Ananalog

Minnesota Private Radio, Two, 9.6.18

https://www.mixcloud.com/Ananalog/minnesota-private-radio-two-9618/

1. MF Doom (Mediavuelta remix), "Go With the Flow (12" version)", Operation: Doomsday, Foldle 'Em / Metal Face, 1999 / 2008 / 2018, USA  

June haze remix of the original version of Doom's "Go With The Flow." I have the recording as collected on the 2008 Metal Face reissue of the oft reissued Operation: Doomsday. The 12" version is sparse and easier to remix than the album version. I ambiened verse, almost reducing it to rap soundz, but no disrespect is intended. Hopefully, you have a well worn issue of the album on your shelf.

2. Moses Taiwa Molelekwa, "Rapela", Genes and Spirits, M.E.L.T., 2000, South Africa

"Rapela" means pray in Zulu. Genes and Spirits is full of genius moments in which Molelekwa and company fused S.A. jazz, hip-hop, kwaito and electronica. All innovation duly credited, the two barely syncopated notes introducing the deceptively simple first theme of "Rapela" are my favorite part of the album. The joyful canon that follows, like one of Chick Corea's children's songs, is buoyed by the rest of the band and eases into a supercrisp, 21st century jazz take on the same melody, before snapping into a breathtaking, unified turnaround. All fusion aside, "Rapela" is beautiful because of very clever writing that the listener hears as organic.

3. Sons of Kemet, "My Queen is Ada Eastman", Your Queen Is A Reptile, Impulse!, 2018, U.K.

On Your Queen Is A Reptile, Shabaka Hutchings and Sons of Kemet raise up a fist to acknowledge the power of black women and lower a withering gaze at conventional British history - embodied by the queen - that declines to recognize the impact of black women on that history. Ada Eastman was Hutchings great-grandmother, his family's matriarch from Barbados.

Hutchings, Theon Cross (tuba) and Seb Rochford (drums) cook at a FAMU drumline temperature beneath Joshua Idehen's lines. "I'm born strong, the song of an immigrant / [...] I'll be here when your cities are sediment / and only your borders and fences are left / I'll be here when your banks stop selling debt / and all your leaders stop selling death / And you've lost all relevance."

This is the most Impulse!-y music Impulse! has released since Black Unity and Magic of Ju-ju, fifty or so years ago.

4. Donald Byrd, "Places and Spaces", Places and Spaces, Blue Note, 1975, USA

I'll admit that while I have about a dozen or so Byrd, Blackbyrd and Mizell brothers recordings from this era, and "Lansana's Priestess" played a key role in ramping my wedding reception song list from stun to kill, I had never heard Places and Spaces before a few months ago. I heard a clubby remix of the title track at a pizza place, recognized the sample from Pete Rock's "All The Places" (P.R. has sampled Mizell and Byrd more than a few times), recognized the trumpet as obviously Donald Byrd and the arrangements as so perfect they must be Mizell brothers, and tracked down the album that afternoon. I'm resisting the urge to gush too much about this record.

5. Blackrock, "Yeah Yeah", 7" single, Select-O-Hits, 1969, USA

This lone release from a group of Stax and Hi session musicians in Memphis is thunder that predates the first Funkadelic album by a few months. It's an odd and effective bit of song arranging, with the first, minor key section not serving an obvious role except to amplify the overjoyed, major key guitar solo you didn't realize was going to microwave your face a few seconds later.

6. MonoNeon, "Shooting For the Stars With My Laser Beam", I Don't Care Today (Angels and Demons in Lo-Fi), self release, 2018, USA

MonoNeon is the freek funkateer handle of Memphis bass virtuoso Dwayne Thomas Jr. I Don't Care Today is some clever shit, couching MonoNeon & friends' intimidating virtuosity and avante-garde experimentation on a futon of immediately approachable pyjama funk. Like the bedroom stoner, Sonic The Hedgehog funk that Thundercat rips but doesn't pull off quite as well because his music is too high fidelity. I just really like the guitar riff after the chorus.

7. Belair, "Samba For A Cold Warrior", Relax, You're Soaking It In, Belby Wetterman, 1980, USA

I have this recording from a Kev Beadle, Private Collection compilation. (Where does he find all of this not Brazilian, jazz samba?) The original seems to be small or private press on a microscopic label. I don't know much about this group. I presume guitarist Michael Belair is the leader. Broadly, "Samba For A Cold Warrior" fits a Kev Beadle presents comp well - small combo, small press, medium edge, mild Chick Corea-esque exotica. The big surprise is the vocal chorus that emerges from seven minutes of traded solos. "With the darkness dispelled by the radiance of day, the wiles of the wicked are driven away."

