Comfortably Numb

[PZ]

[Dweller_Benthos]

Absolute classic. And if you want a deep dive as to why it is, here's Rick Beato explaining it



In my search for that video which I'd seen a while ago, I also found that none other than Miley Cyruss covered it. Go figure. I'll let dear reader go look for that if they are so inclined. But Rick also has a couple other videos where he talks about this song, which also pop up on a youtube search that might be interesting.

[PZ]

Interesting background. I like the Gilmore parts the best in that song, but everything comes together so well I did not even know there were two main players in the song when I first heard it back in the day. Pink Floyd is probably my favorite band - their music sounds so sophisticated, especially when compared to the head-banging *bleep* we see these days.

[Dweller_Benthos]

There will never be another Pink Floyd. A perfect example of "the sum total is greater than the values of the parts" or however that saying goes. As we've seen with the versions that came after personnel changes, it's not quite the same. Another thing that might be of interest is Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets live shows. He got together with a couple of guys who also toured with Floyd to "help out" on the more complex stuff and a couple other guys for a live album and a couple of tours. Nick always said his favorite Floyd music was pre- Dark Side so that's all they play, just music from every album before Dark Side, a lot of songs you never heard live unless you were hanging around London in the late 60s.

Sample:



One of my all time favorite songs.

[mandru]

so that's all they play, just music from every album before Dark Side, a lot of songs you never heard live unless you were hanging around London in the late 60s..

Oh you mean like "Careful With That Axe Eugene", "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun", or maybe "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict".  (OKAY that last one was not exactly a song.  It was more like a psychedelic experience. 

In Seattle during the "70s" I would buy up every plain label bootleg Pink Floyd album that a boutique music store in the U-District called Cellophane Square could get in stock. 

Comfortably Numb is still a must sing along for me. 

[PZ]

There will never be another Pink Floyd. A perfect example of "the sum total is greater than the values of the parts" or however that saying goes. As we've seen with the versions that came after personnel changes, it's not quite the same. Another thing that might be of interest is Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets live shows. He got together with a couple of guys who also toured with Floyd to "help out" on the more complex stuff and a couple other guys for a live album and a couple of tours. Nick always said his favorite Floyd music was pre- Dark Side so that's all they play, just music from every album before Dark Side, a lot of songs you never heard live unless you were hanging around London in the late 60s.

One of my all time favorite songs.

I'd not ever heard that song until you posted it - quite good!

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah Nick Mason's current playlist, though the tour ended late last year, includes a ton of songs the average listener probably hasn't heard. Though "Several species .... etc" isn't one of them, probably because that is more a soundscape than a song, it's really a Roger Waters solo effort that was put on a Pink Floyd album. That album, Ummagumma, was a bit of an experiment for them, a couple live songs and each band member did some solo stuff that was in some cases, well, just weird. We loved that album back in the day though, and played it quite frequently along with the other weird experiment, Atom Heart Mother. Pink Floyd's music is really split into the stuff they did before Dark Side and the stuff they did after. It's really like two bands, or three if you count the Syd Barret stuff from really early in their career, which Nick Mason also plays, he and Syd were really close friends so Nick often talks fondly during the concerts of Syd and mentions those songs that Syd wrote are really some of his favorites. Honestly those I can take or leave a lot of the time, Syd was a weird dude and the drugs didn't help.

As for the song "Fearless" that's from the Meddle album which is really my top favorite of theirs. Close along behind is Obscured By Clouds which was released the following year I believe and a movie soundtrack for a really strange French movie called "La Vallée". Not a lot of people know that Pink Floyd did quite a few movie soundtracks back in the late 60s and early 70s. Most are hard to find or also not in English so they don't get a lot of exposure here in the states even when they were released. Forget finding them 50 years later. Probably clips on youtube let me look

Here's the trailer for La Vallée where it mentions music by Pink Floyd and some of the clips feature it. As to what it's about, the woman travels to deepest Africa to meet a tribe that hasn't had much contact with western civilization and does lots of drugs and has sex with pretty much everybody. It's a French film, so go figure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUe9y_o8I9Q