nsign's Full Review: Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd by Pink Floyd
On 6th July 2005, Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concerts were beamed out across the world to an estimated (potential) audience of three billion people, many of whom will have found much of the proceedings to be typically lachrymose and simplistically sanctimonious, as all charidee gigs tend to be. In all fairness, it was a pretty entertaining show, and only the most cold hearted of cynics would argue that the concerts were a waste of everyone’s time - Raising a little more awareness and provoking a little thought amongst people 'aint a bad thing.
There were certainly some embarrassing misfires, though. Charity gigs may well bring out the best in people, but why is it they so often bring out the worst in rock stars who can’t resist making global arses of themselves when standing in front of what is probably the biggest audience they’ll ever have? There was Mariah Carey, carping on about poverty one minute then throwing a diva strop the next, and Pete Doherty’s embarrassingly shambolic duet with Elton John, and the head-slapping moment when Coldplay’s Chris Martin told the crowd, ”This is the greatest thing that’s ever been organised in the history of the world, ever”, which may have raised some eyebrows among, say, D-day veterans.
On the plus side, though, there were some classic moments, not least when Snoop Dogg repeatedly ordered the crowd live on TV at around 5pm to ”Put your motherf*ckin’ hands in the air”! Make poverty history!" But I digress. As many media watchers noted, Bob Geldof’s greatest achievement will probably be remembered not as the man who crusaded to eradicate global poverty, but as the one who persuaded Pink Floyd to reunite with Roger Waters for one last waltz as the penultimate act. I don't mind admitting that it brought a tear to my eye to see David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason stand in a group embrace following their stunning four-song set ( much to my better half's bafflement. She just didn't understand what a big deal it was. I'm currently in the process of educating her in the ways of the Floyd ).
The Floyd were unanimously voted the big hit of the day, and sales of this best-of collection, originally released in 2002, jumped by a massive 1000% in the following week, returning it to the top 20 of UK album chart. It's the only real Floyd compilation album available, and it contains most, though certainly not all, of their best songs, which does make it a good introduction for the casual listener. All of these 26 tracks, drawn from the band's entire career from the late sixties to their last studio album, 1994's superb The Division Bell, have been remixed and remastered, and they have never sounded as crisp and gleaming as they do here. With a good stereo system ( the best way to listen to the Floyd ), this simply sounds fantastic.
Most of the music on this album is, frankly, beyond reproach. The Syd Barrett era is faithfully represented by his best songs, including the spookily spaced-out Astronomy Domine, the wonderful cross-dressing saga of Arnold Layne, and the brilliantly constructed See Emily Play. Also included is Barrett's farewell song to the Floyd, written whilst mentally dissolving as a result of his constant LSD intake, Jugband Blues, in which he "wonders who could be writing this song" as a Salvation Army band toot madly in the background.
The Barrett era, although innovative and responsible for some great songs, also produced some daft nonsense, and the band struggled to match his brief flare of brilliance in the immediate years following his departure. Without their main songwriter, it largely fell to Roger Waters to provide the bulk of their output, and it would take him time to rise to the challenge. Hence, his early efforts such as Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun are not particularly distinguished, although the co-written Echoes is a thing of blue oceanic beauty.
It would be on Dark Side Of The Moon where Waters' vision and lyrical skill would finally be fully realised and combined with the musical talents of David Gilmour, and it is represented here by the celestial outpouring of The Great Gig In The Sky, the funky bass strutting of Money, and the truly fantastic Time, with those thudding rototum drums on the intro and Gilmour's scything guitar work. The long-awaited follow up album, Wish You Were Here, contained what is probably the band's best song, in the form of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which makes a welcome appearance here all in one piece instead of being split into its seperate parts. From the opening pyramid-like guitar figure, to the freaky laugh that emerges from the left speaker after the first line, to the closing stretch of Gilmour's genius guitar wails, this is a song that needs nothing adding, and nothing taking away.
The title track of Wish You Were Here is another Floyd work I will never tire of hearing, and is probably the warmest and most emotionally open song in the band's catalogue. The following album, Animals, released just as punk began to boil over in the UK, is an underrated and unfairly overlooked record, full of lyrical bite and razor-sharp solos, and Sheep is included here, a fast-paced and dynamic rocker with a belting melody.
