I saw Springsteen in 1978.  I was working in a record store and someone gave me a free ticket, but all around me were Wall St./hedge fund types who you know paid top dollar and then some to get tickets, singing along with Bruce: "Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!"  Uh huh.

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35 minutes ago, mjzee said:

Reminds me of when I saw Springsteen in 1978.  I was working in a record store and someone gave me a free ticket, but all around me were Wall St./hedge fund types who you know paid top dollar and then some to get tickets, singing along with Bruce: "Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!"  Uh huh.

I hear you, but Bruce live is hard to not join in.   You want to believe and sing along "Show a little faith, there's magic in the night" when he does Thunder Road.  I think of bopping along to "Born To Be Wild" back when I was doing trigonometry homework or whatever ca. 1968-69.

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1 hour ago, felser said:

I hear you, but Bruce live is hard to not join in.   You want to believe and sing along "Show a little faith, there's magic in the night" when he does Thunder Road. 

I have no problem not joining in, nor do I want to believe, nor do I not want to sing along. I just want it to stop, especially when it's in a room I can't leave.

I know there's people who feel the same way about music that I feel that way about, but dude, for me, the illusions behind "rock" pretty much ended when Hendrix died, Woodstock devolved into Altamont, and Grand Funk Railroad made it all too clear that going forth, "attitude" was going to be the whole game. Sure, exceptions here and there along the way, a few, but once I got into Coltrane & Ayler & then Bird & Sonny & Ornette, I really, really did not care any longer about "rock".

That was not quite 50 years ago, and I still like me some good pop music. But "Rock" is not about pop, quite often it mocks the notion of "pop". Well, ok, but what do they offer as an alternative? Attitude and lyrics that tell me what I want to hear? What else?

Nothing for me, that's all I can say about that. Nothing for me.

 

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I was an early Pink Floyd fan as it was happening, and listened with interest up to Dark Side of the Moon. That one got overplayed, was at every stoner party and in every stoner car and in every stoner home at the time and beyond, and I just didn't want to hear it. Wish You Were Here came along and was new and interesting for a while, and then it too became a boring thing heard over and over. Then Animals, rinse and repeat. I stopped both frequenting places I would hear these played and seeking out listening to them at that point and moved deeper and deeper into jazz and further and further away from most rock, really only keeping an ear to Hendrix who was a pinnacle of rock and soul for me.

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