Pink Floyd

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trans-chigley express
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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby trans-chigley express » 28 Apr 2022, 04:57

Mike Boom wrote:I can't listen to it, half the problem is everything is so damn slow and drawn out, everything drags at a funeral pace, and I really dislike Waters vocals, couple that with no really great songs, misses Richard Wrights keyboards, its a big nothing to me I'm afraid.


This is pretty close to how I feel about it. I remember being crushingly disappointed with it at the time but I must admit I've warmed to it more over the years but it still falls far short of what I expect from an album under the Pink Floyd name. I don't think it's any better or worse than the two albums that followed without Waters.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby trans-chigley express » 28 Apr 2022, 05:00

robertff wrote:Image


A1. Astronomy Domine 4:10
A2. See Emily Play 2:47
A3. The Happiest Days Of Our Lives 1:38
A4. Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2) 4:01
A5. Marooned 2:02
A6. The Great Gig In The Sky 4:40

B1. Echoes 16:30
B2. Hey You 4:39

C1. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun 5:20
C2. Money 6:29
C3. Keep Talking 5:57

D1. Sheep 9:46
D2. Sorrow 8:45

E1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-7) 17:32

F1. Time 6:48
F2. The Fletcher Memorial Home 4:07
F3. Comfortably Numb 6:53
F4. When The Tigers Broke Free 3:42

G1. One Of These Days 5:14
G2. Us And Them 7:51
G3. Learning To Fly 4:50
G4. Arnold Layne 2:52

H1. Wish You Were Here 5:21
H2. Jugband Blues 2:56
H3. High Hopes 6:59
H4. Bike 3:24



The most satisfying Floyd album? I think so.


.


For a 2CD compilation I think this does a pretty fine job. The song choice is good, the edits are well done and songs segue nicely. I sometimes listen to it on earphones when I'm on out and about.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 28 Apr 2022, 09:59

trans-chigley express wrote:
Mike Boom wrote:I can't listen to it, half the problem is everything is so damn slow and drawn out, everything drags at a funeral pace, and I really dislike Waters vocals, couple that with no really great songs, misses Richard Wrights keyboards, its a big nothing to me I'm afraid.


This is pretty close to how I feel about it. I remember being crushingly disappointed with it at the time but I must admit I've warmed to it more over the years but it still falls far short of what I expect from an album under the Pink Floyd name. I don't think it's any better or worse than the two albums that followed without Waters.




I much prefer the three albums that followed without Waters especially Division Bell, which I really like. The Endless River (the final mainly instrumental one) was also a good listen.


.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby trans-chigley express » 29 Apr 2022, 00:59

robertff wrote:

I much prefer the three albums that followed without Waters especially Division Bell, which I really like. The Endless River (the final mainly instrumental one) was also a good listen.


.

I always forget The Endless River. I have it and quite like it but haven't played it since the week I bought it. I should do.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 02 May 2022, 16:37

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David Gilmour About Face 1984
The band was on hiatus in 1984, with Roger never to contribute again, but we didn't know that at the time. Dave came up with his second solo LP before Waters could get his Pros and Cons record on the street, and though this didn't cause much of an impact at the time, I feel it's not really a lesser effort compared to his first album. Gilmour efforts tend to be of similar quality. He may never have made a classic, but all four are worthy for Floyd fans. His voice and guitar are what sells it, and there's plenty of both here. David is not an idea guy like Roger is. These records are song-based, not concept LPs. Waters albums are projects, Dave's are collections of tracks.

Wikipedia: "About Face is the second solo studio album by the English singer and musician David Gilmour. It was released on 5 March 1984 by Harvest in the UK and Columbia in the United States, a day before Gilmour's 38th birthday. Co-produced by Bob Ezrin and Gilmour, the album was recorded in 1983 at Pathé Marconi Studio, in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. The lyrics of two tracks, "All Lovers Are Deranged" and "Love on the Air," were written by Pete Townshend of the Who. Townshend's version of "All Lovers Are Deranged" appears on his solo album Scoop 3.

The album received positive reviews and peaked at #21 on UK Albums Chart and #32 on the US Billboard 200. Two singles were released: "Blue Light" peaked at #62 in the United States, while "Love on the Air" failed to chart. The album was certified gold by the RIAA. A remastered reissued CD was released in 2006 on EMI in Europe and Columbia for the rest of the world."

Main personnel
David Gilmour – lead vocals, guitar, bass, production
Jeff Porcaro – drums, percussion
Pino Palladino – bass
Ian Kewley – Hammond organ, piano (except for "Blue Light" sessions)

Additional personnel
Steve Winwood – Hammond organ on "Blue Light", piano on "Love on the Air"
Anne Dudley – synthesisers
Jon Lord – synthesisers
Bob Ezrin – keyboards, orchestral arrangement, production
Steve Rance – Fairlight CMI programming
The Kick Horns – brass
Luís Jardim – percussion
Ray Cooper – percussion
Roy Harper – backing vocals
Sam Brown – backing vocals
Vicki Brown – backing vocals
Mickey Feat – backing vocals
The National Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Kamen – orchestral arrangement

All lyrics are written by David Gilmour, except where noted; all music is composed by David Gilmour.

Side one

1. "Until We Sleep" 5:15
Party until you die seems to be the message to this uptempo tune. This sounds nothing like Roger's music, and even though it's a routine rocker, the change of pace from the dirges on The Final Cut are welcome to these ears. A synthesized almost-dance beat pervades. This is the eighties, after all, and Gilmour wanted some radio play (this would elude him, of course - but then Roger's solo stuff suffered the same fate). All things considered, not a bad way to begin the disc.

"Recording
The album was recorded with engineer Andy Jackson at a time when Pink Floyd's future was uncertain. It was mixed by James Guthrie at Mayfair Studios in London, England.

Gilmour said he wanted to take his time and make "a really good album" and "get the best musicians in the world that I could get hold of to play with me." Musicians on the album include drummer Jeff Porcaro, bass guitarist Pino Palladino, Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord, backing vocalists Roy Harper, and Sam Brown, orchestral arranger Michael Kamen (who had also worked on The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking and The Wall), and keyboardist Steve Winwood." - Wiki

2. "Murder" 4:59
An almost Dylan-like guitar motif, lyrics about killing a man, and a elaborate middle section detailing the act itself pretty much covers it. Again, I want to point out that David's and Roger's music sounds nothing alike, but both sound like Pink Floyd.

Wiki: "Murder" was an outcry by Gilmour about the senseless killing of John Lennon, a longtime musical peer and inspiration to him. Gilmour embellished the song with a solo fretless bassline (played by Pino Palladino), adding an edgy funk groove to the acoustic beginning of the song, leading to an instrumental bridge, where the song picks up in the speed of the beat with more electric instruments."

3. "Love on the Air" (Pete Townshend) 4:19
Pete wrote the words to this one, and I can almost hear him sing it. Of a more personal nature than what the member of PF usually write, its middle-of-the-road feel neither inspires nor puts me off. It's pretty average though.

"Gilmour collaborated with Townshend on the songs "Love on the Air" and "All Lovers Are Deranged," as Gilmour recalled: "I sent him three songs and he sent back three sets of lyrics. Two of them suited me well. One didn't. He did the two on About Face and he did the other one ['White City Fighting'] on his White City album." The lyrics for "Love on the Air" were written in a day, after Gilmour had asked for Townshend's help." - Wikipedia

4. "Blue Light" 4:35
An ever faster tempo than "Until We Sleep," with backing horns no less! Dave wants some radio play, and he's pulling out all the stops here. This 45 actually charted in the States, but I never heard it. Run of the mill, of course.

Wiki - Release
The album featured the single "Love on the Air," with lyrics by Townshend, and the disco-style single "Blue Light", later remixed by François Kevorkian; "Blue Light" was released, backed with "Cruise", on 13 February 1984, while "Love on the Air", backed with "Let's Get Metaphysical" on 24 April. "All Lovers Are Deranged" and "Murder" were released as singles for North American rock radio; the former reaching #10 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart."

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWPJr_ ... A&index=11

5. "Out of the Blue" 3:35
I like this one. A ballad illustrating the inevitability of pain/suffering. One could say it's about war possibly, I've never read anything about it so I couldn't say. As side one ends, one realizes it's another David record, and you're not gonna be blown away by any of the cuts, but then you're not offended by anything either.

"Cover art
The cover of the LP is a little wider than usual, approaching 12 1/2 inches. The inner sleeve bears lyrics and photographs of Gilmour, and exists in at least two variations. A sleeve for the UK Harvest edition has rounded corners and opens to the side; one for the USA Columbia edition has square corners and opens to the top, relative to the lyric text. Like the cover, the latter sleeve is wider than it is tall, and may not fit into the outer sleeve if turned 90 degrees. In one corner of both versions are printed the words "Fleudian slip," a play on the words "Freudian slip" and "Pink Floyd." - Wiki

Image Image

Side two

6. "All Lovers Are Deranged" (Townshend) 3:14
Another Pete-penned tune with better lyrics this time. I like the "love recalled is love reborn" theme, but the music is still pretty average to me.

Wiki: "Music and lyrics
"I think Pete [Townshend] feels some restrictions on what he would like to do with the Who, as I guess we all feel restrictions within everything we attempt [to do], just because of the types of personalities and role you've created for yourself. I know he's felt uncomfortable about certain things--- things he could express in solo stuff. For me, the restriction was the scale of what Pink Floyd had become more than anything. It's nice to get out and do something on a slightly different scale; go out and do theatres, which is not really a possibility with Pink Floyd until we get a lot less popular."

— David Gilmour"

7. "You Know I'm Right"
5:06
One of the more interesting pieces because of its conversational nature to Roger Waters, "You Know I'm Right" ambles along nicely, but fails to register as a great tune. I wonder if Rog was listening?

"You Know I'm Right" was written in a similar vein to Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" and was a dig towards Waters.

Live performances
Gilmour performed tracks from the album on his 1984 tour, and performed "Love on the Air" and "Blue Light" in 1985 as a member of Townshend's supergroup, Deep End, a recording of which became Townshend's live album Live: Brixton Academy '85. - Wikipedia

8. "Cruise" 4:40
A pretty melody for this anti-US missile song which, had I not read the background of, I would never have guessed its meaning. The reggae beat towards the end doesn't help.

Wiki: "Cruise" was about Ronald Reagan having cruise missiles stationed in Britain at the time.

Gilmour was later interviewed by Texas-based DJ Redbeard, on the radio program, In the Studio during which the focus was his 2006 third album On an Island. He commented on About Face saying that, "looking back on it, it has some great moments on there but the whole flavor of it is too '80s for my current tastes."

9. "Let's Get Metaphysical" (Instrumental) 4:09
This is a wordless guitar-laden number which sounds like no one else. I wish there were more stuff like this on the album actually.

Critical reception
Writing for AllMusic, critic Tom Demalon wrote of the album "The songs on About Face' show a pop sensibility that Pink Floyd rarely was concerned with achieving," adding that "About Face is a well-honed rock album that is riveting from beginning to end." - Wiki

Not sure about that, but we'll let it slide...

