Results: The 2018 KMA Pink Floyd Top 18 (Not 20)!

Alright folks, here’s the finalized KMA Pink Floyd Top 20 (er, 18… read on…)! Thank You For All Your Votes! For the record, I threw my 20 votes into the mix too, to help boost numbers!

Looking at the finalized results, based on votes received, it’s actually a Top 18 when I cut off at all songs that received 3 votes or more. 11 songs received 2 votes, and 27 tracks received 1 vote, so if you want to choose from them to round out your Top 20, I highly recommend you do!

So, I’ve organized this according to number of votes total per song, with songs receiving the most votes (in parentheses) making it onto the final list. This ended up meaning all tracks receiving between 3-6 total votes.

The KMA Pink Floyd Top 18 (not 20)!

Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun* (22)(or 3)
Echoes (6)
Shine On You Crazy Diamond** (6)
Wish You Were Here (5)
Us And Them (4)
One Of These Days (4)
The Great Gig In The Sky (4)
Astronomy Domine (4)
Run Like Hell (4)
Pigs (Three Different Ones) (4)
Time (4)
Comfortably Numb (3)
Bike (3)
Sheep (3)
See Emily Play (3)
Brain Damage (3) / Eclipse (2)**
Learning To Fly (3)
Money (3)

Whew! That’s an awesome mix! Don’t see songs you would have wanted on there, though? Stay tuned, because here are all the tracks that received 2 or even 1 overall vote:

2 Votes

Dogs / Summer ’68 / Mother / Careful With That Axe Eugene / What Do You Want From Me / Keep Talking / Breathe / High Hopes / Another Brick In The Wall Pt.2 / Hey You / The Fletcher Memorial Home

1 Vote 

Careful With That Axe Eugene (live) / Fearless / Mud Men / Not Now John / Point Me At The Sky / Scream Thy Last Scream / One Of My Turns / Welcome To The Machine / Interstellar Overdrive / The Final Cut / On The Turning Away / Poles Apart / Take It Back / Sorrow / Breathe (Reprise) / Fat Old Sun / Free Four / Cirrus Minor / Cymbaline / Green Is The Color / Remember A Day / Julia Dream / The Nile Song / When The Tigers Broke Free / Have A Cigar / It’s What We Do / The Gold It’s In The…

In Sum:

This was an excellent mental exercise and a fun project overall. Thanks again to everyone who cast their votes. For those of you who admit not knowing too much about Floyd yet, your fellow KMA Readers have spoken and given you a pretty damn fine list of tracks to check out when you’re ready to immerse yourself!

Cheers everybody!

 

* It’s really 2 votes plus Mr. 1537’s 20 votes for the one song repeated, so… 3 actual votes haha.
** I counted these as one track.

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The 2018 KMA Pink Floyd Extravaganza

Recently I covered The Best Of Pink Floyd: A Foot In The Door. In comparing it to Echoes, a 2cd Hits set of the band, there were differences in the track listings (obviously, as Echoes is a 2cd whereas AFitD is 1cd… but anyway). Some noticed AFitD had nothing from Animals on it… fair point!

Such a simple thing got me thinking. Then it got me plotting, and realizing it’s been a while since we’ve done something like this… So then it got me hatching a plan…

Right. So, because we can and because we should, let’s make a KMA Readers’ Greatest Hits Of Pink Floyd. For the sake of brevity, let’s keep it to 20 tracks… Choose any 20 songs you love and that you know should be there. Don’t just pick the hits to remake AFitD or Echoes if there are songs you love more. We want those 20 of your absolute favourites!

Just drop a comment below with your Top 20 Floyd tracks. Let’s say… one week from today is a deadline (Saturday, June 23). After that, I’ll compile the results and post ‘em up for all to see! I’ll share my personal choices at that point, too.

We’ll probably get a lot of duplication, but I’ll take each inclusion as one vote for that track. Top 20 tracks with the most votes are our mix!

You in? Of course you are!

GIVE ‘ER!

 

Pink Floyd – The Best Of Pink Floyd: A Foot In The Door

For the purposes of brevity, I will refer to ‘A Foot In The Door’ as ‘AFitD’ in this post.

***

Here’s another one I didn’t really need to buy, as I already own Echoes, the 2cd hits set of Pink Floyd.

