The Wall tears it down at Toyota Center

Haven't been on here in a while and I really regret that. I tried to post some stuff last week but school dropped more and more shit into my lap and prevented me from posting.

Last weekend, Roger Waters performed the whole Wall at the Toyota Center here in Houston and it was fantastic. The only thing that would have made it better is if Rick Right was alive and Nick Mason and David Gilmour weren't "back at the hotel", but the show still managed to be better than I ever anticipated. Besides Waters there was at least one other major Floyd veteran on stage, Snowy White. While white was never a band member, he did tour with Pink Floyd on the original wall tour and also contributed some playing for the European version of Animals.

The content of the show was similar to the original wall but was updated for maximum relevance. Waters collected pictures from fans of people killed in combat and maintained the same anti-war message with out any sort of hippie naivety. Waters has always been a critic of anarch0-capitalism and used to be an outright socialist but during the show he also mocked the role of overbearing government. In the song "Mother" he displayed an ominous red and black animation of a security camera while belting out "of course momma's gonna help build the wall".

Just like the original show, the concert revolved around the building of a literal wall on stage and mind-blowing visuals. One of the most amazing special effects took place after the second song "the thin ice" as a large model plane smashed into the wall and exploded into a giant fireball. An extended cut of the "empty spaces" animation was played and it looked amazing on the huge, circular, screen.

The message of the show was more universal this time too. Using visuals, Waters criticized war, interventionism, over-consumption, radical Islam, and material greed, especially during "goodbye blue sky".

Overall Water's voice held up incredibly well and his band did a good job reinterpreting the music. It's too late for Houston but if by some stroke of good luck, he finds the time to come back again, please go see him. You will thank me.

Obscured by Coulds: a largely unknown pleasure

I grew up basically idolizing the Pink Floyd and everything they did. At first it was just for David Gilmour's masterful guitar licks but later I'd develop a fuller appreciation by understanding their full genius. I started, as many newcomers do, with Dark Side of the Moon and from there I listened to all the Floyd the casual rock fan would know of (i.e. greatest hits type tracks). Later though, I got the Floyd compilation Echoes as birthday present from my mother and was exposed to less familiar, old school, tracks like "See Emily Play" and "Astronomy Domine" and I learned how rich the rest of their discography was. There were the albums like Meddle and A Saucerful of Secrets I'd never heard of before because they never got any radio play; now I knew of their existence and was full prepared to seek them out.

Two albums that a lot of Floyd fans have missed, largely due to their obscurity (no pun intended) were both movie soundtracks called More and Obscured by Clouds. Obviously the movies never did exceedingly well and Obscured by Clouds actually tanked pretty badly yet their soundtracks are both good finds for true Floyd fans. Clouds in particular was a childhood favorite of mine and recently I acquired the album on vinyl and I continue to enjoy it. It includes quiet, majestic "Us and Them" type tracks like "Burning Bridges" and "Mudmen" but doesn't fail to take on a harder rock edge in songs like "When you're in" and "Childhood's End". Ballads like "Free Four" pontificate about human mortality and there's even an endearingly romantic song called "Stay" that you could use to set a mood for an intimate evening. Fuck Barry White, let's throw on some Floyd and make-a some-a sexy time! It's a stellar album but for some reason critics poo pooed its contents as merely a soundtrack rather than a standalone. I can see making that charge of More but Obscured by Clouds has lots of thoughtful songwriting, lyrics, and complexity unlike the former which is good but definitely sounds as if it's subordinate to something greater. Obscured by Clouds is actually my favorite Floyd album but what's a favorite when everything a band does is gold, I guess. Definitely worth a look though if you're unfamiliar.

mp3/CD Review: Here We Go Magic by Here We Go Magic

Here We Go Magic's first album is a satisfying indie rock work that pushes the boundaries of traditional pop structures with interesting production and music while most of its songs stay comfortably enough within those pop boundaries to be accessible to most listeners.

There are some tracks that go outside these boundaries such as

"Babyohbabyijustcantstanditanymore", "Ahab", and "Nat's Alien" but these are more instrumental jams/experiments than regular lyric based songs. Ahab in particular is very cool and reminds me slightly of Pink Floyd's "Any colour you like" with the addition of some chanting the background.

The other tracks, especially "Tunnelvision" (which definitely sounds a little like Thom Yorke) and "only pieces" are quirky but infectiously catchy indie-pop songs. "only pieces" is probably my favorite track off the entire album which combines harmonic vocals, acoustic guitar playing, and a tastefully used synth arpeggio to create a beautiful sound.

The album didn't blow me away but it was pretty good. I expect even better work from these guys in the future.

Flaming Lips and White Dwarves Take on Pink Floyd

At first I was nervous about this version of Dark Side of the Moon. I heard a bit, about twenty seconds, of "Money" on the iTunes store and I was thinking "NO!NO!NO! This is ALL wrong!" but when I listened to the album from beginning to end I was pretty satisfied. The songs all contain enough Lips and enough Floyd to attract fans of either band even if fans of one are not necessarily fans of the other.

However, I was a little skeptical of the Henry Rollins vocals at first. I love Black Flag as much as the next guy but I was worried that including Rollins might just be a dumb gimmick to attract people who would otherwise be uninterested in the album. I was wrong. Rollins' vocals fit unusually well and give the recording a modern sounding edge that helps define the album as a work of its own rather than just a giant Pink Floyd cover. Rollins' voice coupled with the campy but cool falsetto background vocals gave the entire album a distinctly Flaming Lips feel.

Gone are the solos from "Money" and "Time" that defined their original recordings. Instead of Gilmour's masterful guitar playing the spaces are filled with less stimulating but equally appropriate ambience or simple melody. But at the same time, for songs like "Any Colour you like" (my favorite song on the original album) the However It's really better that the Lips didn't feel the need to emulate each guitar solo on EVERY song because I think it allowed them to make this album an interpretation of Pink Floyd rather than just a flat, boring, straight cover. Coyne's nephew's band Star Death and White Dwarves added some different sounding vocals to a few songs but the band is similar enough to the Lips that their playing is not jarring when heard alongside. The resulting sound is a more relaxed and more somber version of Dark Side that relies more on ambiance than straight composition.

The album definitely had the potential to devolve into a super-pretentious, long, drawn-out, version of Dark Side but ultimately, the sound is good, there is lots of originality but at the same time, there's a lot of fidelity to the original recording.

Flame On!

With great relish I downloaded and dove into the Flaming Lips' newest EP after months of anticipating the release of their next studio album, Embryonic. The EP contains just a taste of the Lips' latest work at only three tracks but should be enough to satisfy me until the new album's projected release date of Septemeber.

Coyne seems to be moving the band back to a more experimental sound than the stellar but admittedly more commercial; At War with the Mystics. Though the tracks seem like they would be a bit less accessible to a casual audience the band appears to be preserving their sound rather than making any drastic changes.

My favorite track is "Convinced of the Hex" which is somehow vageuly remeniscient of the Pink Floyd song "Let there be more Light", probably because of the mysterious sounding key and the octave-jumping bassline.

Enjoy!

Sic transivit Gloria Mundi. . .

This is the last 2008-catchup-entry I plan to do, but on September 16th a very important person died: Rick Wright, keyboardist for Pink Floyd. I was sad to see that so few musicians and bloggers stopped to commemorate his contributions to one of the greatest bands of all time. With Rick died my naive hopes that Pink Floyd would stop feuding and reunite for a final world tour. He was an amazing musician but now he's finally gone to play the great gig in the sky.