Oh, I guess you’re right. I guess it’s just VHS and DVD then. I thought I had that but I’m clearly misremembering (and not near my collection to check).
As someone, who got hooked on Pink Floyd the first time I heard them as a little kid back in the 70’s, I can offer the definitive list:
- Dark Side of the Moon. An untouchable, unimpeachable masterpiece.
- Wish You Were Here.
- The Wall
- Animals
- Meddle
…
999. The Final Cut - A tiresome bit of Roger Water wankery
Everything in between pretty much consists of early Syd psychedelic oddities, or material from a band stumbling to find a new direction (Obscured By Clouds et. al.). Astromony Domine is honestly the only thing I like from them pre-Meddle. Songs about Arnold, cats named Lucifer Sam, and Bicycles are amusing periods pieces, though. Anything after the lamentable Final Cut is not Pink Floyd, but Gilmour & Friends.
I prefer the Soundtrack to More over The Final Cut, And it, along with “Domine” are what I can stomach pre-Meddle. Oh, and Eugene and Set the Controls.
#1 is Momentary lapse of Reason
That album was a cornerstone of my high school/college years.
We might need to move this thread to P&R.
Or I guess we can just accept that most people’s Pink Floyd world view was shaped by when they were in high school. I owned Meddle and had listened many times to pre-Meddle Floyd, so I bought Dark Side of the Moon right when it came out. They pretty much ceased to exist to me after The Wall, and even Animals felt like a huge let-down after Meddle, Dark Side and Wish You Were Here. The only one I still regularly listen to is Wish, but that reflects how many times I have already listened to Dark Side - I don’t need no stinkin’ stereo system to hear it, it’s in my brain.
Mine is much younger. My brothers used to listen to The Wall when I was a toddler onward.
So the first time I heard the Wall “in my waking years” so to speak, where I can actually access the memory, I felt like it was music I’d listened to a million times before even though I didn’t actually remember ever listening to it. That guitar riff from Another Brick in the Wall Part 1 that starts off that whole section of the album just feels like home to me. I want to nestle there and purr.
I pretty much agree with you if you see what I have posted here. And I graduated from HS in '89.
The early Barret-era Pink Floyd captures the feeling of my best times in high school. But later on things were much more subdued.
That’s Pink Floyd in name only, so it doesn’t count, sorry.
Pink Floyd without Roger Waters isn’t any more PF than it would be without David Gilmore. Still a decent band, though.
If you don’t like Animals, then, well, you’re nearly a laugh, but you’re really a cry. Ha, ha, charade you are.
(p.s. I like Meddle, but I didn’t discover it until college).
This is what I tell people who say that the Beatles would have been better off without Ringo. But then they wouldn’t have been The Beatles, I say. Still a hell of a band, no doubt, but not the same.
Well, by this logic, Final Cut and The Wall really weren’t Pink Floyd. Well, 85% of The Wall.
I actually kind of agree…
Piper At the Gates of Dawn
then
Parts of Saucerful of Secrets
And then I guess Wish You Were Here well behind that.
There it is! That spiciest of hot takes ;)
Now I’m curious, is Set Controls part of the Saucer Full of Secrets that is included, or excluded for you @triggercut
I think it’s debatable how much of a band’s ‘core’ has to go before the band ceases to be itself. Granted, all 4 Beatles were pretty integral to their Beatlesishness, even if they were already called the Beatles when Pete Best was the drummer.
In the case of Roger Waters, though, Pink Floyd without him is like the Beatles without John Lennon. In other words: it ain’t.
Yeah so basically you’ve got three bands each called Pink Floyd. It’s complicated.
Nah, only “Jugband Blues”.
And you can believe me or not, but there are a WHOLE lot of folks for whom Pink Floyd is Syd Barrett and then some stuff after.
And Waters and Gilmour make clear that Floyd without Barrett was basically a completely new band.
I mean, “See Emily Play” is such a weird set of chords and notes to begin a song with. It’s like you wandered into the middle of the chorus of a tune. And how the hell do you make “She’s often inclined to borrow somebody’s dreams till tomorrow?” actually fit into a metered verse?
God that song still sounds like something completely different and exciting from anything anyone was doing in the confines of pop music. Slap some washes of distorted guitar and a tremolo bar on it, and it’s a My Bloody Valentine song.
And then you get cool stuff that deliberately pushed the envelope, like “Lucifer Sam” and “Matilda Mother”. It’s more conscious (I don’t think Syd even realized how bonkers amazing “See Emily Play” sounded when he wrote it) effort, but it still works so beautifully noisily.
It definitely varies from band to band. One of my favorite bands is Dream Theater. Of their original lineup only two members remain. They replaced their lead singer after the first album, first keyboardist after the third, second keyboardist after their fourth, and drummer after their drummer after their tenth.
The only one of these of consequence was the drummer. Not to say the others weren’t the tallented, but that they weren’t the core of the band. The core is guitarist John Pettruci, bassist John Myung, drummer Mike Portnoy, and by their third album singer James LaBrie (largely supplanting Myung). That’s because of the influence, and importance in song writing, those contributed most. Jordan Rudess is a great player. But if he were to leave, it wouldn’t be as critical.
Mike Mangini is a fine drummer, but he isn’t Mike Portnoy. And while Bruce released three albums post Portnoy, they aren’t as classic (though they have their moments!)
In general there are two people I consider most critical. The lead singer, and the main songwriter. It is possible to lose one, but if at any time the other leaves, it kinda ceases to be the same band.
Nightwish, a band I love, has basically three eras, and they’re only loosely the same band. Though guitarist and primary writer Marco is constant, Tarja, Annette, and Floor are so different, and the sound and tone shift so much, they’re practically three different bands for me. And I say this as someone who likes and listens to all three!
So with Floyd I get the idea of different bands. For me there is continuity of some ethereal ‘spirit’ of the band up through Final Cut, though I do enjoy some of the later work as well. It’s distinct for me.