Echoes 2

Listening to Floyd again. As usual, its eerily beautiful. Roger Waters is in his element in 'Careful with that axe, Eugene!' as he screams, whispers, and emits animal cries to the accompaniment of dreamy music. 'A saucerful of secrets' is very 'Space Floyd', with an other-worldly composition, and Gilmour's wordless singing adding the final touch. Then comes the mad energy of 'One of these days', followed by the mystic litany of 'Set the controls for the heart of the sun'. Roger again shines in 'Set the controls...' with his understated vocals and the trippy lyrics taking you to a different dimension. This is followed by the wierdest song in the album, 'Mademoiselle Nobs', where Floyd's eccentricity reaches a zenith. In this song, Gilmour creates some Picasso-like music on the harmonica, followed by a dog/bitch (of the same breed as 'Lassie') howling in an apparent effort at singing into a mic held to its mouth by Wright. The animal seems to be in as much solemn mood as Floyd in its urge to add to the '...Pompeii' atmosphere. Of course, nothing rivals the opening credits of the album, a blank screen, with two very intimate sounds, breathing and heartbeats, following each other in a natural rhythm for 3 - 4 minutes, taking you inside yourself, to the core of life, before you blast into outer space in the shuttle taking off from the space center (the immediate next scene).

One senses a kind of other-worldly spirituality in Floyd’s music of the ‘…Pompeii’ time, like they are worshipping some pagan God with pagan music. Listen to ‘A saucerful of secrets’ if you wish to understand what I mean. Their music sometimes reminds me of religious chanting, each syllable in the chant expressing things better than any words will. You wouldn’t be remiss if you were caught swaying in a trance to Floyd’s music. In fact, when I saw the video of ‘One of these days’ on YouTube, I saw a comment posted underneath, saying, ‘This is the world’s first death metal song!’ Of course, I’ve yet to verify this, but I was pretty shocked when I read that. Take that for progressive!

‘One of these days’ has Nick Mason going into a demonic momentum with the drums, a precision that seems more machine-like than human. The music can only be described in two words: ‘Spaced Out’. The climax of the song is of course, the demonic voice screaming inside Nick Mason’s head, ‘One of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces!’ For a moment, you expect to see pieces of your body neatly arranged next to you.

It was always dark in Pompeii due to the heavy clouds and the ground was dark with volcanic ash, but the darkest thing of all was Pink Floyd’s music.

Just read an iMDB comment stating, 'Pink Floyd were The Beatles of the 70s'. Not sure how Beatles fans would feel about that, but I fully agree. They are certainly among the greatest rock bands of all time. This, by the way, is a great opinion piece on the '10 best rock bands ever': www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4595384/

Don't miss 'Live at Pompeii'. Now set the controls for the heart of the sun!