Hello, my friends, old and new, and happy holidays! You're probably sick and tired of wishes by now, so, without further delay, let's dig into our Pink Floyd countdown.
At #35 on our list is a song from The Final Cut (1983), Not Now John. It was the only single released from the album, reaching #30 on the UK Singles Chart. The lyrics, written by Roger Waters, deal with war (particularly the Falklands War) and criticism of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as well as general criticisms of the greed and corruption that Waters saw as dangers to society. It also shows the corruptible and fruitless labor of post-war America, Europe, and Japan. The wording is such that it mainly tells of the changing of global trade and that a new leader is emerging in the consumer goods industry, Japan.
It's the standout track from The Final Cut, with all the characteristics you'd expect from a Roger Waters song - the pinched sarcasm and the prominent backing vocals. Gilmour's voice is really suited to the track - his only vocal contribution on this album.
Something of a Young Lust retread, to be sure - Gilmour's guitar solo even starts off identically - but the performance is committed and gritty enough, and it's so nice to hear a voice besides Waters' on The Final Cut's back end, that Gilmour's growl Not Now John is lent a disproportionate kind of energy and urgency. Definitely the best use of the F-word on a Pink Floyd record, at least: ("Fuck all that, we’ve got to get on with these / Gotta compete with the wily Japanese.") Which gave rise to the acronym that I often use in my life, albeit usually silently, F.A.T.
High Hopes, from The Division Bell (1994), is the last track we'll be listening to from Pink Floyd's post-The Wall period. Gilmour has said that the song is more about his early days, and leaving his hometown behind. It was a single, peaking at #26 in the UK. It's probably the most acclaimed track from Gilmour-helmed 'new' Floyd, shunning Waters' nihilism…
The band made the curious decision to significantly backload the album - with all three singles coming on the second side - so you have to sit through a whole lot of new-age noodling before you get to the actual song-songs. But the finest of 'em comes at the end, when the clanging church bells of the Lost for Words outro give way to the blood-curdling piano plinks of High Hopes, a dolorous retrospective epic that's maybe a little more Silent Lucidity than Comfortably Numb, but still comes the closest to the cinematic grandeur of classic Floyd than any other song since The Wall came down.
Bob Ezrin, the co-producer of The Wall and The Division Bell said: "Roger's leaving didn't mean they were all suddenly going to fold up their tents and go home. Being a member of this band was how they defined themselves. But it took The Division Bell to get the new order established. There was less tension and stress than in The Wall. We went away for Christmas. And when we came back, Dave played us High Hopes. It wasn't something we'd been working on. And there's nothing complacent about it. It was absolutely feverish. It came to him in a burst, in two days. It was cathartic."
"It's the best track on the record. It is all David. It knitted together the album. It's a monochrome, high-contrast musical painting, surrounded by a few little colorful elements, that form a wrapper around it. But the essence of the song is very stark. It's peculiarly English. And when the Floyd are being English, they are at their best. Sometimes they are almost Dickensian. So is this."
One Of My Turns, #33 in our list, appears almost halfway through The Wall (1979) and was also released as the B-side on the international #1 single Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).
Where to begin with this one? It's a song that represents the tipping point of madness for the album's hero, where everything finally bubbles to a head. Lyrically, this song is the last straw for a very unstable persona. When the narrator finally has it with his unfaithful wife, when he's had it with his own infidelity, when he's had it with the pressures of his own life, created by him, he explodes with a fury and lays waste to a hotel room. The last line represents his fragile state of mind best when he asks, “Why are you running away?” after doing everything he can to drive a wedge between himself and society at large.
Careful with that axe, Roger! The Pink Floyd frontman's screaming-in-a-hotel-room voice would well wear out its welcome by the time he left the band a half-decade later, but the first time it tears through one of the album's more sedate-seeming tracks ("Would you like to learn to fly?/ WOULD YA LIKE TO SEE ME TRY??"), it's legitimately unnerving.
This is the Alan Parker movie version:
This is a live version (August 9th, 1980):
We now go back to the beginning, to Pink Floyd's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). Lucifer Sam is built around a descending riff, with the dominant instrument being composer Syd Barrett's electric guitar, fed through an echo machine; the resultant sound has been likened to a "sinister" Duane Eddy. The song is about the coolest cat that Syd Barrett knew - in this case, an actual cat, his pet Siamese. "That cat's something I can't explain!" he exclaims on the refrain.