Now, AFitD came out ten years after Echoes, as part of the Why Pink Floyd remastering series. And as you can tell by the title, it is meant as an introduction to the band’s music, whereas Echoes has more stuff fans would know. So, between the two sets, how much has ten years changed things (setting aside the obvious fact that Echoes has more tracks as it is 2cd), really?

There are a couple of track differences. AFitD has Brain Damage and Eclipse (both from Dark Side Of The Moon), whereas Echoes does not. Shine On You Crazy Diamond on AFitD is only parts 1-5, whereas on Echoes it’s parts 1-7. But that’s it, really, except I suppose that AFitD has been remastered… At 2cd, Echoes has a ton of other stuff anyway.

So why did I buy this? 

It was in perfect shape, and only $1.50 and, well, why not? Maybe I can have one in the car and one in the house.

Oh, who am I kidding? The truth is I am a music collector magpie, and when I see an album I don’t have, something comes over me and I simply buy it, especially at that price. Even if I didn’t need it. It’s like discernment goes straight out the window, sometimes.

And I’m not even the world’s biggest Pink Floyd fan. I mean, I like some of the stuff but I wouldn’t say all of it. I am definitely a David Gilmour fan, though, hooboy yes indeed. 

So now this hits set lives in my house (or my car). Cool.

 

Track list:

Hey You*
See Emily Play
The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.2
Have A Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Time
The Great Gig In The Sky
Money
Comfortably Numb
High Hopes
Learning To Fly
The Fletcher Memorial Home
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5)
Brain Damage
Eclipse

* My kids always crack the hell up when he gets to the “sitting naked by the phone” line. They cannot fathom why anyone would sit naked beside a telephone.

Wish You Were Here

Last night I sat and drifted with Pink Floyd’s track Wish You Were Here on repeat… an incredible tune from a classic album. Sometimes the timing of hearing a song just hits you right.

Cool info HERE.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
And how we found
The same old fears
Wish you were here

***

Pink Floyd – Animals

It was the mighty Boppin who recomended this album to me, when it got mentioned elsewhere in the community of blog posts and comments. So when I saw this remastered edition in the 2-for deal at our dying HMV, I picked it up solely on that recommend.

I’m actually kind of nervous about writing this up – who am I to be writing about Pink Floyd, hearing this for the first time in 2017? Hahaha hooboy.

I’m fairly new to the Pink Floyd stuff. I have the hits set (Echoes) and have played it enough times, but the individual albums are mostly new to me. I have some of them here, and haven’t even played most of them yet! I know! I need 48 hours a day, with 24 of them devoted just to listening to all the tunes I have here… Which is all to say I am not a Floyd expert. If I muck this up, forgive me. I’m basically going in having only heard one track off this (Sheep is on Echoes). I’ll always bow to the superior knowledge of actual long-time fans of the band.

Anyway, Animals. This is my first time ever through it. I’m going to write this from the gut, as I listen, in real time. One thought up front: Wouldn’t it be great if this was somehow about Orwell? Looking at the album cover, all the track titles are animals, thinking of Animal Farm… That sounds like something Floyd would do, “four legs good, two legs bad!” Haha. Let’s see what’s up. 

***

Pigs On The Wing 1 is a short and sweet acoustic intro. Nice one! Perhaps there could be a bit more hope in the words, though…

But then the 17-minute Dogs fires up next, and it’s a mid-tempo Floyd rocker with acoustic in the fore. It soars and pleases in all the right ways. I didn’t even mind the synths. The guitar solo, though. Oh man. So simple (seemingly), but those notes hanging there are perfection. I know it’s part of the song, but I could have done without the dogs barking, as it reminds too much of an annoying neighbour dog we have right now. Right around the mid-point of this epic, there’s a bit of synth note-holding while a voice echoes. That wore on me a bit too. Thankfully, it doesn’t last forever. Oh wait, now the barking dogs are back. Fuck. How is this pleasurable? Makes me want to call the city by-law officer. If I repeat-listen to this, I will be scanning through all this barking shit. When it’s just the synths on their own, it’s trippy. Then the acoustic comes back, and I have hope the barking is over. It builds back into the previous mode, groovy, spacey and fine. Then the drums start pounding and another guitar solo rips away. Sweet. The song rides out on a galloping repeated riff. Nice.