After Animals would come the Floyd's masterpiece, and what is surely one of the most important rock albums ever: The Wall, a multi-layered, multi-levelled behemoth of unrivalled narrative scope and depth, matched only in its ambition by Bowie's seventies work. It would provide Pink Floyd with their first and only number one, with the disco beat and schoolkid singalong of Another Brick In The Wall, and introduced the world to the coruscatingly brilliant Comfortably Numb. This song, with its beautiful wash of strings, soaring vocals and tripped-out closing guitar solo, is Floyd at the peak of their powers, and I defy anyone not to love it.
It was The Wall which heralded the end of the Waters era, as he would make only one more album with them before upping sticks. The downbeat The Final Cut, a bile-filled critique of the Falklands conflict, is not remembered with much fondness by the band or many fans, but the album's best track, the orchestrally-enhanced The Fletcher Memorial Home, is well worth a listen, and is included here. There is also a never-before released track entitled When The Tigers Broke Free, taken from the soundtrack of The Wall movie, which, although short, is excellent and builds to a dramatic crescendo.
In the same way that the band floundered following Syd Barrett's mental breakdown and subsequent departure, the remaining trio of Gilmour, Mason and Wright struggled to fill the songwriting void after Waters had flounced. Consequently, the Momentary Lapse Of Reason album, released in 1987, was produced with the assistance of a veritable army of collaborators, and is the most pop-friendly record the band ever made, although it is arguably also one of their weakest efforts. Learning To Fly is the sole offering included here, and it's not bad, but the version that should have been included is the live one from the Pulse album, which is about fifty times better. By the time of 1994's masterful The Division Bell, Gilmour had found his feet as a songwriter and produced a beautiful record which could deservedly be called their modern classic. High Hopes, its closing track, is a hauntingly atmospheric tale of nostalgia and the loss of childhood dreams, and its inclusion here gives lie to Waters' oft-repeated claim that Gilmour is no songwriter.
As good as most of the songs on this collection are, there are some mystifying exclusions. Where, for example, are Breathe, Coming Back To Life, Run Like Hell, the peerless Brain Damage, and Interstellar Overdrive? Their absence, among others, which will admittedly not be noticed or missed by the casual buyer, is extremely glaring to anyone familiar with this band's work, and could easily have fitted on to these discs. Modern CD's can take something like 16 songs on each side, so why that space wasn't utilised properly is baffling.
The arrangement of the songs on this album is also puzzling, and works against it. Tracks from the Barrett era are plonked randomly amongst tracks from the nineties, and vice versa. There is no chronological order, which with a band that progressed and developed as much as Pink Floyd did, should be the way a best-of album is arranged. It means that the mood and tone of these CD's is wildly inconsistent, and even unsettling, and it often seems as though you are listening to several different bands. It was always going to be difficult to join the dots of Pink Floyd's scattered history to make a coherent whole, but whoever compiled this collection didn't do them any favours.
At the end of the day, this album is for the casual buyer, as any Pink Floyd fans will already own much of the music on here. Pink Floyd were always an album band, and not a singles band. Each record was bound and directed by a set of themes, the songs working as part of a cycle. Sometimes this was loosely so, as in Dark Side Of The Moon, or more explicit, with a direct narrative shape, as in The Wall. Taken out of context and out of their intended surroundings, many of these songs lose at least some of the impact they originally had, particularly if you already know where they've been lifted from. However, the musicianship remains as stunning as it ever was, and if you're a casual fan you will certainly get a decent introduction to this most rightfully lauded of bands, and from there, hopefully go on to discover the records they came from. There's alot to discover, so get started.
Track Listing:
CD 1:
1. Astronomy Domine
2. See Emily Play
3. The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
4. Another Brick In The Wall part 2
5. Echoes
6. Hey You
7. Marooned
8. The Great Gig In The Sky
9. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
10. Money
11. Keep Talking
12. Sheep
13. Sorrow
CD 2:
1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond parts 1-7
2. Time
3. The Fletcher Memorial Home
4. Comfortably Numb
5. When The Tigers Broke Free
6. One Of These Days
7. Us And Them
8. Learning To Fly
9. Arnold Layne
10. Wish You Were Here
11. Jugband Blues
12. High Hopes
13. Bike
It all started in 1966, amid the psychedelic explosion then sweeping swinging London. In small, smoky clubs like the UFO and the Roundhouse, Syd Barre...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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