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[Gimpson]

With Roger and everything.

Personally, I vote good thing.  I kind of doubt they'll tour after this show, but if they do I'd travel for it.

[andalucia]

Yeah, I'm one of those Pink Floyd was nothing post-Syd people, so a big "meh" here-- fuck, I hate Roger Waters.

 I don't know, were they good live?  I think of them as such a studio band, plus at their current age... I don't really see how this could transcend its own novelty value, not that that wouldn't be enough to sell a lotttt of tickets if they go on tour.

[pmcd9]

Definitely a good thing.

Oh yeah and a tour will definitely follow.

And then an album as well.

I can't remember if it were here or elsewhere, but I predicted this at least a year ago.  It's happened almost exactly the way I imagined it.

First Waters and Wright, the two most estranged members of the band have a "chance meeting" and remember that they were once friends and therefore decide to shed their animosity.

Gilmour declares the end of Pink Floyd because "they've got nothing left to say."  This actually first put me on to the notion that there would be a reunion.  Because how can you have a reunion after all if you never broke up in the first place?  Also, if Gilmour hasn't anything left to say, i'm sure that Waters can come up with some new ideas.

Gilmour and Waters work closely together on the Echos box set which is a huge success.  Gilmour declares to be "surprised there is still so much interest in the band."  Given the fact that their entire catalog continues to sell millions of copies each year this couldn't possibly be a true statement, but whatever, he's paving the road to a reunion.

Everyone who i've ever spoken with says they'll never get together because a) they hate each other too much and b) they have too much money to care.

I must admit that's a tough argument to defeat, but I knew they wanted to do it, especially Waters.  With his massive ego It's gotta bother him that his records sell a couple of hundred thousand while Gilmour's Floyd albums sell millions.  If I only had the name back he must be saying to himself.  If I only have the name.  So he sucks it up and starts playing nice.  As for the rest of them, sure they have millions and would never need work another day in their lives, but hey, they're bored.  The kids are grown, they're middle aged crazy.  So sure, let's put the band back together, it ought to be good for a laff right?

All they needed was an excuse.  Raising money to help starving kids in Africa?  Headlining an allstar concert broadcast to the entire world?  What better incintive could there ever be?

Definitely a good thing.

~Paul

[slink]

Yeah, I'm one of those Pink Floyd was nothing post-Syd people, so a big "meh" here-- fuck, I hate Roger Waters.

Exactly my sentiments.

[miles]

Yeah, I'm one of those Pink Floyd was nothing post-Syd people, so a big "meh" here-- fuck, I hate Roger Waters.

Exactly my sentiments.

You don't like Meddle?

[Golfhaus]

heh heh... "nothing post-Syd" people always came across as ludicrous to me. Forget Meddle - although that's hard to do because it IS a musically superior record - what about Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, The Wall? I don't recall ever seeing "I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like" spray-painted on the Berlin Wall by forward-thinking German youth.

Post-Syd, they were one of the most influential bands of all time. If Syd had been able to hold it together a little better, they'd probably get mentioned on occasion as "one of those 60's psychedelic bands with a weird name" and nothing more.

And I LIKE Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But man, given the choice of one or the other, I'd probably even listen to The Division Bell before it.

[miles]

I hate The Wall.  Wish You Were Here is a great song but an OK album.  Dark Side is great, but I think Meddle is the best.

But The Division Bell over Piper?  Come on, you can't mean that.

[AugustWest]

Pink Floyd is my favorite band and has been for a long long time.  Some random thoughts:

David Gilmour is a hugely underrated guitarist.

I can't stand to listen to anything after The Wall.

I have a copy of the studio sides of Ummagumma in my truck right now.  It's very strange to drive down the narrow backroads between farms and forests while listening to "The Narrow Way" and "The Grand Vizier's Garden Party".

So it's "Art Rock".  So it's pretentious.  I don't care.  It sounds good to me.

I like Syd-era.  I like post-Syd.  They're different creatures, but I like 'em both.  

I have my doubts about the whole Syd mythology.  OK, he was a great whimsical lyricist who went mad because of the pressure and the LSD and he's been reclusive/hospitalized/protected ever since.  Or maybe he had his fun and made some money, had a crisis, recovered and decided he didn't want to go back to that life.  40 years later modern psychiatry is incapable of making the guy functional?  I doubt it.  But the first version is a better story.

DSOTM + Wizard of Oz = BS

I have both of Gilmour's old solo albums, and Rick Wright's solo album.

Favorites:

Meddle
DSOTM
Piper
Wish You Were Here

Next:
Atom Heart Mother
Ummagumma
The Wall
Saucer Full of Secrets

Least:
Obscured by Clouds (although it has a couple of my very favorite songs on it)
More
Animals

Don't Listen To:
Anything after The Wall

[slink]

I have no time for Floyd after Syd, but I don't actually ever listen to them anyway. I'm just really not into them at all. And I really really hate Waters.

[pmcd9]

The kids don't like them because they are 'still' in heavy rotation on classic rock radio and classic rock radio = uncool.  I don't listen much to their best work [Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, The Wall] either because it's been so burned out to me by 30 years of constant radio play.  But the kids like what they like, so what'cha gonna do about it.  It's no Mars Volta, but it'll do for me.

