#33; The Great Gig On the Ground

As I sit here on my bed on a warm Thursday evening listening to some epic Pink Floyd, it’s got my mind wondering once more about the world history of music. What makes such a great band a great band? Bit of a strange sentence I know, and worded horrifically in such a way that puts my English Language educational studies to shame, but it’s just on my mind. Now I live for music, and music keeps me going along with other things every day. Of course I love my Muse (as if you didn’t realise that!) but for me it would honestly be a crime to say that Muse are my choice for the greatest band of all time. In fact I’d feel downright angry if, at this stage of their career, I even suggested a thing. Definitely not, but perhaps I could offer a few choices for me.

The band who stand out as the greatest band of all time are a certain progressive rock band you may have heard of known as Pink Floyd. Yeah no-ones heard of these guys what with their many many albums, legendary pieces of musical history, feuds and arguments galore and incredibly atmospheric live performances. Joking asides though, they are the epitome for me of what music should be heard as. Their soulful, deep and simply bone chilling songs at times, whether it be the more psychadelic stuff that makes of Dark Side of  the Moon or the two CD epic that is The Wall, just everything about what they have done gets my infinite respect and there is simply no words to conceive how much admiration I have for them. When they performed at live 8 for the final time in 2004, at the end of a long day in Hyde Park, every Pink Floyd fan simply sat or stood there in awe, simply in awe, at one of the most historic moments for me in music and something that our newer generation of stars will never create. It was simply awe inspiring, and it gives me such shame to not grow up in their era and simply experience their back catalogue and read their stories in the way that I do now. Their albums were varied and epic, their stories were wild, gut-wrenching, and gripping at times, their arguments frustrating, but they were Pink Floyd.

Concerning that 2005 performance at Live 8, which in general was a woeful day with the likes of Pete Doherty wasting time, I will admit to you know that I sat there almost in tears late at night in the darkness just staring, gobsmacked. They played a few songs, Breathe, Wish You Were Here, and obviously Comfortably Numb come to mind and I think Money was on the short setlist too, but with their short time, they made the entire day. They simply were the star attraction and the perfect way to go out. Sadly, with the death of Richard Wright a few years later and continually ongoing arguments between Gilmour and Waters, it’s such a shame that we’ll never see this epic creation of music perform on the stage again. A musical tragedy in fact.

I’ve been recommended by a friend to go check out Nick Mason’s autobiography on the events and views from within the Pink Floyd world themselves and it’s definitely the next book I’ll be reading in the next few weeks. There’s a story I’m sure you guys may know about reading that I wanted to share with you anyways because it always seems so fascinating to retell. Basically, the original Pink Floyd line-up saw the band headed by Syd Barrett rather than David Gilmour, and this is when the music they were producing came out with a more psychadelic sound to it. Now I forget the littler details but it was simply too much for Barrett, his indulgences into a rock lifestyle with the influences of drugs and drink simply send him into narcotic, crazed drugged up states, at times causing him to simply stop still in the middle of a gig and stare into the distance. The band members later spoke about these events broke who they knew of Syd Barrett, and he soon quit the band in the late 60’s and simply escaped from the limelight. For years and years he was never seen even in a media spotlight or the band themselves. Gilmour obviously took over from that, but the band years later wrote the song Shine on You Crazy Diamond, almost in memory of the person they knew that was Syd Barrett before his indulgences ruined him. When the band went into the studio to record the song in 1975, a bald man walked into the studio and Roger Waters confronted the stranger. he was bald, rough, almost broken looking. Little did the band know it was Syd Barrett, looking so changed that even Roger Waters couldn’t recognise him. It broke Waters down to tears and left an emotional hold on the song without a doubt, an eerie coincidence that some people may simply say is untrue but is just a part of their huge history that I can do no justice simply retelling.

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,
rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

Their live work was tremendous too, they had such an aura about them onstage that so little I feel just could not match based on what I have seen and watched. I agree with the viewpoint that it seems a little unfair of me to make these assumptions when I’m simply a 20 year old student watching back on stuff like Youtube, TV and DVDs but there is simply no other band that captivates me attention with their live work at the time and studio stuff such as Pink Floyd do. That incredible bit of film at Pompeii for example stands out once again in my memory, and it’s such a unique bit of footage to watch and yet at the same time, so utterly brilliant and a big recommendation to music lovers everywhere.

There are other bands that come into contention for the greatest band of all time – The Who, Led Zeppelin, and a few others that I’ll go into detail on a later entry. But for now, I simply wanted to do a bit of writing on these wonderful, wonderful men.

Nick Mason, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Syd Barrett,

Shine on you Crazy Diamonds.