10. "Near the End" 5:36
We end with this slow number which sounds like it could be about Roger if you read closely...

Wikipedia - Unused track
Another piece of music written for the album was not used by Gilmour.

He asked Roy Harper and separately, Pete Townshend, to supply lyrics, but felt that those provided were not messages that he could relate to. Harper subsequently used the tune, with his lyrics, as "Hope", on his 1985 album, Whatever Happened to Jugula?. Townshend used it with his lyrics as "White City Fighting", which has a markedly faster tempo, on his 1985 album White City: A Novel, on which Gilmour plays."

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 02 May 2022, 18:41

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Roger Waters The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking 1984
In the interests of full disclosure, I'll admit to enjoying this more than both About Face and even The Final Cut. I can see why David, Rick and Nick chose The Wall over these songs back in the late '70s, but I feel this is an interesting concept with some cool tunes, and some fluid guitar playing from Eric Clapton. Much like the cuts on About Face, I never heard any of this on the airwaves, but by the mid eighties, corporate rock radio had become so staid and predictable, that playing new music even by old favorite artists was nigh impossible for DJs and program directors obsessed with statistics from listening parties of people filling out little cards explaining what they want to hear on the radio. The problem with asking people what they want to hear is that their answers are going to be predictable - they want to hear what they already know, not anything they're unfamiliar with. That's why FM jocks will play something from Dark Side of the Moon for the millionth time rather than a Pros and Cons track, or anything post-The Wall. They figure based upon the research, listeners don't want to know. That's why new music by bands or artists rarely gets a chance to be heard. Anyway, I digress...

Wiki - "The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking is the first solo album by Roger Waters; it was released in 1984, the year before Waters announced his departure from Pink Floyd. The album was certified gold in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America in April 1995.

Concept history and production
The concept was originally envisioned by Waters in 1977 and refined in the early 1980s. In its completed form, it rotates around a man's scattered thoughts during his midlife crisis. These are explored on a dream journey during which he takes a road trip through California, commits adultery with a hitchhiker he picks up along the way, attempts to reconcile with his wife by moving to the wilderness, and finally ends up alone but with greater insight into a common human compassion. Along the way he also faces other fears and paranoia.

The entire story is framed in real time as a fitful dream taking place in the early morning hours of 4:30:18 am to 5:12:32 am on an unspecified day. At the end of the dream, the man wakes up lonely and contrite and turns to his real wife for comfort, presumably having processed his crisis.

In July 1978, Waters played some of the music demos of what he had pieced together, but he also played parts of another album he was preparing titled Bricks in the Wall to the rest of his bandmates in the group Pink Floyd. After a long debate, they decided that they preferred the concept of Bricks in the Wall instead, even though their manager at the time, Steve O'Rourke, thought that Pros and Cons was a better-sounding concept, and David Gilmour deemed Pros and Cons stronger musically.

Well, the idea for the album came concurrently with the idea for The Wall – the basis of the idea. I wrote both pieces at roughly the same time. And in fact, I made demo tapes of them both, and in fact presented both demo tapes to the rest of the Floyd, and said "Look, I'm going to do one of these as a solo project and we'll do one as a band album, and you can choose." So, this was the one that was left over. Um...I mean, it's developed an awful lot since then, I think.

— Roger Waters"

Musicians

Roger Waters – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, bass, tape effects, production
Andy Bown – Hammond organ, 12-string guitar
Eric Clapton – lead guitar, backing vocals, Roland guitar synthesizer
Michael Kamen – piano, production
Raphael Ravenscroft, Kevin Flanagan, Vic Sullivan – horns
David Sanborn – saxophone
Madeline Bell, Katie Kissoon, Doreen Chanter – backing vocals
Andy Newmark – drums, percussion
Ray Cooper – percussion
The National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted and arranged by Michael Kamen

Actors (in order of appearance)

Andy Quigley as 'Welshman in Operating Theatre'
Beth Porter as 'Wife'
Roger Waters as 'Man'
Cherry Vanilla as 'Hitch Hiker' and 'Waitress'
Manning Redwood and Ed Bishop as 'Truck Drivers'
Jack Palance as 'Hell's Angel'
Madeline Bell as 'Hell's Angel's Girlfriend'

All tracks are written by Roger Waters

Side one

1. "4:30AM (Apparently They Were Travelling Abroad)" 3:12
Well, you know you're listening to a Roger Waters album when the first thing you hear are sound effects. There's that sense of theatricality so dominant in his music. I mean, just look at the list of "actors" above for a good indication of what I'm talking about. Much like the songs on The Final Cut, this starts off slowly, with his favored speak/sing thing. In fact, he's whispering here. LOL. But he can also be bothered to sing too, when the mood strikes him, so we have some of that. There's little that menacing in David Gilmour's music, but Roger loves that vibe.

"Bricks in the Wall, retitled The Wall, became the next Pink Floyd album in 1979, and Waters shelved Pros and Cons. In early 1983, Waters undertook the shelved project himself. The album was recorded in three different studios between February and December 1983 in London, the Olympic Studios, Eel Pie Studios and in Waters' own Billiard Room, the studio where his demos were constructed. The album features musical conductor Michael Kamen, the vocal talents of actor Jack Palance, saxophonist David Sanborn and rock and blues guitarist Eric Clapton." - Wiki

2. "4:33AM (Running Shoes)" 3:22
A bit of David Sanborn sax for you as well as the requisite backing choir of course, make this track more rockin' than the previous one. The tracks segue right into each other, so it's hard to tell where one ends and the next begins sometimes. The hazy nature of dreams suffuses the lyrics as Roger is with some woman with "Arabs at the foot of the bed" or something. As I mentioned before, he never shies away from ethnic stereotypes in his lyrics. The cinematic nature of these songs are appealing though. At least to me.

Wikipedia: "Roger's a very different sort of person [i.e. different from Eric Clapton or David Gilmour, described as easygoing]. I have tremendous respect for him. He's a very clever man, but he is very serious. When Eric and I toured with him, he wanted everything exactly the same as the record, which, unfortunately, kind of took the fun out of performing.

— Tim Renwick, guitar player"

3. "4:37AM (Arabs with Knives and West German Skies)" 3:03
Continues the themes of the previous number with Roger doing his different voices again. Slower, more meditative than before. There's the feeling he's exorcising demons like in The Wall. A nice bit of Clapton to leaven things out.

4. "4:39AM (For the First Time Today, Part 2)" 2:02
The guitar continues and sex is the order of the day in this short little ditty which sounds like the other numbers. I do like the playing though. Completely different vibe to Dave's songs. Waters pleading with his dream girl to "Stay with Me!" in an almost Lennon primal-scream timbre.

Notes on real time
The original album was released in 1984 on the traditional two-sided vinyl LP and cassette formats. In keeping with Waters' concept, there are five seconds missing between sides one and two to allow the listener to flip the record (or turn the cassette) in order to keep the second half starting at exactly 4:50 am as planned.

An unintended consequence of the album being released on CD a few years later was that this gap was lost due to continuous play, which moves the start of the second half back to 4:49:55 am, and the start of the final track, 5:11 am (The Moment of Clarity), back to 5:10:59 am.

Further to this, Track 3 on the first side, 4:37 am (Arabs with Knives and West German Skies), actually begins at 4:36:52 am, and Track 6, "4:47 am (The Remains of Our Love)", actually begins at 4:46:46 am." - Wiki

5. "4:41AM (Sexual Revolution)" 4:49
Apparently, right in the middle of his sex fantasy, ole' Rog awakes and there's his wife with the dog. Another one which sounds like a Wall reject. Eric is saving these numbers for me.

6. "4:47AM (The Remains of Our Love)" 3:09
Or is he still dreaming? That's the nature of this LP, you never really know I guess. The couple plan to go to Wyoming, for what, I'm not sure. Images of country life run through these tracks, so it was clearly something he had on his mind at the time.

Image Image

Side two

7. "4:50AM (Go Fishing)" 6:59
This part of the story/dream deals with living in the country for a spell, with A.A. Milne imagery and domestic bliss, until it's time to return to their previous life. Easily the longest track here, so this rural theme obviously is important to him. The whisper/scream thingy is right out of The Wall though. Or maybe I need to stop making these comparisons and simply say it sounds like Roger Waters' vocal delivery.

Wiki: Track 7, "4.50 am (Go Fishing)," includes the same refrain as "The Fletcher Memorial Home" from Pink Floyd's The Final Cut: "The Fletcher Memorial Home for incurable tyrants and kings". This song also includes one of the car sounds, and the slightly changed chorus melody, from that album's "Your Possible Pasts".

8. "4:56AM (For the First Time Today, Part 1)" 1:38
Followed by a short cut functioning as a link for...

9. "4:58AM (Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin)" 3:03
I must admit I really don't know what the hell he's on about by this point in the narrative. There's a truck driver, a character named Jade, more yelling, Clapton, Roger's wife, etc. The whole LP sounds like one long story meant to be heard in real-time. I wonder what Floyd would have made of these songs?

Packaging
Gerald Scarfe, who had created the album artwork and some animation for Pink Floyd's The Wall album, created all the graphics and animation for the Pros and Cons album. Its cover prompted controversy for featuring a rear-view nude photograph of model and softcore porn actress Linzi Drew. Although it was originally released with the nudity intact, subsequent editions distributed by Columbia Records censored Drew's buttocks with a black box." - Wikipedia

10. "5:01AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Part 10)" 4:36
The most commercial-sounding track on the LP and the one which they should've promoted as a 45. We're in California now with Hell's Angels imagery, Dick Tracy, Shane, and the surreal logic of a dream.

Wiki - Possible film
A film based on the concept was proposed, and in 1987 a press release for the Radio K.A.O.S. album claimed a film adaptation of Pros and Cons... had been completed, though nothing has been heard of it since. The screenplay was written by BBC/Radio Times Drama Award winner Pete Ward, who used excerpts from Waters' songs/lyrics from 1967 to 1987 as background to his award-winning play, Yesterday's Triumph, exploring the 20-year relationship of two close friends – one who attempts to fake mental illness to be with the other, who is an institutionalized 'catastrophic schizophrenic'. Ward was commissioned to expand the plot and characters in The Pros and Cons around the album's 42-minute real-time dream sequence based on Waters' own dreams.

Background
Its meaning consists of the lasting memories of the main character, Reg, and displays the benefits and problems associated with his hitch hiking, figuratively and metaphorically. During the song, Waters mentions such popular icons as Dick Tracy, Shane and Yoko Ono. Roger has said that the inclusion of Yoko Ono in the song comes from a dream his drummer Andy Newmark had."

11. "5:06AM (Every Stranger's Eyes)" 4:48
The usual fatalistic imagery (much of it American - his next album would take place entirely there), slow, bluesy ambience, and the feeling that this journey is coming to a close. I do feel that even an average track on this record has more ambition than one on About Face, but I can also see why it wasn't very commercial and its quick gold-record status comes more from the name on the LP cover than the music itself.


