To celebrate the massive catalog re-release and global celebration of Pink Floyd’s music and legacy, LMB will be hosting it’s own Pink Floyd Week with posts from the editors and a few contributors about their connection to the band’s music, favorite albums and any other Floyd-related anecdotes and memories that come to mind. Please share your memories of any shows you may have attended in the comments section. This is the band that pushed pop music into outer space. And from what I understand, they were pretty great live too.

Without Pink Floyd we would not have a lot of your favorite bands today. With no Floyd there likely is no Tame Impala, Mars Volta or MGMT and CAN’s epic record Future Days perhaps would not have been made. I am too young to have seen them in their heyday or even on the PULSE or Division Bell Pink Gilmour tours in the mid-90′s, but thanks to the band’s lengthy discography and things like YouTube and periodic/often viewings of Live at Pompeii or Gilmour’s more recent Live at Gdansk concert film, my fanship of this band continues to grow with each passing year. How they were able to make an album as sonically dense and still future-sounding as Dark Side of the Moon in 1973 remains mind-boggling to this day. The fact that the word “Floydish” is such a big part of the musical journalism lexicon is quite telling of their still-resonant influence in modern music. I even named my radio show when I DJ’d at WRVU-Nashville “Any Colour You Like”, playing the show’s title track each night and skewing the programming towards artists influenced by the band. My fondest memory from hosting the show was playing “Echoes” (all 23+ minutes of it) in it’s entirety the night Richard Wright passed away. Midway through the song, the station phone rang and the caller said, simply: “Thank you for doing this, it means a lot.” This band’s massively sprawling music moves mountains. Truly the first band in space.

Favorite Album – Animals (1977)

This is my favourite album of all-time period, I can even remember my first time hearing this record many years ago on a mid-summer drive through North Georgia to a friend’s lake house. This strange, dark and twisted album is often overlooked by casual fans and you won’t hear “Sheep” on classic rock radio anytime soon. Despite being Roger Waters’ ominous brainchild, David Gilmour’s guitar heroics dominate this record, and the late-great Richard Wright’s eerie and dripping psychedelia on “Dogs” and “Sheep” is some of his most magical keys/synth work. Gilmour’s brawny blues-rock riffs are both pristine and hypnotic soundscapes that do exactly what great Floyd is supposed to do: put you in an entirely different dimension for 17:08 (in the case of “Dogs”). The sheer darkness of Waters’ creative output is stunning and the mood of the music fits the puzzle perfectly. For an album taking such a cynical worldview, this record always manages to get my head in the right gear. This is the ultimate fan’s record, there simply isn’t an in-road for those on the outskirts and that’s what makes it so great. The music incites a certain urgency you can feel and the brooding lyrical nature of the album, although pessimistic, is timeless. This record requires headphones and your astute listening attention. Can’t wait to get my hands on the remastered vinyl.

Dogs Part 1

Dogs Part 2