Best Pink Floyd Song

Brewer's Friend 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Homercidal said:
I know I'm going to get flak for this, but I just can't seem to get into the early Floyd albums. They are just a bit too far out there for me. I like some of the songs, but musically I can't appreciate them. I think for the most part I like them better the further along they went. Up to a point anyway.

Hard to pick on best song. I find I like a different song best each time I listen to them. Comfortably Numb was really good in the car this weekend. Talk to Me is a another favorite. It's an age old problem.
Click to expand...


I'm with you. I have Piper but I really can't get into it. I like Meddle but not all of it.
 
On the turning away


or Comfortably Numb


Saw them 3 times, in 1973, 1987, & 1988. Best concerts ever!!!!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wish You Were Here, Careful with that Axe Eugene, Us and Them, Dogs

The 'Animals' album was not to my liking the first time I heard it, then I listened to the lyrics. Amazing...

Dogs is about a corporate guy/businessman with questionable ethics making his way up the ladder. Sadly typical of some examples I have seen in my career...

17+ minutes. Awesome song.

PF is my favorite band, and I would gladly give a kidney to see them in concert before I leave this place...

Waters or Gilmour, no matter - PF > all other bands before or since IMO
 
Airborneguy said:
Shine on You Crazy Diamond is my favorite. I listen to Floyd whenever it is dark and I'm driving a nice long distance and I can really drift away in it.
Click to expand...

I had no idea the Shine lyrics were about Syd Barrett, original PF frontman. I was just reading all about it on Wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Barrett

He went bat**** crazy after Saucerful of Secrets. Super crazy. LSD, plus maybe some unresolved emotional issues.

I also read that Wish You Were Here was dedicated to him.

Maybe Brain Damage on DSOTM is about him too.
 
OK, follow this. I'm sorta making up a story here, but it makes sense.

Shine You Diamond (S-Y-D). Hmmm... the name of the song spells out Syds name. Sorta. Cooincidence? It's similar to the Beatle's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD), from Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Similar tricky use of letters, right?

Syd wrote almost all of PF's first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which was recorded in Studio 3 at Abbey Road Studios, and produced by former Beatles engineer Norman Smith. At the exact same time that engineer Smith was creating this PF album, the Beatles were in Studio 2 recording songs for... yep, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Cooincidence? Hmmm...
 
I've been on a hard-core Roger Waters run for months. I mean, I wake up, get some coffee in me, fire up the workstation and settle in for the day, and launch my RW playlist - which is literally everything he's published.

Yeah, a bit repetitive when you have both live and studio and compilation albums in the mix, but it gets me through the day with a lot of energy.

Before this, it was All Gilmour, All The Time.
And before that it was The Wall - live and studio versions back to back.
And before that it was everything else Floyd...

It's an illness...

Cheers! (...but I'll live through it! ;))
 
passedpawn said:
OK, follow this. I'm sorta making up a story here, but it makes sense.

Shine You Diamond (S-Y-D). Hmmm... the name of the song spells out Syds name. Sorta. Cooincidence? It's similar to the Beatle's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD), from Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Similar tricky use of letters, right?

Syd wrote almost all of PF's first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which was recorded in Studio 3 at Abbey Road Studios, and produced by former Beatles engineer Norman Smith. At the exact same time that engineer Smith was creating this PF album, the Beatles were in Studio 2 recording songs for... yep, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Cooincidence? Hmmm...
Click to expand...


Did you read this?

In another incident, Barrett (heavyset, with a completely shaved head and eyebrows) wandered into the studio while the band was recording Wish You Were Here, although Mason has since stated that he is not entirely certain whether "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was the particular work being recorded when Barrett was in the studio. Because of his drastically changed appearance, the band could not recognise him for some time. When they eventually recognised Barrett, Roger Waters was so distressed he was reduced to tears.[1] Someone asked to play the suite again and Barrett said a second playback wasn't needed when they'd just heard it. Apparently, when "Wish You Were Here" was played, "He [Barrett] stood up and said, 'Right, when do I put my guitar on?'" Wright recalled. "And of course, he didn't have a guitar with him. And we said, 'Sorry, Syd, the guitar's all done.'"[6] When asked what he thought of Wish You Were Here, Barrett said it sounded a "bit old". He subsequently slipped away during celebrations for Gilmour's wedding to Ginger Hasenbein, which had taken place earlier that day.[7] Gilmour confirmed this story, although he could not recall which composition they were working on when Barrett showed up.[8]