12. "5:11AM (The Moment of Clarity)" 1:28

Well, our hero wakes up, his wife is there, and all is right with his world. Until next time he falls asleep I guess...

"A film was made in 1984 and 1985 which combined Gerald Scarfe's animations and Nicolas Roeg's live-action footage with slit-scan photography created by Peter Truckel at The Moving Picture Company. Also directed by Nicolas Roeg the film was projected on a backdrop behind the stage as the band played. Three promotional videos were also directed by Roeg. The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking features snippets of the live action material from the screen films interspersed with footage of "Shane" and other cowboy films. "Sexual Revolution" also featured screen film material interspersed with footage Waters singing the song and playing his bass. "Every Stranger's Eyes" is identical to the screen projection, except for the fact that footage of Waters is also interspersed here." - Wiki

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby ConnyOlivetti » 02 May 2022, 19:28

As usual great write up/copy and paste
I dont have "pros and cons" but bought it upon release.
It went with lots of other vinyls back in the days and I never
feelt the urge to buy it on CD.
Dont even remember how it sounds, strange....
The only Waters album I care for are his last two ones.
Amused and Is this ....
Charlie O. wrote:I think Coan and Googa are right.


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Je suis!

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 02 May 2022, 19:53

ConnyOlivetti wrote:As usual great write up/copy and paste
I dont have "pros and cons" but bought it upon release.
It went with lots of other vinyls back in the days and I never
feelt the urge to buy it on CD.
Dont even remember how it sounds, strange....
The only Waters album I care for are his last two ones.
Amused and Is this ....


All four of his pop/rock albums are of a piece, really. I guess Radio K.A.O.S. is the least of them, but I even enjoy that one.

Here's the Sea of Tranquility guys geeking out over ranking them for almost two hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODl7WVeTAA4&t=3611s

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trans-chigley express
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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby trans-chigley express » 03 May 2022, 02:38

I much prefer About Face over Pros and Cons

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Mike Boom » 03 May 2022, 03:19

Never heard Pros and Cons. About Face is great as is the first Gilmour album.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 03 May 2022, 17:09

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Roger Waters Radio K.A.O.S. 1987
So the boys done broke up in 1985, with Roger going on to contribute to the soundtrack to the When the Wind Blows animated film with his Bleeding Heart Band, and Dave beginning work on another solo LP which would become A Momentary Lapse of Reason. I'll chronicle that project after this, but for now we come to Radio K.A.O.S., the second solo record Waters gave us in the eighties. Probably fans' least-appreciated Roger endeavor, I still don't mind it, and throw it on now and again to familiarize myself with its contents. Naturally, it's another concept album (can he write anything else?), with nothing really commercial in the way of songs. But we're not looking for that anyway when listening to a Roger Waters record, are we?

Wikipedia: "Radio K.A.O.S. is the second solo studio album by English rock musician Roger Waters. Released on 15 June 1987 in the United Kingdom and June 16 in the United States, it was Waters' first solo album after his formal split from Pink Floyd in 1985. Like his previous and future studio albums and many works of his during his time with Pink Floyd, the album is a concept album based on a number of key topical subjects of the late 1980s, including monetarism and its effect on citizens, popular culture of the time, and the events and consequences of the Cold War. It also makes criticisms of Margaret Thatcher's government, much like Pink Floyd's The Final Cut (1983), another album conceived by Waters.

The album follows Billy, a mentally and physically disabled man from Wales, forced to live with his uncle David in Los Angeles after his brother Benny was sent to prison after an act intended to support striking coal miners results in the death of a taxi driver, following his dismissal from his mining job due to "market forces." The album explores Billy's mind and view on the world through an on-air conversation between him and Jim, a disc jockey at a local fictitious radio station named Radio KAOS."

Personnel
Credits are adapted from the Radio K.A.O.S. liner notes.

Roger Waters – vocals; acoustic and electric guitars; bass guitar; keyboards; shakuhachi
Graham Broad – percussion; drums
Mel Collins – saxophones
Nick Glennie-Smith – DX7 and E-mu on "Powers That Be"
Matt Irving – Hammond organ on "Powers That Be"
John Lingwood – drums on "Powers That Be"
Andy Fairweather Low – electric guitars
Suzanne Rhatigan – main background vocals on "Radio Waves", "Me or Him", "Sunset Strip" and "The Tide Is Turning"
Ian Ritchie – piano; keyboards; tenor saxophone; Fairlight programming; drum programming
Jay Stapley – electric guitars
John Thirkell – trumpet
Peter Thoms – trombone
Katie Kissoon, Doreen Chanter, Madeline Bell, Steve Langer & Vicki Brown – background vocals on "Who Needs Information", "Powers That Be" and "Radio Waves"
Clare Torry – vocals on "Home" and "Four Minutes"
Paul Carrack – vocals on "The Powers That Be"
Pontarddulais Male Voice Choir – chorus
Paul Batchelor – assistant engineer
Noel Davis – choir master

All tracks are written by Roger Waters.

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1. "Radio Waves" 4:58
OK, we're off and running with our tale of Billy from Wales in his wheel chair who hears radio waves. The story is set in LA and Jim Ladd, the DJ, is a real local guy who I've heard on the airwaves for decades. Perhaps the Los Angeles locale makes me appreciate this stuff more, I dunno. The dance rhythm is most unlike Roger's music, so there's a bit of catering to the commercial which might be off putting for some.

Background
"Radio Waves" introduces the main character, Billy, a disabled man who finds a way to talk and become friends with a radio DJ. Billy is gifted and has the miracle of hearing and interpreting radio waves in his head. He explores a cordless phone which was hidden in his wheelchair by his brother Benny, after destroying and robbing a store. Recognizing its similarity to a radio, he experiments with the phone and is able to access computers and speech synthesizers, he learns to speak through them. He calls a radio station in L.A. named Radio KAOS, a completely fictitious radio station based in Los Angeles and tells them of his abilities and his life story throughout the album." - Wiki

2. "Who Needs Information" 5:55
So Billy tells the tale of how he and his brother, Benny, tried to rob a Hi Fi shop. Roger is doing his speak/sing shtick, but for once it doesn't sound like The Wall so much as just typical RW music. You can tell he's trying harder than usual to give these cuts more of a sing-song quality, and even though he put time and effort into the story, it's not so deadly serious as previous songs. That's Crimson's Mel Collins on sax.

Wiki - Background and inspiration
In 1979, Waters met American disc jockey Jim Ladd for a radio documentary on The Wall album, beginning a friendship which remains today. Ladd was an inspiration as he brought some light into Waters's dim view of L.A. life, initially through listening to the bizarre Fish Report from KMET. Waters became increasingly interested in Ladd's plight with his radio station KMET, and his eventual sacking to change the programming format of the station in search of market-researched profits. In 1985, Waters wrote a song called "Get Back to Radio," which seemed to be partly based on the experiences of Ladd, and partly from childhood memories – Waters fondly remembers listening to Radio Luxembourg well into the night as a child.

An event from the 1985 miners' strike in Britain where a striking worker threw a concrete block off a motorway bridge, killing a taxi driver who was taking a strikebreaker to his job, seemed to register in Waters's subconscious, emerging in the second song written, "Who Needs Information" and later, "Me or Him." The album, with a working title of Home, took only three months to record, developed from 16 songs throughout 1986 and was worked into a now familiar Waters concept album.

The Ronald Reagan campaign advertisements during "Me or Him" are sampled from an actual 1980 political advertisement of Reagan's."

3. "Me or Him" 5:23
Now we learn how Benny dropped a concrete block on another guy, killing him. There's anti-Reagan parts, more speak/sing, and the story continues. This one is slow and a bit of a slog.

Concept
Billy is a 23-year-old Welshman from the South Wales Valleys. He is mentally and physically disabled as a result of cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair and is only able to work his upper body. Though he is perceived as mentally challenged, his disability has actually made him not only a genius, but also superhuman, as he also has the ability to literally hear radio waves throughout all frequencies without aid.

Billy was living with his twin brother Benny, who was a coal miner, wife Molly, and their children. Unfortunately, Benny has lost his job in the mines due to the "market forces." One night, Benny and Billy are out on a pub crawl when they pass a shop full of TV screens broadcasting Margaret Thatcher's "mocking condescension." Benny vents his anger on this shop and steals a cordless phone. Next, in theatrical fashion, Benny poses on a footbridge in protest to the closures; the same night, a taxi driver is killed by a concrete block dropped from a similar bridge by Benny ("Who Needs Information" – track 2). The police question Benny, who hides the phone in Billy's wheelchair.

Benny is taken to prison, and Molly, unable to cope, sends Billy to live with his uncle David in Los Angeles, California, United States. Since Billy can hear radio waves in his head ("Radio Waves" – track 1), he begins to explore the cordless phone, recognizing its similarity to a radio. He experiments with the phone and is able to access computers and speech synthesizers, and learns to speak through them. He calls a radio station in L.A. named Radio K.A.O.S. and tells them of his life story about his brother being in jail ("Me or Him" – track 3), about his sister-in-law not being able to cope and sending him to L.A. to live with his uncle Dave ("Sunset Strip" – track 5), and about the closures of the mines ("Powers That Be" – track 4).

Billy eventually hacks into a military satellite and fools the world into thinking nuclear ICBMs are about to be detonated at major cities all over the world while deactivating the military's power to retaliate ("Home" – track 6, and "Four Minutes" – track 7). The album concludes with a song about how everyone, in thinking they were about to die, realizes that the fear and competitiveness peddled by the mass media is much less important than their love for family and the larger community. ("The Tide Is Turning" – track 8).

In the sleeve notes, Waters dedicated the album "to all those who find themselves at the violent end of monetarism." - Wiki

There, the whole album laid out for you!

4. "The Powers That Be" 4:36
Rog lays out his hatred for fat cats in this song which could probably be on any of his LPs with different production. Definitely a product of the late eighties, but it doesn't bother me, and it's a contrast to the slow-tempo of the previous number.

Wikipedia: Recording
The album was recorded at Waters' own personal studio in London called The Billiard Room and mixed at Odyssey Studios in London.

Recording was done with the aid of Roger Waters' backing band the Bleeding Heart Band.

Promotion
The record was first announced via a press release from EMI on 6 April 1987, confirming Waters's new album, its details and release date.[1] The press release mentioned that the project was conceived to be a full-out rock opera, complete with a stage show, film and live album, much like Waters's original vision for the album.

Waters also made a Video EP for this album featuring the songs "Radio Waves," "Sunset Strip," "Fish Report," "Four Minutes" and "The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)."

Tour
The Radio K.A.O.S. tour aka K.A.O.S. On the Road ran from mid-August 1987 to the end of November of the same year. It was entirely in North America except for the final two shows from Wembley, England. The tour, the largest of Waters's career up to that point, featured extravagant staging, props and video. The entirety of the concert was presented as a K.A.O.S. radio special, "K.A.O.S. on the Road", and featured disc jockey Jim Ladd introducing the songs, conversing with Billy, or simply complimenting Waters and the band on their performance. The screen used for the tour displayed video of Waters, Ladd, and various other actors playing out aspects of the narrative, as well as animations and video illustrating the songs. The concert was 'interrupted' at one point each night by Billy, who played the video to the début Pink Floyd single "Arnold Layne", in remembrance of Syd Barrett.