~Paul

PS- I saw a really cool band two weeks ago play a cover of Flying, the old Rogers and Hamemrstien song from Meddle.  At the end of it I stood up and started singing You'll Never Walk Alone, but no one joined in with me so I shut up and sat back down.  Man, that could have been really great.

[andalucia]

The kids don't like them because they are 'still' in heavy rotation on classic rock radio and classic rock radio = uncool.  I don't listen much to their best work [Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, The Wall] either because it's been so burned out to me by 30 years of constant radio play.  But the kids like what they like, so what'cha gonna do about it.  It's no Mars Volta, but it'll do for me.

Nah, as far as I'm aware, the same kind of kids who always liked Pink Floyd still like them.  And so most of my stoner friends in high school thought they were the best thing since Zig-Zags.  I've seen The Wall, god, way too many times, I've seen Wizard of Oz synched up with Dark Side (don't remember if it worked or not, I passed out about 3/4 the way through), but no amount of drugs could make me enjoy Pink Floyd.  And I mean, mushrooms make pretty much any music incredible, but nope.  Don't think I haven't tried, is what I'm saying.  

I don't think Piper is a glorious, life-changing thing (nor am I interested in mythologizing Syd; there's nothing romantic about schizophrenia), I just think it's a fun little album, whereas their albums that are supposed to be glorious, life-changing things just always seemed really ridiculous to me.  

Goddamn Roger Waters and his boring mommy issues.

[pmcd9]

I never saw any of their music as life changing, just extremely enjoyable to listen to.  Ob-la-di Ob-la-Da, now that's some life changing music right there.

~Paul

[dejavroom]

Saw them on youtube and loved it. Not really because of the music, but for some reason knowing that they have sort of reunited touches my heart in all the right places. Something to do with our somewhat distorted perception of pop groups as the closer we'll get to super-hero groups and of how wrong it feels when super-heroes fight (I hope there's enough comic-book geekage around to understand, appreciate and validate the analogy, because it surely sounds cheesy), an idealization of the adventure, companionship, camaraderie, of *how fun* all that must have been... It was basically old pals getting a good resemblance of a closure, which is not bad. This feeling only got reinforced when later I saw the three of them - Wright couldn't attend, he was performing eye surgery - receiving the thing at the UK Music Hall Of Fame.

Also part of what makes it so alluring to old time fans is that how many classic bands from the golden age are around with their formation intact? NONE (Help me out if I'm forgetting someone): The Doors, The Who, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin... whenever nostalgia (or greed) attacks, it's always an exercise in make-believe and squinting real hard for the fans, who have to ignore the new drummer with pimples on his face, or the indelible aura of venality that hangs around hired musicians, but the Floyd can go onstage and still be 100% Floyd.

Now I drool:

Seeing Dave Gilmour and Rick Wright performing Arnold Layne on television was *really* far out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=b8KvKu8YYHE. There was half of a band that the world grew used to see solely as a stadium act, a heavy machine that could only clumsily trundle from arena to arena and perform under stratospheric production values... playing it raw and sloppy (my God Wright, mind your throat, please) without as much as a lighter as visual effects, really grooving to it, cutting a real nice 3-minute pop song with some bite to it! That Gilmour and Wright seemed as I said sort of un-rehearsed or sloppy only made it more jarring, considering. Almost like a bunch of kids trying to nail and audition or something - which is pretty close to that spunky, ineffable spark that real good bands possess when they're young and that, given the Floyd's level of desiccation (the "removal of water", see, see, nudge, nudge?) one wouldn't expect to find in them anymore. Also the strange contrast in seeing old wrinkled faces at it again, playing, screwing up here and there - not hiding behind an army of musicians playing 25-minutes-long embellished muzak - , I, I, I have tried to avoid saying it but I cannot - it seemed almost punk (Ok, I was squinting real hard there).

The drooling will get worse, you might wanna stop reading now.

The recent inclusion of "Wots... Uh The Deal" from "Obscured By Clouds" in Gilmour's setlist only made me start panting louder. If only sense struck them, and they started digging up those perfect short obscurities from "More", "Obscured..." and so on, and started playing them like real bands used to do, only the four of them onstage, bass, guitar, keyboard and drumkit, also ditching megavenues in favor of small clubs and small arenas - which of course won't happen because the rest of the world got Floyd all wrong, and nobody listens to me anyways, so there.

Sorry for that, it's just that I'll be 30 years old in May.

[jaydub]

I have my doubts about the whole Syd mythology.  OK, he was a great whimsical lyricist who went mad because of the pressure and the LSD and he's been reclusive/hospitalized/protected ever since.  Or maybe he had his fun and made some money, had a crisis, recovered and decided he didn't want to go back to that life.  40 years later modern psychiatry is incapable of making the guy functional?  I doubt it.  But the first version is a better story.

I'm not enough of a student of the band to even have recognized these "eras" within their timeline, but I was at least aware of the members' names.  Color me surprised then to find that Barrett died last year (in July) of complications from Type-II Diabetes.  Must have happened while I was on vacation - I can't believe I would have missed it otherwise.

[coldfrog]

I love floyd, and I guess I can be still considered a kid at 24.  I love Meddle and Saucerful of Secrets, Piper is my next favorite, and I've always enjoyed animals as well.  I like and listen to it all, though, but maybe it's just blind fan-ism.  I do agree about Division Bell being sub-par, but!  Division Bell is the reason they have to have a reunion.  Why, you ask?

Because no one has solved the Publius Enigma.