Pink Floyd

[Martin Hash]

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Everybody's got the first song syndrome: first time they heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for example, a song that changed the music landscape, or first time hearing “Stairway to Heaven.” My First Time song was “Money” by Pink Floyd, which prompted me to buy my very first record album at age 15, “Dark Side of the Moon,” another musical event that changed the world. Even more personal, the album's song “Time” has the lyric, “The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,” which I now know was “sun” but I was religious at the time, and I heard “Son,” as in Jesus. I can frankly say that my journey from religious indoctrination to a self-awareness of what life is about led directly from that song. From there I bought “Wish You Were Here,” “Animals,” and ultimately, “The Wall.” I'll admit, the first time I heard “The Wall” on a cassette tape I had gotten for my birthday, I thought it was noise. Still, I went to the movie by myself, sat in a balcony seat and got high on all the doobie smoke raising up in the theater. (Possession of marijuana at that time in California was only an infraction.)

Obviously, my children grew up with an appreciation of Pink Floyd; when they were young riding in the car & a Pink Floyd song came on the radio, I would ask, “Who's this song?” and they would all scream in unison, “Pink Floyd!” Even my wife, Gwynne, who prefers Country music, played the Pink Floyd radio game. No surprise when for my 59th birthday, and Roger Waters, primary founding member of Pink Floyd, was touring, supposedly for the last time, my son bought me concert tickets in Seattle, and boy, did that turn out well, and not just on account of the THC-laced chocolate chip-cookie I ate beforehand. (Washington is a recreational marijuana State.)

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To begin, Roger Waters was the lead singer-songwriter of almost everything I was most enamored to, especially “Animals,” my favorite album of all time, and “Dogs,” my favorite song of all time, which I still listen to all the time. Plus, contrary to most concerts where the live version is almost unrecognizable, the acoustics & volumes in the Tacoma Dome were perfectly done. Easily the best technically correct concert I've ever been to, let alone everything else. Even more special, I remember thinking how appropriate it was that Pink Floyd did a “Wall” concert at the Berlin Wall as it was being torn down back in 1990, and wishing I could have been part of that great coincidence... But now, with Trump's election, Waters used Trump's image & quotes behind the songs “Money” & “Dogs,” and it fit perfectly with our times. Life don't get no better than that. It was 3 hours of perfectly choreographed entertainment, including the famous flying pig, and most importantly, the iconic prism, 40-ft tall & lit in all its colorful glory. Of course, I bought the t-shirt.

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[SuburbanFarmer]

Jelly I would have loved to see them all together, before the breakup.

[Ph64]

First Floyd album I heard was Meddle, on an 8-track car stereo hooked up in my parents basement by my brother... I was age 8. Then Obscured by Clouds and Atom Heart Mother.

By my teens I had everything from Piper at the Gates of Dawn up to Animals. Honestly never really got into The Wall or The Final Cut (the Wall pt 2 ), though everyone else was seriously overplaying them.