Prior to each show, Jim Ladd took calls from people in a booth and these calls were then answered by Waters. The person in each booth was usually chosen via a competition on local radio stations, in keeping with the theme of the concert. The setlist included the entire Radio K.A.O.S. album, with popular Waters-composed Pink Floyd songs mixed into the sequence, and typically lasted more than two and a half hours.

The tour went heavily into debt, with Waters using his own money at one point to underwrite the expense, as there were massive overruns and delays. The tour was proposed to go worldwide, but due to financial considerations these discussions never went any further, and the tour ended."

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5. "Sunset Strip" 4:45
Young Billy misses Wales and doesn't like fish as he recounts his life to Ladd. More jaunty than usual and I guess that's one of the reasons this isn't your usual RW record. It's different, I'll give it that - now as to whether these are actually good songs are not...

Background
Billy is a young man with a disability. He uses a wheelchair and is thought to be incapable of speech. However, Billy is highly intelligent and gifted, and can hear radio waves in his head. He begins to explore the cordless phone, recognizing its similarity to a radio. He experiments with a phone which his brother, Benny, now in prison, hid in his wheelchair after burgling an electronics shop. Through it Billy is able to access computers and speech synthesizers and learns to speak through them. He calls a radio station in Los Angeles named "Radio KAOS" and tells the DJ of his life story. "Sunset Strip" is about Billy's sister-in-law, Molly not being able to cope and sending him to L.A. to live with his uncle Dave. During the song Billy expresses his longing for home and the song mentions various things associated with Wales, such as the Red Dragon, male voice choirs, the land of his fathers and the Black Fields." - Wiki

6. "Home" 6:00
"Everybody's got someone they call home" says Billy, or is it Roger? Hard to tell. The tale becomes more political as our young hero is hacking into the government's computer network or some such nonsense. This isn't one of my faves.

Wiki: Packaging
Morse code is a central theme in the art and style of the album, visually and audibly. The artwork for the album, designed by Kate Hepburn, are written Morse code sentences in green imprinted on a black background. The translation spans both the front and the back of the sleeve. The front cover reads ROGER/WATERS/RADIO/KAOS/WHONE/EDSINF/ORMA/TIONTH. The back cover reads EPOWE/RSTHAT/BEHO/METHETI/DEISTU/RNING/RADIO/WAVES. When translated as a whole, the artwork spells out the name of the artist, the album, and five tracks from the album. It reads: Roger Waters, Radio K.A.O.S., "Who Needs Information," "The Powers That Be," "Home," "The Tide Is Turning" and "Radio Waves." The code on the artwork is also heard throughout the album itself, most notably at the beginning and end of the album, book-ending the piece in the same manner as the heartbeat from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and the Bleeding Heart Band from The Wall.

7. "Four Minutes" 4:00
The button has been pushed, and the world has four minutes to live. Naturally, the DJ wants Billy to call him to discuss this. Yep, that's what I'd want to do with my few remaining moments. Turgid piece which is probably the least effective track here.

"Singles
Aside from eight songs that were used on the released album, additional songs appeared as B-sides.

The lead single from the album, "Radio Waves", was released on 11 May 1987 as a 7" single, a 12" extended play single, and a CD single. The b-side was non-album track "Going to Live in L.A.". "Radio Waves" briefly went into both the American and British charts in the month of release, reaching No. 74 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 12 on the US Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.

"Sunset Strip" was released as the second single in September 1987. The B-side included a demo of the song "Get Back to Radio" and a live version of Pink Floyd's "Money". Despite "Sunset Strip" not being released as a promo to American and British radio stations, and competing against Waters's former band whose single "Learning to Fly" was topping the US Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, it managed to go as high as No. 15.

"The Tide Is Turning" was released as the third single in the United Kingdom and Australia. Without direct competition from Waters's former band, Pink Floyd, the single was a commercial success in Europe. It peaked at No. 54 on the UK singles chart.

"Who Needs Information?" was released in the United States in December 1987 as the fourth and final single, backed with live exclusive "Molly's Song", another previously unreleased song. The single was in direct competition with Pink Floyd's "On the Turning Away". While Pink Floyd's singles topped the US Mainstream Rock charts back to back, "Who Needs Information?" failed to chart, despite a radio promotional release.

Waters even once said in an interview that he might even release an EP with some unreleased songs from this project for those who might be interested, but this never appeared." - Wikipedia

8. "The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)" 5:43
But I guess the world doesn't end because the threat wasn't real. It's difficult to derive the story from the lyrics folks, but I do my best! This cut actually isn't that bad, but there is a sense of this LP not being very important in the scheme of things if I'm honest. In the Roger vs. Dave wars of 1984, I gave it to Waters, as the Pros and Cons record appeals to me more than About Face, but in 1987, I'm awarding the prize to Gilmour for the next album in my installment.

Wiki: "Background
Though Waters had offered his services for the Live Aid concert in 1985 and been turned down by organizer Bob Geldof, the event still inspired Waters to write this song. After he had recorded the Radio K.A.O.S. album, which ended with a simulated nuclear attack in the song "Four Minutes," his record company informed him that the album was too bleak and needed a more upbeat ending. Waters then recorded and added "The Tide Is Turning" to give the album a more optimistic finish.

Reception

The album was first released on 15 June 1987 in the United Kingdom and the United States, and was met with mixed reviews. Internationally, the album only charted in three countries; peaking at number 25 in the United Kingdom, number 33 in Australia, and number 50 in the United States.

J. D. Considine of Rolling Stone magazine gave the album a positive review, highlighting the album as "by no means perfect" but "powerful"; although the themes and style of the album were criticized, he deemed the record to be an improvement on Waters's debut studio album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. Robert Christgau from [i]The Village Voice wrote: "In which Waters's wheelchair-bound version of the deaf, dumb and blind boy learns to control the world's computers with his cordless phone, then simulates impending nuclear holocaust just to scare the shit out of the powers that be. I have serious reservations about any record that can't be enjoyed unless you sit there reading the inner sleeve, but this is not without its aural rewards — a coverable song or two and some nice comping on shakuhachi, as well as the deep engineering that made Floyd famous. As pretentious goes, not stupid."

Since the release, Waters has expressed his dislike for the album and the effort put into creating it. He confessed in an interview that the attempt to make the album sound "modern" had ruined the record:

Between Ian Ritchie and myself, we really fucked that record up. We tried too hard to make it sound modern. I allowed myself to get pushed down roads that were uncomfortable for me. I should never have made that record.

In addition to being dissatisfied with the production, Waters regrets his decision to trim the album from a double to a single one, thus losing much of the concept.

In a retrospective review, Mike DeGagne of AllMusic gave the album three-and-a-half stars, stating that the album, unlike some of Waters's other works, manages to convey the music more than the narrative, but also that "While both The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking and Amused to Death convey his talented use of concept, imagination, and lyrical mastery, this album seems to be nothing more than a fictional tale with a blatantly apparent message."

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 03 May 2022, 17:14

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 03 May 2022, 21:39

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A Momentary Lapse of Reason 1987
This is really a David Gilmour solo album with minimal contributions from Nick and Rick. Most of the keyboard parts had been recorded before Wright came on board (his first PF project since The Wall - and he didn't do much on that one either), and Mason didn't feel his drumming was up to snuff, so his contribution was mostly in the area of sound effects. So I judge it as a Dave record more than anything else, and as such this is certainly the best thing Gilmour ever did on his own. Except he's not really doing it all himself, is he? The fact that Nick/Rick are on it too makes it a Floyd LP. Radio was all over this in San Diego at the time, so I have found memories of it. I realize that a lot of PF fans have no use for this disc, but I actually enjoy it more than The Final Cut. The band also toured on the strength of this record so we got the first live Pink Floyd album since Ummagumma the next year.

Wikipedia: "A Momentary Lapse of Reason is the thirteenth studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in the UK on 7 September 1987 by EMI and the following day in the US on Columbia. It was recorded primarily on guitarist David Gilmour's converted houseboat, Astoria.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was the first Pink Floyd album recorded without founding member Roger Waters, who departed in 1985. The production was marred by legal fights over the rights to the Pink Floyd name, which were not resolved until several months after release. It also saw the return of keyboardist and founding member Richard Wright, who had resigned from the band under pressure from Waters during the recording of The Wall (1979).

Unlike most earlier Pink Floyd records, A Momentary Lapse of Reason is not a concept album. It includes writing contributions from outside songwriters, following Gilmour's decision to include material once intended for his third solo album. The album was promoted with a successful world tour and with three singles: the double A-side "Learning to Fly" / "Terminal Frost", "On the Turning Away", and "One Slip".

A Momentary Lapse of Reason received mixed reviews; some critics praised the production and instrumentation but criticized Gilmour's writing, and it was derided by Waters. It was nonetheless a commercial comeback for the band, reaching number three in the UK and US, and outsold Pink Floyd's previous album The Final Cut (1983). The album was supported by a highly successful world tour between 1987 and 1989.

Background
After the release of Pink Floyd's 1983 album The Final Cut, viewed by some as a de facto solo record by bassist and songwriter Roger Waters, the band members worked on solo projects. Guitarist David Gilmour expressed feelings about his strained relationship with Waters on his second solo album, About Face (1984), and finished the accompanying tour as Waters began touring to promote his debut solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. Although both had enlisted a range of successful performers, including in Waters' case Eric Clapton, their solo acts attracted fewer fans than Pink Floyd; poor ticket sales forced Gilmour to cancel several concerts, and critic David Fricke felt that Waters' show was "a petulant echo, a transparent attempt to prove that Roger Waters was Pink Floyd". Waters returned to the US in March 1985 with a second tour, this time without the support of CBS Records, which had expressed its preference for a new Pink Floyd album; Waters criticized the corporation as "a machine".

After drummer Nick Mason attended one of Waters' London performances in 1985, he found he missed touring under the Pink Floyd name. His visit coincided with the release in August of his second solo album, Profiles, on which Gilmour sang. With a shared love of aviation, Mason and Gilmour were taking flying lessons and together bought a de Havilland Dove aeroplane. Gilmour was working on other collaborations, including a performance for Bryan Ferry at 1985's Live Aid concert, and co-produced the Dream Academy's self-titled debut album.

In December 1985, Waters announced that he had left Pink Floyd, which he believed was "a spent force creatively". After the failure of his About Face tour, Gilmour hoped to continue with the Pink Floyd name. The threat of a lawsuit from Gilmour, Mason and CBS Records was meant to compel Waters to write and produce another Pink Floyd album with his bandmates, who had barely participated in making The Final Cut; Gilmour was especially critical of the album, labelling it "cheap filler" and "meandering rubbish".

At that time, certainly, I just thought, I can't really see how we can make the next record or if we can it's a long time in the future, and it'll probably be more for, just because of feeling of some obligation that we ought to do it, rather than for any enthusiasm.