Roger was there, and he was sitting at the desk, and I came in and I saw this guy sitting behind him--huge, bald, fat guy. I thought, "He looks a bit...strange..." Anyway, so I sat down with Roger at the desk and we worked for about ten minutes, and this guy kept on getting up and brushing his teeth and then sitting--doing really weird things, but keeping quiet. And I said to Roger, "Who is he?" and Roger said "I don't know." and I said "Well, I assumed he was a friend of yours," and he said "No, I don't know who he is." Anyway, it took me a long time, and then suddenly I realised it was Syd, after maybe 45 minutes. He came in as we were doing the vocals for Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which was basically about Syd. He just, for some incredible reason he picked the very day that we were doing a song which was about him. And we hadn't seen him, I don't think, for two years before. That's what's so incredibly...weird about this guy. And a bit disturbing, as well, I mean, particularly when you see a guy, that you don't, you couldn't recognise him. And then, for him to pick the very day we want to start putting vocals on, which is a song about him. Very strange.

—Richard Wright [9]
Click to expand...
 
Homercidal said:
Whatever is playing at the moment.

Some of that early stuff is hard to digest. We had it playing in the car and my wife was like, "WTF?"
Click to expand...

Ha. The wall introduced me to PF. Never did listen to much of what they did before that but I have been today. And I have to agree with her.
 
Homercidal said:
Some of that early stuff is hard to digest. We had it playing in the car and my wife was like, "WTF?"
Click to expand...

GilaMinumBeer said:
Ha. The wall introduced me to PF. Never did listen to much of what they did before that but I have been today. And I have to agree with her.
Click to expand...

I never could get into much of their stuff from the '60s, but some of their best work was written pre-The Wall. Wish You Were Here, Dark Side, Animals, Meddle. Didn't care much for Atom Heart though.
 
Meddle is still one of my favorites. One Of These Days and Echoes are timeless. I can do without San Tropez and Seamus (with Steve Marriott's dog howling).

The early material, with Syd Barrett, is kind of cool '60s psychedelia.
 
MaxStout said:
Meddle is still one of my favorites. One Of These Days and Echoes are timeless. I can do without San Tropez and Seamus (with Steve Marriott's dog howling).

The early material, with Syd Barrett, is kind of cool '60s psychedelia.
Click to expand...

Withour San Tropez????

The album, as a whole, is perfect.

Of course, I began my listening to an actual album. Before CDs and digital when you put the needle in the grove and listened until the end, then flipped it over.

This has been discussed before, but I think PF cannot be divided up into individual songs, but should be enjoyed as entire albums. One could even divide it into eras. Syd era, post Syd-Gilmore era, and post Waters.
 
hunter_la5 said:
SYCD :p
a
Click to expand...

No no no. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. LSD. You got to drop some letters to get the secret message...

rfFWukr.gif
 
passedpawn said:
No no no. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. LSD. You got to drop some letters to get the secret message...
Click to expand...

About that....

Wikipedia Would Never Lie to Me said:
Shortly after the song's release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the title nouns intentionally spelled LSD. Lennon consistently denied this, insisting the song was inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland books, a claim repeatedly confirmed by Paul McCartney
Click to expand...

Wikipedia Would Never Lie to Me said:
Rumours of the connection between the title of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" and the initialism "LSD" began circulating shortly after the release of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP in the summer of 1967. Lennon said he was surprised at the idea that the song title was a hidden reference to LSD, countering that the song "wasn't about that at all": "It was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until someone pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title?...It's not an acid song."

Paul McCartney confirmed Lennon's claim on several occasions, the earliest in 1968:

[W]hen you write a song and you mean it one way, and someone comes up and says something about it that you didn't think of—you can't deny it. Like "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," people came up and said, cunningly, "Right, I get it. L-S-D," and it was when [news]papers were talking about LSD, but we never thought about it.

