Posts Tagged ‘Pink Floyd’

9 May 2011
“The easiest way to get laid by a girl, or get rid of her, is to write a song about her.” ~ David Crosby

Fleet Foxes | Helplessness Blues

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young | So Far


Lou Donaldson | Gravy Train

Dizzy Reece | Star Bright

Alice Cooper | Love It To Death

Paul Siebel | Woodsmoke and Oranges

Pink Floyd | Meddle

Kid Cudi | Man On The Moon: The End Of Day

Talking Heads | The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads

Various Artists | The Anthology Of American Folk Music, Volume Three: Songs

Freddie Roach | Good Move!

Various Artists | Latin Funk Flavas

Willie Colon | Cosa Nuestra

Santana | Abraxas

Various Monks | A Treasury Of Gregorian Chants

Various Artists | Fania DJ Series: Gilles Peterson

The Jazz Messengers | At Cafe Bohemia Volume 2

Curtis Fuller | New Trombone

Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers | Rare Bird Alert

Muse | Black Holes and Revelations

Doubleshot Tuesday: Let’s Take It To The Stage/The Wall

1 February 2011
[Today: The joy of singing...]


The Wiz hit Broadway in January of 1975, and put a decidedly Afro-American spin on the then-36-year-old classic film, The Wizard Of Oz. In April of that same year, Funkadelic released Let’s Take It To The Stage, which has proven to be the unintentional prequel to another classic, Pink Floyd’s The Wall (which wasn’t released for another four years). Strip away the WWII imagery and Freudian hand-wringing, and concentrate on the artist-to-audience relationship, and The Wall becomes the inverse of Let’s Take It To The Stage.
The Wall opens with ‘In The Flesh?’, a direct challenge of audience expectations. Here, Roger Waters all but spits on the crowd, calling individual fans names and singling them out for humiliation. Let’s Take It To The Stage leads off with ‘Good To Your Earhole’, a promise to deliver good times, and an invitation to put your hands together. For Floyd and Waters, the process of being a rock star was akin to running a gauntlet of people who all want to do you harm. Funkadelic and George Clinton wallowed in the joy of making music, and if the business was sleazy, then hey, they could get to that.
Even the album titles conveyed the spirit of the bands responsible for them. Pink Floyd literally hid themselves behind a brick wall while playing The Wall onstage. Funkadelic created communal celebrations that were designed to take everyone up to the sky. Floyd demanded that you ‘Run Like Hell’ while Funkadelic insisted that you ‘Get Off Your Ass And Jam’. Floyd explained away violent interactions with groupies in ‘One Of My Turns’ while Funkadelic got down and dirty with ‘Baby I Owe You Something Good’. Floyd cranked out the sleaze of ‘Young Lust’ while Funkadelic pumped proto-pornography such as ‘Be My Beach’ (complete with Bootsy Collins stuttering about octopusses).
Let’s Take It To The Stage has ‘No Head No Backstage Pass’, while Floyd included a filmed version of that transaction in the movie The Wall. Roger Waters asks “Mother do you think they’ll like this song?” while George Clinton mocks James Brown as the Godmother and the Grandfather before calling out “Earth, Hot Air and No Fire” and “Fool & The Gang”. Funk used to be a bad word, according to Clinton, who proceeds to use variations like “motherfunker” that would have had Pink’s mother washing his mouth out with soap.
Neither of these albums was live, but both revolved around the concept of a band making their way to the stage. Personally, I know which audience I’d rather be part of…
Listen: Good To Your Earhole [Funkadelic]
Listen: In The Flesh? [Floyd]
Listen: Baby I Owe You Something Good [Funkadelic]
Listen: One Of My Turns [Floyd]
Listen: Get Off Your Ass And Jam [Funkadelic]
Listen: Run Like Hell [Floyd]
Listen: Let’s Take It To The Stage [Funkadelic]
Listen: Mother [Floyd]

Buried Treasure: The Film

14 January 2011
[Today: The Wall comes to life...]

From at least 1980 on, it would be nearly impossible to get the members of Pink Floyd to agree on anything this side of Syd Barrett’s one time brilliance. But agree they did on at least one other item: Dark Side Of The Moon had absolutely nothing to do with The Wizard Of Oz, and any synchronicity between sound and picture was purely coincidence. Each denied it in his own way. Drummer Nick Mason said that “It’s absolute nonsense. It has nothing to do with The Wizard Of Oz. It was all based on The Sound Of Music.” Guitarist David Gilmour sounded more bitter: “Some guy with too much time on his hands had this idea of combining Wizard Of Oz with Dark Side Of The Moon.”
But urban legend is a fierce beast, and the idea that Dark Side is a hidden soundtrack to Wizard Of Oz persists to this day. Which is even more absurd because Pink Floyd actually hid an amazing soundtrack right in plain sight. Their album The Wall was released in 1979, while the movie didn’t hit the big screen until 1982. In that time, Roger Waters evolved the songs, and included a few more that didn’t make the album. The double-LP bootleg The Film compiles all of the music as it was used in the movie, complete with television dialogue, glass breaking (often) and Bob Geldof. With strings and Tom & Jerry cartoons and groupie dialogue, Waters added additional textures to these songs, making this feel like a more in-the-flesh experience than the studio album.
Because it’s the true soundtrack to the movie The Wall, this bootleg is ideally sequenced to tell the story of the jaded rock star Pink – a human wave of destruction who was formed by the loss of his father to WWII, an overbearing mother, soul-crushing school system and cheating wife. This version includes the critical song ‘When The Tigers Broke Free’, which recounts Pink’s father’s death at the Anzio Bridgehead and the correspondence informing the family of his death, a letter that was “signed in his majesty’s own rubber stamp.”

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