Nick Mason, In the Studio with Redbeard
(1987)

They threatened me with the fact that we had a contract with CBS Records and that part of the contract could be construed to mean that we had a product commitment with CBS and if we didn't go on producing product, they could a) sue us and b) withhold royalties if we didn't make any more records. So they said, 'that's what the record company are going to do and the rest of the band are going to sue you for all their legal expenses and any loss of earnings because you're the one that's preventing the band from making any more records.' They forced me to resign from the band because, if I hadn't, the financial repercussions would have wiped me out completely.

Roger Waters, Uncut (June 2004), explaining why he stopped his legal challenge

According to Gilmour, "I told [Waters] before he left, 'If you go, man, we're carrying on. Make no bones about it, we would carry on', and Roger replied: 'You'll never fucking do it.'" Waters had written to EMI and Columbia declaring his intention to leave the group and asking them to release him from his contractual obligations. He also dispensed with the services of Pink Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke and employed Peter Rudge to manage his affairs. This left Gilmour and Mason, in their view, free to continue with the Pink Floyd name. In 2013, Waters said he regretted the lawsuit and had not understood English jurisprudence.

In Waters' absence, Gilmour had been recruiting musicians for a new project. Months previously, keyboardist Jon Carin had jammed with Gilmour at his Hookend studio, where he composed the chord progression that became "Learning to Fly", and so was invited onto the team. Gilmour invited Bob Ezrin (co-producer of 1979's The Wall) to help consolidate their material; Ezrin had turned down Waters' offer of a role on the development of his new solo album, Radio K.A.O.S., saying it was "far easier for Dave and I to do our version of a Floyd record". Ezrin arrived in England in mid-1986 for what Gilmour later described as "mucking about with a lot of demos".

At this stage, there was no commitment to a new Pink Floyd release, and Gilmour maintained that the material might become his third solo album. CBS representative Stephen Ralbovsky hoped for a new Pink Floyd album, but in a meeting in November 1986, told Gilmour and Ezrin that the music "doesn't sound a fucking thing like Pink Floyd". By the end of that year, Gilmour had decided to make the material into a Pink Floyd project, and agreed to rework the material that Ralbovsky had found objectionable.

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Recording
Gilmour experimented with songwriters such as Eric Stewart and Roger McGough, but settled on Anthony Moore, who was credited as co-writer of "Learning to Fly" and "On the Turning Away". Whereas many prior Pink Floyd albums are concept albums, Gilmour chose a more conventional approach of a collection of songs without a thematic link. Gilmour later said that the project had been difficult without Waters.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was recorded in several studios, mainly Gilmour's houseboat studio Astoria, moored on the Thames; according to Ezrin, "working there was just magical, so inspirational; kids sculling down the river, geese flying by...". Andy Jackson was brought in to engineer. During sessions held between November 1986 and February 1987, Gilmour's band worked on new material, which in a change from previous Pink Floyd albums was recorded with a 24-track analogue machine and overdubbed onto a 32-track Mitsubishi digital recorder. This trend of using new technologies continued with the use of MIDI synchronization, aided by an Apple Macintosh computer.

Ezrin suggested incorporating rap, an idea dismissed by Gilmour. After agreeing to rework the material that Ralbovsky had found objectionable, Gilmour employed session musicians such as Carmine Appice and Jim Keltner. Both drummers, they replaced Mason on several songs; Mason was concerned that he was too out of practice to perform on the album, and instead busied himself with its sound effects. Some drum parts were also performed by drum machines. In his memoir, Mason wrote: "In hindsight, I really should have had the self-belief to play all the drum parts. And in the early days of life after Roger, I think David and I felt that we had to get it right, or we would be slaughtered."

You can't go back ... You have to find a new way of working, of operating and getting on with it. We didn't make this remotely like we've made any other Floyd record. It was different systems, everything.

David Gilmour

During the sessions, Gilmour was asked by the wife of Pink Floyd's former keyboardist, Richard Wright, if he could contribute. A founding member of the band, Wright had left in 1979, and there were legal obstacles to his return; after a meeting in Hampstead he was recruited as a paid musician on a weekly wage of $11,000. Gilmour said in an interview that Wright's presence "would make us stronger legally and musically". However, his contributions were minimal; most of the keyboard parts had already been recorded, and so from February 1987 Wright played some background reinforcement on a Hammond organ, and a Rhodes piano, and added vocal harmonies. He also performed a solo in "On the Turning Away", which was discarded, according to Wright, "not because they didn't like it ... they just thought it didn't fit".

Gilmour later said: "Both Nick and Rick were catatonic in terms of their playing ability at the beginning. Neither of them played on this at all really. In my view, they'd been destroyed by Roger." Gilmour's comments angered Mason, who said: "I'd deny that I was catatonic. I'd expect that from the opposition, it's less attractive from one's allies. At some point, he made some sort of apology." Mason conceded that Gilmour was nervous about how the album would be perceived.

"Learning to Fly" was inspired by Gilmour's flying lessons, which occasionally conflicted with his studio duties. The track also contains a recording of Mason's voice during takeoff. The band experimented with samples, and Ezrin recorded the sound of Gilmour's boatman Langley Iddens rowing across the Thames. Iddens' presence at the sessions became vital when Astoria began to lift in response to the rapidly rising river, which was pushing the boat against the pier on which it was moored.

"The Dogs of War" is a song about "physical and political mercenaries", according to Gilmour. It came about through a mishap in the studio when a sampling machine began playing a sample of laughter, which Gilmour thought sounded like a dog's bark. "Terminal Frost" was one of Gilmour's older demos, which he decided to leave as an instrumental. Conversely, the lyrics for "Sorrow" were written before the music. The song's opening guitar solo was recorded in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. A 24-track mobile studio piped Gilmour's guitar tracks through a public address system, and the resulting mix was then recorded in surround sound.

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Legal disputes
The sessions were interrupted by the escalating disagreement between Waters and Pink Floyd over who had the rights to the Pink Floyd name. O'Rourke, believing that his contract with Waters had been terminated illegally, sued Waters for £25,000 of back-commission. In a late-1986 board meeting of Pink Floyd Music Ltd (Pink Floyd's clearing house for all financial transactions since 1973), Waters learnt that a bank account had been opened to deal exclusively with all monies related to "the new Pink Floyd project". He immediately applied to the High Court to prevent the Pink Floyd name from being used again, but his lawyers discovered that the partnership had never been formally confirmed. Waters returned to the High Court in an attempt to gain a veto over further use of the band's name. Gilmour's team responded by issuing a press release affirming that Pink Floyd would continue to exist; however, Gilmour told a Sunday Times reporter: "Roger is a dog in the manger and I'm going to fight him, no one else has claimed Pink Floyd was entirely them. Anybody who does is extremely arrogant."

Waters twice visited Astoria, and with his wife had a meeting in August 1986 with Ezrin; Ezrin later suggested that he was being "checked out". As Waters was still a shareholder and director of Pink Floyd Music, he was able to block any decisions made by his former bandmates. Recording moved to Mayfair Studios in February 1987, and from February to March – under the terms of an agreement with Ezrin to record close to his home – to A&M Studios in Los Angeles: "It was fantastic because ... the lawyers couldn't call in the middle of recording unless they were calling in the middle of the night." The bitterness of the row between Waters and Pink Floyd was covered in a November 1987 issue of Rolling Stone, which became the magazine's best-selling issue of that year. The legal disputes were resolved out of court by the end of 1987.

Packaging and title
Careful consideration was given to the album's title, with the initial three contenders being Signs of Life, Of Promises Broken and Delusions of Maturity. The final title appears as a line in the chorus of "One Slip".

For the first time since 1977's Animals, designer Storm Thorgerson was employed to work on a Pink Floyd studio album cover. His finished design was a long river of hospital beds arranged on a beach, inspired by a phrase from "Yet Another Movie" and Gilmour's vague hint of a design that included a bed in a Mediterranean house, as well as "vestiges of relationships that have evaporated, leaving only echoes". The cover shows hundreds of hospital beds assembled in July 1987 on Saunton Sands in North Devon, where some of the scenes for Pink Floyd – The Wall were filmed. The beds were arranged by Thorgerson's colleague Colin Elgie. A hang glider in the sky references "Learning to Fly". The photographer, Robert Dowling, won a gold award at the Association of Photographers Awards for the image, which took about two weeks to create.

To emphasise that Waters had left the band, the inner gatefold featured a photograph of just Gilmour and Mason shot by David Bailey. Its inclusion marked the first time since Meddle (1971) that a group photo had been used in the artwork of a Pink Floyd album. Wright was represented only by name, on the credits. According to Mason, Wright's leaving agreement contained a clause that prevented him rejoining the band, and "consequently we had to be careful about what constituted being a member".

Tour

Pink Floyd decided to tour for the album before it was complete. Early rehearsals were chaotic; Mason and Wright were out of practice, and, realizing he had taken on too much work, Gilmour asked Ezrin to take charge. Matters were complicated when Waters contacted several US promoters and threatened to sue if they used the Pink Floyd name. Gilmour and Mason funded the start-up costs; Mason, separated from his wife, used his Ferrari 250 GTO as collateral. Some promoters were offended by Waters' threat, and several months later 60,000 tickets went on sale in Toronto, selling out within hours.

As the new line-up (with Wright) toured throughout North America, Waters' Radio K.A.O.S. tour was sometimes close by. Waters forbade the members of Pink Floyd to attend his concerts, which were generally in smaller venues. Waters also issued a writ for copyright fees for use of the Pink Floyd flying pig; Pink Floyd responded by attaching a huge set of male genitalia to the balloon's underside to distinguish it from Waters' design. By November 1987, Waters had given up, and on 23 December a legal settlement was reached at a meeting on Astoria.

The Momentary Lapse tour beat box office records in every US venue it booked, and was the most successful US tour that year. Tours of Australia, Japan, and Europe followed, before two more tours of the US. Almost every venue was sold out. A live album, Delicate Sound of Thunder, was released on 22 November 1988, followed in June 1989 by a concert video. A few days later, the live album was played in orbit, on board Soyuz TM-7. The tour eventually came to an end by closing the Silver Clef Award Winners Concert, at Knebworth Park on 30 June 1990, after 200 performances, a gross audience of 4.25 million fans, and box office receipts of more than £60 million (not including merchandising)."

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Personnel
Track numbering refers to CD and digital releases of the album.

