Oh, thank fuck for that! May I never have to listen to Pink fucking Floyd as someone's ringtone! ...Particularly when their phone is going unanswered on a train or bus because they've slipped into a coma whilst also listening to that shit on their personal media player!

Stupid twats. Pink Floyd are one of those acts where I can agree they've done a few good songs, but take as a whole their "concept albums" are just rather dull. There's no way I'm going to download the whole of the otherwise dreadful The Wall just because I like 'Comfortably Numb'.

Surely Run Like Hell is the only acceptable song off that atrocious album?

Still, what a truly awful band eh? I really wish I had some sort of 'Aha but what about...' going against convention line on them but they really are fucking appalling.

Imagine being a fan of a band that felt that they had to literally build a wall between you and them because they hated you that much. (But not your money obviously.) It still amazes me that they had this rep as music for intelligent people in the 80s.

Carcass wrote:
I really wish I had some sort of 'Aha but what about...' going against convention line on them but they really are fucking appalling.

Not a Syd Barrett fan? I think they were something a bit special when he was around.

I've got a vaguely soft spot for those two albums.

Actually, Taylor's amazing piece on reconsidering post Barrett Floyd is something I meant to re-read with Spotify going. I may do that at some point.

I also like the bit on Dark Side Of The Moon where they invent acid house.

There's no way I'm going to download the whole of the otherwise dreadful The Wall just because I like 'Comfortably Numb'.

Thank goodness I downloaded it on its own about ten days ago. As I surveyed the various versions across the years on Amazon I was amazed to find that, since taking over the reins himself, David Gilmour now plays an already slow song much slower. I chose the original over prima facie value for money.

I don't really understand Pink Floyd, I've sort of given up trying to like them. I listened to Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and Division Bell and the only one that i really thought was any good was DB, probably completely wrong about that too.

Comforting to know I'm not alone.

It's a tired old cliché, but the post Barrett stuff is really great to listen to when you're stoned, and I mean really great - the tempo, the chord changes, the weird sound effects, Gilmore's vocals - it really works in that environment.

I only own "Pipers..." and both Barrett solo albums, but I'd never object to hearing Ummagumma, Meddle or Dark Side during a bong session. Mind you, there's not much you can object to during a bong session.

Understandable that urbanite modern Pink Floyd listeners who've only ever heard "Dark Side of the Moon" while sat in a brightly-lit morning rooms would think "WTF"?

When I fell in love with it it was sat in the middle of a totally dark starlit field, the music coming out of the stereo system installed in a Mark 1 Ford Escort Estate, in the middle of Devon, ripped to the fucking tits on cider and giggly weed and surrounded by semi-naked teenaged girls.

Believe me it takes on all sorts of different nuances and memories after that.

Not sure the other caravanners on my 2007 holiday to Braunton's KeyCamp site were THAT appreciative, but I had a whale of a time, until they asked me to leave.

It's a tricky one, this business of music that you have to listen to while on mood-altering substance X. I kind of think it's not good enough, really. The art needs to be able to stand alone. I mean, obviously, the Barrett stuff is drenched in acid, but whatever it is that's special about it survives, for my money, listening to it while straight. Likewise, I'm sure I could enjoy mid-period Oasis if I drank enough lager, but that surely says more about lager than about Oasis.

Mind, I think I may have a particular down on stoner music, which does particularly badly at being any good when you're sober. The Grateful Fucking Dead. Jesus.

Actually, Rogin's gone a bit further, and suggested there's such a thing as music you can only listen to while stoned in rural districts. If so, I basically don't want to know about it. Though I do quite like the Wurzels.

My friend's American wife says that "Laser Floyd" is a rites-of-passage teenage tradition over there (or at least, in Seattle).

Where they open up a planetarium to a load of kids ripped on acid, and play DSOTM at them for eight hours with a laser show going on.

It sounded like something I'd have been well into if I'd grown up there.

There are some piss poor excuses on this thread. There are such things as albums that sound good when you're stoned in the countryside surrounded by semi-clothed jailbait as well as sounding good when you're in your hipster, urbanite Media node in sunblasted London you know.

You, only having a copy of The Wall and Exodus to take drugs to when you were a teenager isn't a mark of quality you know.

When it comes to the Floyd, this bootleg is the one, really. If you don't like it, you probably don't like them (which is fair enough, I suppose).

You know what made me laugh about this? The fact that they were perfectly happy a while back to put out a compilation album which removed all their songs from their original album contexts, the very thing they now object to about downloads. Or is it different when it's on CD and you have to listen to "Money" for the billionth time and most of their best work is written out of history?

"Goodbye Blue Sky" is the best song on The Wall, btw, because it's by far the least bombastic: it's basically "Goodbye, Post-War Settlement", something I think Waters - for all his faults - valued far more than the likes of Jagger.

I fucking love parts of Wish you Were Here.
That is all.

Animals is easily their best post-weird album, partially because it hasn't been done to death (see also Presence and Relayer), and also because it evokes the only time when it genuinely seemed as though social tensions might end in a victory for the organised working class with which Waters clearly sympathises on that album, despite his later reputation.

"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" had several Alan Freeman album requests too many, and I can't seriously imagine anyone wanting to listen to it again, but at least that album got Roy Harper into more homes than all his own albums combined, probably.

You know what made me laugh about this? The fact that they were perfectly happy a while back to put out a compilation album which removed all their songs from their original album contexts, the very thing they now object to about downloads. Or is it different when it's on CD and you have to listen to "Money" for the billionth time and most of their best work is written out of history?

To be fair though, there are few bands who have so readily eschewed maximum commercial gain for maintaining what they see as their creative vision. Including via this move which will cost them money after all.


My favourite post-Sid album is Atom Heart Mother which no-one else likes and even the band themselves came out in the past couple of years to say they had no time for it either.

From my recollection RH was able get into a fair few homes, bedrooms particularly, on his own.

There's a "best" context for everything. Sometimes it's the right room, the right time of day, the right company or the right drug. Doesn't mean that a piece fades into the woodwork when that isn't available though. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun turned up on shuffle the other night when I was driving North into the city, there was little traffic and ahead of me the white crest of the mountains retained the last touch of sunset rose. Perfect.

Also Much as I love Syd, his songs, like Skip Spence's aren't the kind of thing I'd want to bliss out to. Just the opposite, I want to be the straight man. As Roy Harper (to go full circle)once said "Just look at those weekend hippies run when they see a real freak."

Taylor wrote:
When it comes to the Floyd, this bootleg is the one, really. If you don't like it, you probably don't like them (which is fair enough, I suppose).
I'm listening to this right now - in the throes of a cold and ibruprofen, to boot - and . . . I probably don't like them. I love the Syd Barratt stuff, no doubt; it's as psychedelic and accessible as Alice In Wonderland.

But Pink Floyd after that, while I can appreciate all the space and jazzy warmth, just make me anxious. I envy the sense that you have all the time in the world, while thinking they're stupid and unimaginitive for using it to do nothing much.

Thinking about it, the psychedelia I really love has always been about mental meltdown rather than some kind of expansive space exploration. Wu Tang, Tricky, A Guy Called Gerald - they all burrow down into deeper psychic terrain in the face of brick walls, whereas Pink Floyd just sort of waft about a bit on their road trip. If we're doing blissout, I want it structured smartly enough to trick me into transcendence. Pink Floyd proper don't do that; they're caught between the jam and academe, which makes them a bit annoying and 'middlebrow', for want of a better insult, in my book.