{"id":13337,"date":"2017-11-04T05:30:10","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T09:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13337"},"modified":"2017-11-05T12:25:08","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T17:25:08","slug":"a-pink-floyd-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/04\/a-pink-floyd-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pink Floyd Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I first discovered the music of Pink Floyd in the mid 1970s. The Dark Side of the Moon<\/i><\/a> had already been out a few years, and Wish You Were Here<\/i><\/a> had been released, too. Animals hadn’t yet come out, so this would have been 1976. I was 11 or 12 years old, and the music was imposing, almost scary stuff. The band’s often melancholy \u2013 sometimes doomy \u2013 music struck a chord with me, though I wouldn’t come to more fully appreciate just how much it meant to me until some years later. When I first started taking piano lessons, I wanted to learn some rock alongside my classical. That didn’t really happen, so once the lessons ended, I taught myself to play by ear. Those Pink Floyd records were the tools I used.<\/p>\n

I wrote about that period in greater detail for the introduction to my first book, Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon<\/i><\/a>. Published by Rowman & Littlefield, the book will be available in hardcover and e-book editions in February.<\/p>\n

As you might well imagine, I’ve been thinking a lot about Pink Floyd lately; I wrote the entire book between May and the end of August. And as it happens, this weekend marks the anniversary of the first time I saw Pink Floyd live onstage (I saw them twice, and I’ve seen Roger Waters in concert once).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The show was in 1987, and took place in the Omni, a now long-demolished hockey and basketball arena in downtown Atlanta. Sure, the acoustics of such places were dire, but the band had a superb sound system \u2013 a hallmark of Pink Floyd going back to nearly its beginning \u2013 so it sounded pretty good.<\/p>\n

Sadly, there’s no circulating bootleg of that show, though recordings of nearly 40 other shows from the tour do circulate (and yeah, I have them). So instead I rely on my memory. It was pretty thrilling, full of all the spectacle of the band’s earlier tours: lights, lasers, inflatable figures, explosions \u2026 and of course the music. Though lyricist Roger Waters was long gone from the band, David Gilmour had put together a large touring ensemble \u2013 one that featured Nick Mason and Richard Wright \u2013 and so the music sounded Just Like the Record.<\/p>\n

A Momentary Lapse of Reason<\/i> won’t be remembered as Pink Floyd’s best album, not by a long shot. But it’s pretty good, and I’d argue that despite the album’s flaws, it has moments of near-brilliance, and plenty of the spark of old (pre-Dark Side<\/i>) band.<\/p>\n

I bought the t-shirt (long since lost to time). I didn’t buy the program. I did save the ticket stub (pictured above). And I treasure the memory still. Thirty years after that concert, and more than 40 years after discovering the band’s music, I got to write a book about Pink Floyd. To say I’m pleased is understatement.<\/p>\n

I’ll be arranging in-store appearances as I’m able, and will make signed copies of Reinventing Pink Floyd <\/em>available through online ordering. In the meantime, for updates on the book’s progress, please visit reinventingpinkfloyd.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first discovered the music of Pink Floyd in the mid 1970s. The Dark Side of the Moon had already been out a few years, and Wish You Were Here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[1705,3176],"class_list":["post-13337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","category-essay","tag-pink-floyd","tag-reinventing-pink-floyd","cat-10-id","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13337"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13344,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13337\/revisions\/13344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}