Pink Floyd

David Gilmour – vocals, guitars, keyboards, drum machine, sequencers, production
Nick Mason – electronic and acoustic drums, sound effects (tracks 1, 2, 4–6, 9), spoken vocals (on "Signs of Life", "Learning to Fly" and "Terminal Frost")
Richard Wright – piano, backing vocals ("Learning to Fly", "On the Turning Away" and "Sorrow"), Kurzweil, Hammond organ (tracks 1, 2, 5, 9, 11)

Additional musicians

Bob Ezrin – keyboards, percussion, sequencers, production
Jon Carin – keyboards
Patrick Leonard – synthesizers
Bill Payne – Hammond organ
Michael Landau – guitar
Tony Levin – bass guitar, Chapman Stick on "One Slip"
Jim Keltner – drums
Carmine Appice – drums on "Dogs of War"
Steve Forman – percussion
Tom Scott – alto saxophone; soprano saxophone
John Helliwell – saxophone (credited as "John Halliwell")
Scott Page – tenor saxophone
Darlene Koldenhoven (as Darlene Koldenhaven) – backing vocals
Carmen Twillie – backing vocals
Phyllis St. James – backing vocals
Donny Gerrard – backing vocals

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1. "Signs of Life" (Gilmour, Bob Ezrin) 4:24
Another sloooooow build for a track which more or less functions as the intro to the LP. Spacey effects and Gilmour's guitar tell us it's a Pink Floyd record, and it all sounds marvelous too. There's nothing we haven't heard before, but it's nice to have something a tad more weighty than the standard Dave album or Roger concept.

Music
It is an instrumental piece, although on the album version, the electronically processed voice of drummer Nick Mason can be heard for a few seconds reciting two verses of an unknown poem. The screen film used to accompany the song during concert performances featured Langley Iddins, caretaker of David Gilmour's Astoria houseboat-studio, rowing through Grantchester Meadows.

The piece is Pink Floyd's first instrumental piece (excluding the live-only "The Last Few Bricks") since 1973's "Any Colour You Like", from The Dark Side of the Moon. Its roots go back to the 1970s.

Part Two of Signs of Life was actually done in 1977, I think. The guitar and the whistling answers was actually a demo that I did in '77 or '78. We had to replace the actual guitar, but the backing chords are from an ancient thing I did. Most of the rest of it was written within the past two years.

David Gilmour, http://www.pink-floyd.org/artint/crm021988.htm

The song segues directly into "Learning to Fly". "Signs of Life" ends on an E minor chord, while "Learning to Fly" opens with the parallel chord of G major.

A live recording has been released as part of the concert film Delicate Sound of Thunder. The accompanying live album did not include the track until the 2019 remix, which contains the entire live setlist.

The piece is shortened on all official releases of Delicate Sound of Thunder. On the 2019 album and video version, parts of Mason's spoken vocal were re-inserted into the track even if live recordings from the tour show that it was not part of the original concerts." - Wiki

2. "Learning to Fly" (Gilmour, Anthony Moore, Ezrin, Jon Carin) 4:52
Now I heard this all the time on the radio in the late '80s. Dave's analogy of learning how to fly a plane with getting PF off of the ground works perfectly. The song rocks along nicely and Gilmour's voice fits the mood.

Wiki: "Learning to Fly" is a song by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, written by David Gilmour, Anthony Moore, Bob Ezrin, and Jon Carin. It was the first single from the band's thirteenth studio album A Momentary Lapse of Reason. It reached number 70 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 1 on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart in September, 1987, remaining three consecutive weeks at the top position in the autumn of the same year. Meanwhile, the song failed to chart on the official U.K. top 40 singles charts. On the other hand, in Spain, the song peaked at number 1 on the Los 40 Principales chart.

Background
The song was primarily written by David Gilmour, who developed the music from a 1986 demo by Jon Carin. The notable rhythm pattern at the beginning of the song was already present in the demo, and Carin stated that it was influenced by Steve Jansen or Yukihiro Takahashi.

The lyrics describe Gilmour's thoughts on flying, for which he has a passion (being a licensed pilot with multiple ratings), though it has also been interpreted as a metaphor for beginning something new, experiencing a radical change in life, or, more specifically, Gilmour's feelings about striking out as the new leader of Pink Floyd after the departure of Roger Waters. Gilmour confirmed the latter interpretation on the Pink Floyd 25th Anniversary Special in May 1992. Also an avid pilot, drummer Nick Mason's voice can be heard at around the middle of the song. "Learning to Fly" was included on Pink Floyd's greatest hits collection Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.

The track was regularly performed live on the band's two post-Roger Waters tours, with touring guitarist Tim Renwick playing the song's guitar solos (although David Gilmour played the solos on the studio version of the track). A live version is included on Delicate Sound of Thunder and Pulse. At the end of the final solo in both versions, a guitar lick from the second verse of "Young Lust" ("Oooh, baby set me free") is played.

Music video
The music video was directed by Storm Thorgerson, a longtime collaborator of Pink Floyd who had designed many of their album covers, and filmed on West Wind Ridge, a mountain in Kananaskis Country near Canmore, located some 50 to 75 km west of the city of Calgary, Alberta during rehearsals for the band's A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour. The video combined performances of the band with an Indigenous male, played by Canadian actor Lawrence Bayne, working in a field who then runs and jumps off a cliff to turn into a red-tailed hawk. The footage of the stage show shows the band performing "Learning to Fly" but features the more colourful light-show used for live performances of "One of These Days". The red/orange airplane is a Beech Model 17 Staggerwing.

The original video also depicts a factory worker who turns into an aeroplane pilot as well as a child who breaks free from his mother and dives off a cliff into a deep river, swimming away.

The video went to No. 9 on MTV's Video Countdown in November 1987 and was the No. 60 video of MTV's Top 100 Videos of 1987. The video won the band its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Concept Video" in 1988."

3. "The Dogs of War" (Gilmour, Moore) 6:10
A most Waters-like theme really, almost harkening back to Animals with its imagery. I dunno, I guess I'd rather listen to stuff like this than anything Floyd-related since the seventies.

"It was released as a promotional single from the album. Live versions have an extended intro, an extended middle solo for the saxophone, a guitar and sax duel and a longer outro as compared to the album version. The track was a minor rock radio hit in the US and reached #16 on MTV's Video Countdown in May 1988.

Composition
Musically, the song follows a twelve-bar blues structure in C minor, only with significantly different chord changes. A standard blues song in C minor would progress as C minor, F minor, C minor, G (major or minor), F minor, and back to C minor. "The Dogs of War", instead, progresses in this way: C minor, Eb minor, C minor, Ab seventh, F minor, and back to C minor. All minor chords include the seventh.

Singer David Gilmour often approaches the C minor chord by singing on the diminished fifth, G flat, before descending to the fourth, minor third, and root. This melody is also compatible with the next chord, Eb minor, in which G flat is the minor third. It also appears in the Ab seventh chord, as the dominant seventh.

The majority of the song is in a slow 12/8 time. After a bluesy guitar solo, the song switches to a fast 4/4 tempo for the saxophone solo. This is not unlike what happens in "Money", a minor-key blues-based song from The Dark Side of the Moon, in which a saxophone solos over the song's predominant 7/4 tempo before switching to a faster 4/4 tempo for the guitar solo. "The Dogs of War" also imitates "Money" in its ending sequence, with a "call and response" between Gilmour's voice and his guitar.

Video
The video for the track composed of the backdrop film directed by Storm Thorgerson which depicted German Shepherds with yellow eyes running through a war zone plus a live recording and concert footage filmed during the band's three night run at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia in November 1987 directed by Lawrence Jordan (who has directed concert films for Rush, Mariah Carey and Billy Joel). Videos for "On the Turning Away" and "One Slip" were also filmed from this concert where the video for "The Dogs of War" was filmed.

"The Dogs of War" describes politicians orchestrating wars, suggesting the major influence behind war is money." - Wikipedia

4. "One Slip" (Gilmour, Phil Manzanera) 5:05
A tune Dave wrote with Phil Manzanera about sex offers another interesting take on the latter-day Floyd sound. I really like side one of this disc, and it's easily my fave Floyd-related music of the decade. The early menace of the group is gone (a sound Roger tries to maintain in his music), but David's commercial instincts are also attractive methinks.

Wiki - "Composition
The album gets its title from a line of this song's lyrics. The song was co-written by David Gilmour and Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, who later co-produced Gilmour's On an Island album and played rhythm guitar on the subsequent tour.

Release
It was first released as the B-side to "Learning to Fly". It was then re-released as the third single from the album in the UK where it was a minor hit and was the fourth single from the album in the US where it did well on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

"One Slip (2019 remix)" from the box set, The Later Years 1987–2019 was released as a single on 24 October 2019 on Spotify and 25 October 2019 on YouTube and iTunes. The song contains newly recorded drums by Nick Mason and organ parts by Richard Wright lifted from 1987-89 live performances, replacing the song's original drum and keyboard parts.

Live
The track was the final song from the album played live when it was the first encore on the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour from 1987–89. The band resurrected the track on one show on their 1994 The Division Bell tour when the band performed it in Oakland, California.

Video
The video for the track is footage of a vintage 1930s plane flying interspersed with concert clips filmed during the band's three night run at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia. The live footage was shot in November 1987 and was directed by Lawrence Jordan (who has directed concert films for Rush, Mariah Carey and Billy Joel). Videos for "On the Turning Away" and "The Dogs of War" were also filmed from this concert."

5. "On the Turning Away" (Gilmour, Moore) 5:42
Probably Dave's best vocal on the album, and yet another one I heard a lot over the years. I know efforts like this LP and Yes' 90125 get a lot of flak from some fans criticizing the top-40 sound, but I see this music as necessary updates on the classic sound. The old records are always there if that's what you'd prefer to hear. There's room in my life for both. Nice guitar solo at the end as well.

"The song was a staple of live shows from the 1987–89 world tours in support of A Momentary Lapse of Reason and was one of the songs in rotation during the 1994 tour in support of The Division Bell. The song was resurrected by David Gilmour on his 2006 On an Island Tour for one night only. Live recordings exist on Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988) and Live in Gdańsk (2008).

Music and lyrics
The song has often been described as a protest song and is one of the more political tracks Pink Floyd released after the departure of Roger Waters. The main concept came from Anthony Moore, but David Gilmour has stated that he re-wrote the last verse of both "On the Turning Away" and "Learning to Fly". Musically, it has been called a power ballad. Bassist Guy Pratt has said about its musical structure (referring to the fact that he had to guide Phil Manzanera and Steve DiStanislao through a completely unplanned performance of it in 2006): "The song only has five chords in it, but they don't necessarily show up where you think they will."

It has also been noted for being one of Pink Floyd's rhythmically most complex songs, constantly alternating between various time signatures. Some reviewers have described it as Celtic sounding.

Release
Released as the second single from the album, it reached number one on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart in early 1988. In the United Kingdom, the song charted at number 55 on the UK Singles Chart." - Wikipedia

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6. "Yet Another Movie" (Gilmour, Patrick Leonard) 6:14
Rather mid-tempo number which doesn't really go anywhere, yet doesn't offend either. A man is not treating a woman well, and this is the last co-written tune on the disc. All the rest are completely Gilmour. More great guitar playing though, I can't deny that.

Wiki - "It began as an instrumental piece to which words were later added and features soundbites from the films One-Eyed Jacks and Casablanca.

Live
The piece was performed at every show in Pink Floyd's 1987–1989 tours as the fourth piece in the first set of the show (falling between "Learning to Fly" and "Round and Around") and was featured on the live album Delicate Sound of Thunder. The lap steel guitar that appears at the end of the studio version of "Yet Another Movie" was replaced by a normal guitar solo played at a lower octave on the live performances of the track. On Delicate Sound of Thunder and the 2011 remaster of A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the band separated "Yet Another Movie" from "Round and Around" into different tracks."

