Pink Floyd is a prominent English band formed in the 1970s who made great progressive rock music like no other bands. i found this band during my university days when i bought a bootleg compilation of their greatest hits. The songs grew and grew on me and soon blew me away. Their music can be best described as hypnotic and dense. you have to listen to this band yourself to experience it...The main players to shape the definitive Pink Floyd sound were bassist Roger Waters and virtuoso guitarist David Gilmour. Water's stark and dark lyrics exploring all facets of human emotions and conditions, coupled with David Gilmour's musical genius and brilliant guitar playing produced such classic songs as "Comfortably Numb", "Another Brick In The Wall", "Wish You Were Here" and countless good songs in their catalogue. Even mere album tracks sounded as good as singles. Their songs also has this ability to segue seamlessly into each other, such that i first made my own "Pink Floyd compilation" mixing all my favourites tracks into a single continuous piece of music, and it sounded marvellous.
The band produced one of the most successful rock albums called "The Dark Side Of The Moon" in 1973, a continuous montage of songs exploring such eternal themes as birth, growing up, money and death. "The Wall" album produced in 1979 was a mini rock opera with the theme of isolation and while facing life's traumas, each has inevidently become "another brick in the wall" in a person's life. "Another Brick In The Wall" produced the popular starting refrain - "We Don't Need No Education" - with the rest of the song lambasting the unkind and chiding classroom teacher to show no "dark sarcasm in the classroom" and to "leave the kids alone." It is one of their most recognizable hits.
In spite of so many good songs, my most favourite track is from this quite unknown album track called "High Hopes" taken from "The Division Bell" album in 1994. The opening clanging of bells follows into a lyrical journey telling listeners of how "the grass was greener and the light was brighter" in the past. How often have we felt that in our lives to a time when we were much happier before the complications of adulthood sets in? Ironically, this tune has a reverse effect on me. i listen to this track each time when i feel weary or down and it just fills my inner self with hope. This song builds up to a final outro with David Gilmour's wailing guitar solo, simply one of the best i heard. Check out the mysterious and bizarre MTV here. i really love it.
Listen to "Coming Back To Life" - a very optimistic and encouraging tune while "The Final Cut" is just a very sad (but beautiful) song, culminating in near suicide from the lyricist point of view. These lyrics to me are one of the truest and best written ever :
" if i show you my dark side
will you still hold me tonight?
and if i open my heart to you
and show you my weak side
what would you do?
would you sell your story to rolling stone
would you take the children away
and leave me alone
and smile in reassurance
as you whisper down the phone
would you send me packing
or would you take me home"
To top it up, Pink Floyd songs do somewhat bears a resemblance to Alan Parsons Project. But if the latter did have me dreaming of the sky, stars and the sun, Pink Floyd always sends me beyond the stratosphere to the far reaches of the universe.
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