uReview: The Pink Floyd Discography
With Pink Floyd on an all-out reissue bender, I thought it would be a good time for another one of these discography reviews. I loved the Floyd as a youngster discovering rock & roll, but started to lose faith as I delved deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. Dark Side is an undisputed masterpiece, but am I too much of a Syd snob to choose it here? What are you gonna go with?
[poll id=”7″]
Q. Do you call them “The Pink Floyd” or just “Pink Floyd?”
Written by Brendan | October 5th, 2011 | Comments (15)
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What a timely subject. I have been enjoying all the reissue coverage that seems to be everywhere lately, and have been listening to Pink Floyd all week. Aaaaah memories! Was glad to see “The Final Cut” left out of the voting. Just curious about everyones take on buying all these records….again? Are the extras worth it?
Thanks again for the topic!
I am not sure on this one….Relics is a good early summary of the band with some great non-lp cuts…not sure it would fit in here but it’s worthy. Also, while Ummagumma is one of their weakest studio albums the live portion (which is on disc two) is outstanding. They should have added “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream” to one of the early album reissues….same goes for ‘Lucy Leave”, “I’m A King Bee” and all those other early outtakes.
Obscured By the Clouds is the best record they ever made!! I call them Pink Floyd, I’m not from the 60’s.
A. The Floyd….?
anyone familiar with the late period minidisc reissues from 94? weird format, but are they worth checking out?? http://pinkfloydarchives.com/DUSMDPF.htm
I agrree with jb, if you use the word the then it’s just The Floyd, otherwise it’s Pink Floyd. Unlike a band like The Rolling Stones who sometimes left the off of their album comvers. I don’t think Pink Floyd ever put the on album covers.
My personal fave remains More OST, very underrated – see my review on this site. It’s Pink Floyd for sure. “The” Pink Floyd is very middle-aged mid-sixties journalese. Bands stopped calling themselves “the” anything by 1967. The Final Cut excluded because only the albums up to Roger Waters’s petulant departure have been listed. In fairness, whatever you thought of Waters, the albums without his lyrical input aren’t really Floyd works, more Gilmour solo albums. In fact Wright and Mason ended up as his salarymen.
I say “Les Floyd”
Per Len’s comments as to what Pink Floyd albums were included: I agree with the reasoning, however, The Final Cut was the last album Roger Waters was involved in. It could be argued with force that it is essentially a Waters solo album, as Gilmour had practically no influence, writing nothing, singing very little, and giving up his associate producer role. In addition, Wright didn’t appear on the record, as he had been let go after The Wall tour.
Oops, sorry I left the above message without including my name. I dislike anonymous posting…. my apologies.
Years ago I somewhere heard a rumor/story that Roger presented the band with two concept albums he had already written most of, The Wall and The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking. Needless to say, they chose The Wall. If the story is true, I wonder how Hitchhiking would have sounded as a Pink Floyd record. I have always loved it, especially Claptons work on it.
Comments anyone?
Band was known simply as Floyd to everybody I knew back in the rabbit ears age. If I were only allowed one of their records it would be Wish You Were Here because my mom gave it to me for Christmas the year it came out (along with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow first record).
Quite right, Neil, my mistake about The Final Cut. Thanx for the heads-up on Hitchhiking, Vandal – that’s one I must investigate.
Piper is winning the vote – inevitably.
I always found it more than irritating that ‘Relics’ included tracks from the first two albums, but excluded many of the early singles and B-sides, not to mention “Vegetable Man” etc. Back in the late 80s I secured a copy of the “Master of Rock” compilation which *did* include some of the rare tracks. It was quite hard to find at a reasonable price, and in reasonable condition.
I remember reading an interview with a band member who said “It would be so nice” was a terrible record, but I rather like it. It’s yet another example of Wright’s considerable songwriting talent. “Point me at the Sky” is fairly crappy, but still it’s a shame it didn’t make it on to Relics whereas Interstellar Overdrive did. It makes no sense at all to me that Relics has not been bumped up to 72 minutes with these extra ‘rare’ tracks, and still carries cuts from Piper and Saucerful. Especially bizarre, considering the elaborate architectural model remake of the original Nick Mason cover drawing for a later CD reisusse.
The *really* rare Floyd stuff I long to hear is the recordings using found objects, made soon after UmmaGumma, and discussed in Miles’ book. The band apparently liked these tracks but never released them because there weren’t enough for a whole album. I suppose if you plot an imaginary line between “Several species…” and “Music from the Body” you can imagine how they might sound.
“The Pink Floyd” never appeared (with “The”) on an album cover, although as far as I know, it did appear on the *spine* and disc label of most, if not all the albums up to and including Atom Heart Mother.
Floyd were my favorite band for years, and were the first band I loved enough to buy all their albums. The experimentation on the early albums is extraordinary, considering that they were not attempting to be avant-garde. Now I have a more ambivalent opinion of them, especially the stuff after Dark Side. I have since discovered dozens of other fabulous prog rock, avant garde and psychedelic bands, which hit my joy button more squarely.
Still I will always have a soft spot for Dark Side, Atom Heart Mother, Piper and Umma Gumma, which were my four choices in the vote.
I chose Piper (no need explanations), Meddle (Fearless, Echoes: for me the best piece of music made by Floyd), Dark Side (I like this album as a whole, more than single songs) and Wish you were here (WYWH).
I still dont get The Wall…