7. "Round and Around" (instrumental) (Gilmour) 1:13
Short piece used as a link between the two tracks which precede and follow.

"It shares the sixth track with "Yet Another Movie", Index #2 and is a short, repetitive instrumental in 5/8 time.

Later release
It was released as a separate track on the 2011 remastered CD and on the live album Delicate Sound of Thunder. - Wiki

8. "A New Machine (Part 1)" (Gilmour) 1:46
Now this sounds more like what would be on a Dave solo record. I like a good melody, failing that I'll take a good riff or rhythm, in the absence of both of those things I'll be satisfied with the proper ambience. I hear none of the above here.

Wiki: "Lyrics and music
They serve as bookends to the instrumental track "Terminal Frost", and feature David Gilmour's voice, electrically distorted, through a vocoder and a rising synth note. The narrator seems to express weariness with a lifetime spent in one body, waiting for the moment of death, but seeks consolation in the fact that this "waiting" will eventually end.

"A New Machine has a sound I've never heard anyone do. The noise gates, the Vocoders, opened up something new which to me seemed like a wonderful sound effect that no one had done before; it's innovation of a sort."

— David Gilmour

The two songs were the first Pink Floyd songs to be credited solely to David Gilmour since "Childhood's End", from their 1972 album Obscured by Clouds."

9. "Terminal Frost" (instrumental) (Gilmour) 6:17
I'm gonna say the best thing on side two thus far. He's carrying on the waiting-around-to-die-stuff which the "New Machine" songs bookend. The music is nice though and if you didn't know the nature of the piece, you'd think it was something else that inspired it.

"Recording
The saxophones are played by Tom Scott and John Helliwell, the latter best known for his work with Supertramp. The track is bookended by "A New Machine (Part 1)" and "A New Machine (Part 2)" which creates a mini-suite on the album. The sequence of "A New Machine (Part 1) - Terminal Frost - A New Machine (Part 2)" were the only tracks from the album which were not performed at every show of the 1987-89 tours, frequently being dropped. David Gilmour has said that "Terminal Frost" is the oldest piece on the album, having been written many years before." - Wiki

10. "A New Machine (Part 2)" (Gilmour) 0:38
Continuation of Part 1. Filler basically.

11. "Sorrow" (Gilmour) 8:47
Promises broken and old memories permeate this ending song which is the longest thing here. I wish it moved me more or made more of an impression but that could be my fault more than the music. Some fans enjoy side two more than the first one. I can't even remember this cut when I'm not playing it.

Wikipedia: "Lyrics and music
The piece was written and composed by singer and guitarist David Gilmour. He has stated that although lyrics are not his strong point, the song is one of his strongest lyrical efforts, even though the opening lines were appropriated from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Sorrow was a poem I'd written as a lyric before I wrote music to it, which is rare for me.

— David Gilmour

Drummer Nick Mason has since stated that the song was almost entirely written by Gilmour over the space of a weekend on his houseboat Astoria. When Mason returned from the weekend, only "some spit and polish", according to Mason, was needed. Gilmour has also mentioned that the solo at the end of "Sorrow" was done on the boat, his guitar going through a small Gallien-Krueger amplifier. As on many tracks from the album, Gilmour played a Steinberger GL "headless" guitar on this song. The guitar intro was recorded inside Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and piped through Pink Floyd's large sound system, yielding an extremely deep, cavernous sound. The drum machine on the song was programmed by David Gilmour — no real drums were used.

Live Versions
Live versions of the song are featured on 1988's Delicate Sound of Thunder album and 1995's Pulse album, with running times of 9:27 and 10:49 respectively, mostly taken up by extended guitar solos by Gilmour and an additional outro. A slightly shortened version of the song appears on Pink Floyd's greatest hits collection, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd, which is edited so that the song "Sheep" (also edited) segues into "Sorrow". David Gilmour played the song at the Strat Pack guitar concert, an event which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster. Gilmour played the song on the second set of his Rattle That Lock Tour 2015/16. The song was also performed in 1990 during the band's set at Knebworth for the Silver Clef Award Winners Concert. For many years, an official release of this performance was unavailable, but the 2019 boxset The Later Years included it as part of the complete set list on both Blu-Ray/DVD and CD.

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A Momentary Lapse of Reason was released in the UK and US on 7 September 1987. It went straight to number three in both countries, held from the top spot in the US by Michael Jackson's Bad and Whitesnake's self-titled album. It spent 34 weeks on the UK Albums Chart. It was certified silver and gold in the UK on 1 October 1987, and gold and platinum in the US on 9 November. It went double platinum on 18 January the following year, triple platinum on 10 March 1992, and quadruple platinum on 16 August 2001, greatly outselling The Final Cut.

Gilmour presented A Momentary Lapse as a return to an older Pink Floyd sound, citing his belief that under Waters' tenure, lyrics had become more important than music. He said that their albums The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here were successful "not just because of Roger's contributions, but also because there was a better balance between the music and the lyrics [than on later albums]". Waters said of the album: "I think it's very facile, but a quite clever forgery ... The songs are poor in general; the lyrics I can't quite believe. Gilmour's lyrics are very third-rate." Wright later said Waters' criticisms were "fair".

In Q, Phil Sutcliffe wrote that it "does sound like a Pink Floyd album" and highlighted the two-part "A New Machine" as "a chillingly beautiful vocal exploration" and a "brilliant stroke of imagination". He concluded: "A Momentary Lapse is Gilmour's album to much the same degree that the previous four under Floyd's name were dominated by Waters … Clearly it wasn't only business sense and repressed ego but repressed talent which drove the guitarist to insist on continuing under the band brand-name." Recognizing the return to a more music-oriented approach, Sounds said the album was "back over the wall to where diamonds are crazy, moons have dark sides, and mothers have atom hearts".

Conversely, Greg Quill of the Toronto Star wrote: "Something's missing here. This is, for all its lumbering weight, not a record that challenges and provokes as Pink Floyd should. A Momentary Lapse of Reason, sorry to say, is mundane, predictable." Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote: "You'd hardly know the group's conceptmaster was gone – except that they put out noticeably fewer ideas." In 2016, AllMusic critic William Ruhlmann described it as a "Gilmour solo album in all but name".

In 2016, Nick Shilton chose A Momentary Lapse of Reason as one of the "Top 10 Essential 80s Prog Albums" for Prog. He wrote: "While it's not a patch on the Floyd masterworks of the 70s, it merits inclusion here. The ironically titled 'Signs of Life' is an instrumental prelude for 'Learning to Fly' which showcases Gilmour's guitar, while the pulsating 'The Dogs of War' is considerably darker, and the uplifting 'On the Turning Away' simply sublime."

Reissues
The album was reissued in 1988 as a limited-edition vinyl album, complete with posters, and a guaranteed ticket application for the band's upcoming UK concerts. It was digitally remastered and re-released in 1994, and a tenth anniversary edition was issued in the US three years later.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was reissued again as part of the Later Years box set released in December 2019. The album was "updated and remixed" by Gilmour and Jackson, with restored contributions from Wright and newly recorded drum tracks from Mason to "restore the creative balance between the three Pink Floyd members". Rolling Stone described this version as "more tasteful ... [it] doesn’t drown in eighties reverb the way the original did ... Although none of the Momentary Lapse remixes will be dramatic enough to sway the band’s critics, they add clarity to what Gilmour was trying to achieve." A standalone album was released on 29 October 2021."

For the record, I do prefer the Later Years remix with the extra contributions from Nick and Rick.

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trans-chigley express
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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby trans-chigley express » 04 May 2022, 05:29

I sold my copy of Radio KAOS (and Pros and Cons) pretty quickly after buying it and I'm not really tempted to revisit either of them.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was very underwhelming, even viewed as a Gilmour solo effort. I might give the recent remixed and updated version a listen to see if it's improved it at all.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Mike Boom » 04 May 2022, 17:59

trans-chigley express wrote:I sold my copy of Radio KAOS (and Pros and Cons) pretty quickly after buying it and I'm not really tempted to revisit either of them.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was very underwhelming, even viewed as a Gilmour solo effort. I might give the recent remixed and updated version a listen to see if it's improved it at all.


I had given up on Floyd by this point, there was plenty going on elsewhere at the time, Ive heard bits and pieces since over the years, and it all sounded rather bland as I recall, but I must go back and take another listen to these latter albums.



The houseboat/recording Studio Astoria is just the coolest thing ever!

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 09 May 2022, 16:29

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Delicate Sound of Thunder 1988
Pink Floyd were doing quite nicely in the late '80s, thank you very much. Roger must have thought he'd torpedoed the group when he quit several years prior, but A Momentary Lapse of Reason far outsold Radio K.A.O.S., and the subsequent Floyd tour was their biggest ever at the time. We finally got a completely live album too. Not since Ummagumma had there been any official in-concert document of PF. This album is pretty good, though their era of being an improvisational live band was long gone. The object now being to replicate the sound of the records as accurately as possible. I never bought this back in the day, and didn't own a copy until The Later Years box came out in 2019, so it's a relatively recent acquisition for your humble narrator. I'll tell you what I really like though, is the film which has been spit-and-polished with extra tracks added. No reason to listen to something like this when you can see it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbammHvdv-M
4K concert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHf5IftRKPs
longer, full concert

I'm not gonna review the 1988 album in full, as it contains no new songs and I've already dealt with them in previous posts, but I'll give all the relevant Wiki info:

"Delicate Sound of Thunder is a live album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It was recorded over five nights at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York, in August 1988 and mixed at Abbey Road Studios in September 1988. It was released on 22 November 1988, through EMI Records in the United Kingdom and Columbia Records in the United States. The album was remixed, restored and reissued in December 2019 for The Later Years 1987–2019 box set. This version included songs that were not present on the original release. In November 2020, it was given a standalone release.

Release and Reissue
The album was released in 1988 as a double LP, double cassette, and a double CD, each format containing a slightly different track listing. The album includes many works from A Momentary Lapse of Reason as well as tracks from older Pink Floyd albums. The double LP release did not have "Us and Them" on the track listing. Both the double LP and the double cassette had "Wish You Were Here" between "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" and "Comfortably Numb".

Although David Gilmour stated around the time of its release and on a radio interview in 1992 that the album contained no studio overdubbing whatsoever, he embellished the tracks during mixing with some extra acoustic guitar on "Comfortably Numb", according to engineer Buford Jones. In addition, some harmonies were replaced by studio re-takes: Richard Wright re-did his vocal on "Time" and Sam Brown replaced Rachel Fury's part in "Comfortably Numb" but the rest of the album is as performed at the shows.

Along with A Collection of Great Dance Songs, Delicate Sound of Thunder was reissued on 180g heavyweight vinyl LP in November 2017. Its artwork replicates that of the original 1988 LP release.