McCartney further rebuffed the claims in a 1997 BBC Radio interview with Michael Parkinson by saying: "It wasn't about LSD. Because otherwise it would have been called 'LITSWD.' Because the initials aren't 'LSD.' Lucy in the sky with diamonds is more like that."
Click to expand...
 
hunter_la5 said:
About that....
Click to expand...

Hard to argue with the authors, but picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies, somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes. Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, towering over your head. Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes, and she's gone. Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain, where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies, everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers that grow so incredibly high. Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away, climb in the back with your head in the clouds... and you're gone. Picture yourself on a train in a station, with Plasticine porters with looking-glass ties. Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile: the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Nothing trippy there ;)

Shine is about Syd though, so there's a real connection there.

A helicopter just flew over my house. I think I'm getting close to something here. Maybe a little too close.
 
passedpawn said:
Not much (but not zero :D). Come on SYD? Shine You Diamond? I think I found the key to something BIG!
Click to expand...

You might indeed be on to something:

"Point Me at the Sky" = PMS (Showing concern for female issues)

"Remember A Day" = RAD (a tribute to the surfer generation)

"A Saucerfull Of Secrets" = SOS (a cry for help perhaps)

"Signs Of Life" + SOL ($hit out of luck)

"Yet Another Movie" = YAM (perhaps they like them at Thanksgiving time)

"Piper at The Gates Of Dawn" = Pat God (showing support of Religious issues)

Its all making sense now. Thanks Passedpawn.

I can now remove my foil hat.
 
chessking said:
You might indeed be on to something:

"Point Me at the Sky" = PMS (Showing concern for female issues)

"Remember A Day" = RAD (a tribute to the surfer generation)

"A Saucerfull Of Secrets" = SOS (a cry for help perhaps)

"Signs Of Life" + SOL ($hit out of luck)

"Yet Another Movie" = YAM (perhaps they like them at Thanksgiving time)

"Piper at The Gates Of Dawn" = Pat God (showing support of Religious issues)

Its all making sense now. Thanks Passedpawn.

I can now remove my foil hat.
Click to expand...

But Shine was admittedly for Syd. S-Y-D. Syd. Shine You Diamond. See?

Don't remove the foil. You should know that.
 
passedpawn said:
But Shine was admittedly for Syd. S-Y-D. Syd. Shine You Diamond. See?

Don't remove the foil. You should know that.
Click to expand...

Oh, I know Shine was for Syd.
And the acronym is cute.
But don't discount the connection to Thanksgiving Yams. Spooky!


Foil back on.
 
chessking said:
Oh, I know Shine was for Syd.
And the acronym is cute.
But don't discount the connection to Thanksgiving Yams. Spooky!


Foil back on.
Click to expand...

SOL is plaguing me. You might be onto something there. Be careful. srsly.

I'm listening to Buena Vista Social Club now, and there's some stuff in there that might be a message. I don't speak cuban though, so hard to tell. But as one trained in the art of messaging, I'm sure there's a message.
 
Set the Controls is one of my most favorite PF songs. That and Careful with that Axe, Eugene. Truly trippy stuff.

My wife likes PF too, and I played the Obscured by Clouds CD for her. She had a hard time believing it was Pink Floyd.

I'd have to say my favorite album would be DSOTM, closely followed by Wish You Were Here, followed closely by The Final Cut. I guess Animals would be in the top 5 somewhere, along with Meddle.

I love the Wall but find it a bit stale with as much airplay as it gets.

I'm an admitted Gilmour fan, so even though Waters left; to me Gilmour's guitar work 'makes' the albums 100% Floyd.

I even like Gilmour's solo stuff, but not so much on the Waters' side of things.

Would be awesome if they could agree long enough to do a farewell reunion tour. Imagine the cash grab that would be.

Was awesome to see them on stage together at Live 8. I still watch that video often.
 
"Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away"

Think about them lyrics for just a minute......LSD is often on paper.......
 
Chessking - George Noory called, he wants his foil hat back...

Seriously though, See Emily Play gets stuck in my head for days at a time. I'm a fan of all of their work but Wish You Were Here just resonates with me for some reason. That said, Comfortably Numb is far superior to legends like "Stairway..." and "Hotel..." IMO.
 
InkBird 300

Latest posts

Back
Top