The tune is a juicy and credible bit of garage rock, or power pop if you will, with some silky guitar and a rumbling below. It would probably be the direction Pink Floyd would’ve taken, had Syd Barrett not had his emotional and mental breakdown.
Jim Reid, of The Jesus And Mary Chain, said:
"I remember as a teenager sitting in my bedroom trying to play the guitar riffs for Lucifer Sam and make out the lyrics. The version I used to play, if you were being kind, could be described as punk/avant-garde, or more truthfully complete shite, but I enjoyed hacking away at it anyway. I never understood why Floyd didn't release it as a single, it seemed like a sure hit to me."
"When the Mary Chain appeared on The Tube in 1985, Dave Gilmour was there playing with Pete Townshend’s band. In between the rehearsals, William [Reid, JAMC] was onstage doing a really bad job of painting his lovely old vintage Gretsch guitar. Gilmour came over to watch. He had a look on his face as though someone was taking a shit on The Bible. A couple of years ago, at an awards ceremony, he came up to me and mentioned this. Christ, I was astonished he could even remember it! I thought fuck, what have we done to the poor guy? He must have been traumatized to remember that, 20 years later. I wanted to shake his hand and give him a big hug, but I just smiled meekly and disappeared into the shadows."
This version has the best sound:
This version has an inspired animated video:
Finally for today, at #31, is Free Four: a song that appears on Obscured by Clouds (1972). The song begins with a rock and roll count-in, but in this case, Pink Floyd decided to play with words and record, "One, Two, FREE FOUR!" The music begins in an upbeat manner, while the lyrics tell a very cynical and somewhat depressing story.
The song also appeared on the soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder's The Valley. It has a guitar sound out of Spirit in the Sky and a nice sing-along feel. Lyrically it's another step forward for Waters, head and shoulders above anything else the band had done before, a mordant meditation on life, death, war, work, and capitalism, with what I think is the first reference to the death of his father, which would take on more and more importance in his work to come.
Pink Floyd didn't exactly have a ton of natural overlap with the concurrent glam rock explosion as they finished their own ascent to UK rock primacy, but this Obscured By Clouds single borrows Electric Warrior's jaunty handclaps and hip-swaying boogie - though it's clearly set apart by a searing Gilmour mini-solo, a gently foreboding Waters vocal ("You are the angel of death!") and synth bombs detonated at the end of each line by Wright. It's a fiendish concoction, and one of the most purely likable things the Floyd did in the '70s.
Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; I usually try to leave a gap of no more than two days between each story, but this time, for various reasons, the last three stories were spaced three days away from each other. Nonetheless, all three were very successful, which makes me grateful to all of you for reading and listening to what I upload. Thanks!
This was in relation to a huge increase in overall visits, over 200%! If our new friends remain with us, this represents a new stage for our blog. If only I could get you guys to comment more...
As far as countries are concerned, there was a definite winner this week: France. It has amazingly contributed to almost two-thirds of this week's visits. Needless to say, it's sitting comfortably at the top of this week's chart and it has moved up to #2 on the all-time chart, leaving the United Kingdom and Greece clearly behind.
The huge presence of France made most other major players suffer a decrease in their all-time percentage, with the exceptions of Italy, which overtook Cyprus in the all-time list, Canada, Australia, and Spain. A special mention to Colombia, which (if I'm not mistaken) for the first time ever enters this week's top 10, at the quite remarkable position #7. Welcome!
Here are this week's Top 10 countries.
1. France
2. the United States
3. the United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Italy
6. Greece
7. Colombia
8. Germany
9. Australia
10. Spain
Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Albania, Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, Georgia, Ghana, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Mozambique, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!
And here's the all-time Top 10:
1. the United States = 35.8%
2. France = 12.0%
3. the United Kingdom = 9.3%
4. Greece = 8.7%
5. Russia = 4.1%
6. Germany = 2.8%
7. Italy = 1.39%
8. Cyprus = 1.37%
9. Canada = 1.12%
10. the United Arab Emirates = 0.53%
That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!
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