An expanded version of the live album was included in The Later Years 1987–2019 box set in 2019. Previously unreleased tracks include "Signs of Life," "A New Machine (Part 1)", "Terminal Frost", "A New Machine (Part 2)", "Welcome to the Machine", and "One Slip". All tracks were remixed for the 2019 reissue.

Commercial performance
Delicate Sound of Thunder reached #11 on the Billboard 200 and is currently listed as Triple Platinum in U.S. sales — it was certified Gold and Platinum on 23 January 1989 and Triple Platinum in April 1997. In Canada, it was #57 in the 1989 year-end chart. In December, 2020, the album re-entered the Billboard album chart at #76 thanks to the sales of the deluxe reissue of the album.

First in space
Delicate Sound of Thunder became the first album to be played in space, when Soviet cosmonauts took it aboard Soyuz TM-7. David Gilmour and Nick Mason attended the mission's launch.

Pink Floyd

David Gilmour – guitars, console steel guitar, lead vocals, production and 2019/2020 remixing
Nick Mason – drums, percussion
Richard Wright – keyboards, backing vocals, lead vocals on "Time" and "Comfortably Numb"

Additional musicians

Jon Carin – keyboards, programming, backing vocals
Rachel Fury – backing vocals
Durga McBroom – backing vocals
Scott Page – saxophones, oboe, guitar
Guy Pratt – bass guitar, backing vocals, co-lead vocals on "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" and "Run Like Hell"
Tim Renwick – guitars, backing vocals
Machan Taylor – backing vocals
Gary Wallis – percussion, additional keyboards on "Comfortably Numb"

CD
Disc one

1. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" (Roger Waters/David Gilmour/Richard Wright) 11:53
2. "Learning to Fly" (Gilmour/Bob Ezrin/Jon Carin/Anthony Moore) 5:27
3. "Yet Another Movie" (Gilmour/Pat Leonard) 6:21
4. "Round and Around" (Gilmour) 0:33
5. "Sorrow" (Gilmour) 9:28
6. "The Dogs of War" (Gilmour/Moore) 7:18
7. "On the Turning Away" (Gilmour/Moore) 7:58

Disc two

1. "One of These Days" (Waters/Gilmour/Wright/Nick Mason) 6:15
2. "Time" (Gilmour/Mason/Wright/Waters) 5:16
3. "Wish You Were Here" (Waters/Gilmour) 4:49
4. "Us and Them" (Waters/Wright) 7:22
5. "Money" (Waters) 9:52
6. "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" (Waters) 5:28
7. "Comfortably Numb" (Gilmour/Waters) 8:56
8. "Run Like Hell" (Gilmour/Waters) 7:12

Songs omitted from the album
The concerts also featured the following songs which were not included on the album:

"Signs of Life" *
"A New Machine"
"Terminal Frost"
"On the Run" *
"The Great Gig in the Sky" *
"Welcome to the Machine"
"One Slip" *
Songs with asterisk (*) are included in the video version.

2019 reissue
Delicate Sound of Thunder was reissued on CD on 13 December 2019 as part of the box set The Later Years 1987–2019 along with the film of the same name. The album has been remixed and remastered and includes tracks omitted from the original 1988 release. A standalone release was released on 20 November 2020 on 2 CD, triple LP, and CD/DVD/BD box set which includes the 2019 cut of the film.

In the 2019 remix, the songs "Sorrow", "On the Turning Away" and "Comfortably Numb" have longer guitar solos by Gilmour than in the 1988 original; "The Dogs of War" has a longer intro; "Money" has been condensed, removing Guy Pratt's bass solo and the female a cappella section; "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" has extra elements, muted on the original release, added in - most notably an extra "hey teacher!" between Gilmour's and Renwick's guitar solos; "Us and Them" has a piano added to the intro; much of the echo has been removed from Wallis' electronic drums during "Learning to Fly"; "Run Like Hell" has an extended intro and now includes Gilmour thanking the audience; and "Time" guitar's intro starts sooner within the "tic-tac" (as performed on Pulse) than the 1988 original.

"Learning to Fly", "Us and Them", and "Run Like Hell" from the 2019 remix are also included in the 2019 compilation album The Later Years 1987–2019 Highlights, released on 29 November 2019." - Wikipedia

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 09 May 2022, 19:32

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Syd Barrett - Opel 1988
We got another Syd album in '88 as well, but it's little more than barrel-scrapings. You may think I'm being unfair to Nick and Rick by not reviewing any of their solo efforts while giving time to stuff like this, but even an afterthought album such as this one is more interesting to me because it's Syd Barrett than anything by the other two guys. My loss, I'm sure.

There's only eight new cuts here, and while none of them are revelatory, all of them are at least entertaining. The six remaining tracks are variations of what was released on The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. Most of the 'new' songs are from the sessions for those two LPs as well. I'll not bother to review the six songs we already know, of course.

Wiki - "Opel is a 1988 album compiled from recordings made by former Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett between 1968 and 1970. The album is a compilation of unreleased material and alternate takes of recordings from sessions for Barrett's solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. Before they were vetoed by Pink Floyd, the album was to include two unreleased tracks that Barrett had worked on while with Pink Floyd, "Scream Thy Last Scream" and "Vegetable Man".

Opel was released in October 1988 on Harvest in the UK, and on Capitol Records in the US. The album was remastered and reissued in 1993, as part of the Crazy Diamond box set. A newly remastered version was released in 2010.

Background
While Barrett only released two albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, both in 1970, the existence of unreleased studio work was widely reported. After years of demand from Barrett's considerable fan base, Opel was compiled and released. Barrett personally approved the new release.

Release and Content
Opel consists of eight previously unreleased songs and alternate versions of six already released songs. The album was released due to the constant pressure from The Madcap Laughs producer, Malcolm Jones. Despite its positive reviews, it failed to chart. AllMusic reviewer Richie Unterberger said the album was "charming", with the title track, "Swan Lee (Silas Lang)", "Dark Globe" and "Milky Way" as highlights."

Personnel
Syd Barrett – guitar, vocals, producer
David Gilmour – producer
Peter Jenner – producer
Malcolm Jones – producer
Roger Waters – producer
Gareth Cousins - mix engineer

Guest musicians on "Clowns and Jugglers":

Mike Ratledge – organ
Robert Wyatt – drums
Hugh Hopper – bass

1. "Opel" *Take 9, recorded 11 April 1969 Produced by Malcolm Jones 6:26
Well, it's Syd, to be sure, but I can see why this song was passed over for The Madcap Laughs. It slow, and rambling. Naturally, the liner notes above paint it as one of his finest tunes.

2. "Clowns and Jugglers (Octopus)" *Take 2, recorded 20 July 1968 Produced by Peter Jenner 3:27
The familiar "Octopus" song but with a more indecisive arrangement. Remember on the Madcap version, The Soft Machine were overdubbing instrumentation.

3. "Rats" *Demo, recorded 5 June 1970 Produced by David Gilmour 3:12
So this song was originally on Barrett. I guess it stands to reason that none of these alternate versions are better than the originals, but if you know the earlier albums well, then these new versions are of interest.

4. "Golden Hair" *Take 6, recorded 12 June 1969 Produced by Syd Barrett and David Gilmour 1:44
The first of two new versions on this LP of the Madcap tune. Too somnambulist for my taste. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

5. "Dolly Rocker" *Take 1, recorded 14 July 1970 Produced by David Gilmour 3:01
This one isn't bad, perhaps something could have been done with this, but Syd's performance is lackluster. Still, with a bit of work...

6. "Word Song" *Take 1, recorded 17 July 1970 Produced by David Gilmour 3:19
The liners call this one "whimsical," which I guess it is. Mildly entertaining but still with that aura of unimportance which covers the entire endeavor. One's fascination depends on the level of Barrett devotion in the listener.

7. "Wined and Dined" *Demo, recorded 5 June 1970 Produced by David Gilmour 3:03
Another different version of a Barrett ditty. Not crazy about this on either. "Bob Dylan's Dream" would have enlivened this platter plenty.

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8. "Swan Lee (Silas Lang)" *Take 9, recorded 11 April 1969 Take 5, recorded 28 May 1968, overdubs added 8 June 1968 Produced by Peter Jenner Further overdubs added 25 April 1969 Produced by Malcolm Jones 3:13
Syd turns his attention to this tale of a Native American and his squaw. I like this one, and again - with a little work, this could have been a condendah! This is one of the earliest tracks here, predating the Madcap sessions.

9. "Birdie Hop" *Demo, recorded 5 June 1970 Produced by David Gilmour 2:30
Another one of his "whimsical" numbers. I think had he put forth some effort into sounding enthusiastic some of these performances could have made the grade. But then I suppose all concerned were trying to get the best they could out of Barrett.

10. "Let's Split" *Take 1, recorded 14 July 1970 Produced by David Gilmour 2:23
So once you get used to these songs and the realization hits you that none of them are going to be great, a certain acceptance is found whereupon a track like this is as quite okay. Dig?

11. "Lanky (Part One)" *Take 1, recorded 14 May 1968 Produced by Peter Jenner 5:32
Improvisational instrumental which sounds nothing like the other cuts. I rather like it. Reminiscent of an earlier, trippier Floyd.

12. "Wouldn't You Miss Me (Dark Globe)" *Take 1, recorded 26 July 1969 Produced by David Gilmour and Roger Waters
3:00
Early version of the tune which would become "Dark Globe" on Madcap. Don't know how I feel about this one really. Not as good as the original, but it's still all Syd, so there's that.

13. "Milky Way" *Take 5, recorded 7 June 1970 Produced by David Gilmour 3:07
Yeah, I like this one though. Sometimes his quirkiness is enough to make it work. For me, this is one of those times.

14. "Golden Hair (Instrumental version)" *Take 1, recorded 14 May 1968 Produced by Peter Jenner 1:56
Third and final version (second one on this LP) of a song which wasn't necessarily great to begin with. The record doesn't exactly end with a bang, folks.

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robertff
Posts: 12074
Joined: 20 Jul 2003, 06:59

Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 09 May 2022, 19:38

Got a few versions of this album (Momentary) in varying formats - vinyl and CD and I like it well enough. After the abysmal Final Cut it was a breath of fresh air - well maybe not a huge lungful of fresh air but the change helped.




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mudshark
Posts: 2144
Joined: 25 Jul 2003, 03:51

Re: Pink Floyd

Postby mudshark » 09 May 2022, 20:15

I got the CD release of Thunder when it came out. I was underwhelmed. Not a great performance, in my opinion. They made up for it with Pulse, 7 years or so later. Much better band overall. Still, I seldom play either of them because it's annoying having to skip through the post WYWH songs. In terms of live albums, I stick to half of Umma Gumma and a 4-disc bootleg set of live recordings from 67 until 77 of which I forgot the name.
There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over

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Matt Wilson
Psychedelic Cowpunk
Posts: 32515
Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 20:18
Location: Edge of a continent

Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 09 May 2022, 20:19

Well, as I said above - it's better to watch rather than listen to Delicate Sound. It used to bore me too, but The Later Years made me a fan with the surround sound mix. Put that on your TV, hopefully with a big monitor, and it's easy to get into it.


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