Pigs (Three Different Ones) starts off with a grunt and some synths and bass guitar. The guitar stabs over the top, and then it evolves into a slow blues jam, Floyd-style. There’s even cowbell! Love the squawkbox-like solo bits. This 11-minute song has a great feel, and huge groove. The guitar solo at the end wails. So far this track is the album highlight for me.

Then we’re in a barnyard with lots of sheep and tweeting birds, and Sheep (which I know from my Echoes hits set) starts off with some bluesy organ noodling. The bass builds, as does the song, and when the drums come in you think we’re set, then double-take we’re off and running at a decent clip as the song crashes and throbs. This one’s got an punkier edge, but you never forget who it is as spacey synths wash through too. After a cool solo section, we get some robotic chanting. The space monks are here! But they’re quickly lost under another rockin’ blast. The last couple of minutes of the tune rock the best, that jangly guitar overtop the melee. It fades down to the sheep bleating again.

Bookending the album is another short acoustic track, Pigs On The Wing 2. The euphemisms for man as dog here are hilarious. In fact, it’s worth including the lyrics for both Part 1 and 2 here, so you can see how far we’ve come over the course of the album:

Part 1:

If you didn’t care what happened to me,
And I didn’t care for you,
We would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain.
Wondering which of the buggars to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing.

Part 2:

You know that I care what happens to you,
And I know that you care for me.
So I don’t feel alone,
Or the weight of the stone,
Now that I’ve found somewhere safe
To bury my bone.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.

In Sum:

I liked the music quite a bit, though the lyrics are mostly pretty angry and despairing. It comes off as a “we’re all fucked” societal rant, though not always overtly. As I mentioned off the top, and without looking it up, there’s probably (definitely) some sort of concept to the album, and that’s cool. When I get done here, I’m gonna go see what it was (see below). Primarily for me, though, I can’t help but think that the overall project would have been stronger without all of the animal noises. Especially the barking dogs. Can’t stand that. So while having them there was probably part of the whole point, I think we’re smart enough to understand that we’re being herded like sheep without actually having to include the noises of sheep to drive the message home.

***

So Then I Looked Up The Album:

I was right! (Wiki):

Loosely based on George Orwell’s political fable Animal Farm, the album’s lyrics describe various classes in society as different kinds of animals: the combative dogs, despotic ruthless pigs, and the “mindless and unquestioning herd” of sheep. Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs. The album was developed from a collection of unrelated songs into a concept which, in the words of author Glenn Povey, “described the apparent social and moral decay of society, likening the human condition to that of mere animals”.

Apart from its critique of society, the album is also a part-response to the punk rock movement, which grew in popularity as a nihilistic statement against the prevailing social and political conditions, and also a reaction to the general complacency and nostalgia that appeared to surround rock music. Pink Floyd were an obvious target for punk musicians, notably Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols, who wore a Pink Floyd T-shirt on which the words “I hate” had been written in ink; Lydon, however, has constantly said it was done for a laugh (he was a fan of several progressive rock bands of the era, including Magma and Van Der Graaf Generator). Drummer Nick Mason later stated that he welcomed the “Punk Rock insurrection” and viewed it as a welcome return to the underground scene from which Pink Floyd originated. In 1977 he produced The Damned’s second album, Music for Pleasure, at Britannia Row.

In his 2008 book Comfortably Numb, author Mark Blake argues that “Dogs” contains some of David Gilmour’s finest work; although the guitarist sings only one lead vocal, his performance is “explosive”. The song also contains notable contributions from keyboardist Richard Wright, which echo the funereal synthesizer sounds used on the band’s previous album, Wish You Were Here.

“Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is audibly similar to “Have a Cigar”, with bluesy guitar fills and elaborate bass lines. Of the song’s three pigs, the only one directly identified is morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who amongst other things is described as a “house-proud town mouse”.

“Sheep” contains a modified version of Psalm 23, which continues the traditional “The Lord is my shepherd” with words like “he maketh me to hang on hooks in high places and converteth me to lamb cutlets” (referring to the sheep of the title). Towards the end of the song, the eponymous sheep rise up and kill the dogs, but later retire back to their homes.

The album is book-ended by each half of “Pigs on the Wing”, a simple love song in which a glimmer of hope is offered despite the anger expressed in the album’s three other songs. Described by author Andy Mabbett as “[sitting] in stark contrast to the heavyweight material between them”, the two halves of the song were heavily influenced by Waters’ relationship with his then-wife.