8. The Grodeck Whipperjenny, "Put Your Thing On Me", The Groedeck Whipperjenny, People, 1970, USA

You read that label correctly. James Brown's People label put this megaton psych rock shit out. Keyboardist Dave Matthews arranged for Brown and Brown released Matthew's project. The star of this album is guitarist Kenny Poole. Poole is a Cincinnati legend who went on to be better known for intricate finger picked sambas than for renal liquefying fuzz devastation. Great album.

9. M.C. Mell'o', "All Terrain M.C.s", Thoughts Released, Republic Records, 1990, U.K.

Rufff bounce from the godfather U.K. rapper isn't exactly as mell'o as jell'o. I won't pretend to analyze Mell'o' rhymes, because my London accent detection is not that sharp. You can tell it is ruff albeit smooth, though. Republic was house and disco master, Joey Negro's first label.

I love this era of beatmaking. Slamming rolands atop a funk break, every bass drum sample ever on the one, monosyllabic guitar and organ stabs interjected to fake a harmonic accompaniment, unintelligible vocal scratches, a chord change to keep it fresh, the strange piano interlude whose purpose isn't clear twenty five years later. Like Mell'o' would say, there is something "dusk to dawn, dawn to dusk, no fuss" about the beat. It would have lit a fire under my five year old self when it was released just as it does today.      

10. La Mecanica Popular, "Part 4 (Visiones)", Roza Cruz, Names You Can Trust, 2018, USA

La Mecanica Popular, NYC psych salseros, push their newest release into the crawling, sinister realms of live/evil bitches Miles or Eddie Palmieri with his oxygen burning Rhodes turned to t h i c k. "Visiones" churns when the the synth bass, keys and electric guitar unite for the final head. I like that, at least for Roza Cruz, La Mecanica have shunned going somewhere for digging in and being somewhere.

11. Piero Umiliani, "Danza del fuoco", La ragazza dalla pelle di luna, Schema, 1972, Italy

Umiliani is a minor hero of mine. There is a perfect Umiliani track for every life experience. "Danza del fuoco" is a bonus recording not on the original Omicron soundtrack for La ragazza dalla pelle di luni, a 70s exploitation flick about a white European supermodel making out with a Seychellois supermodel or something similarly highbrow.

"Sdoganare" means to sanction or clear through customs. I just discovered the Schema has a Bandcamp page.

12. Leon Ware (ft. Minnie Riperton), "Instant Love", Musical Massage, Gordy, 1976, USA

The second syllable of Riperton's performance, the rising guitar note in between the verses (from either David Walker or Ray Parker), the Mizell-perfect orchestration, this song is so good. I don't know how Ware and company put together such a carefully controlled experience that is dripping with truth and soul. Maybe it is what happens when you task a room full of master craftsmen each with a small task. Parker and Walker's guitar tones on this album have haunted me. I'll accept advice on ringing that bell.

13. Sinn Sisamouth, unknown recording, Cambodian Soul Sounds, Vol. II, Cambodian Soul

Sounds, early 1970s, Cambodia

Sisamouth was a hugely popular and influential figure in Cambodian popular music for decades before his disappearance and death at the hand of the Khmer Rouge. He songs are still re-recorded today. Intellectual property debates regarding the music of Sisamouth and his contemporaries continue to the present, as while the music remains beloved, the Khmer Rouge sought to erase the careers, legacies and lives of many of the musicians who made it. The first Cambodian intellectual copyright law was passed in 2003, but bootlegs are commonly traded and the Cambodian state lays claim to Sisamouth's compositions as property of the Ministry of Culture. Richard Rossa, the Swedish DJ behind the compilations donates sales from both volumes of Cambodian Soul Sounds to charities that support Cambodian youth and the preservation of Cambodian cultural history in an effort to square the fact that the recordings were unlicensed, or possibly un-licensable in the traditional sense.

Minnesota Private Radio, One, 4.16.18

https://www.mixcloud.com/Ananalog/minnesota-private-radio/

1. Mediavuelta, "Apex Predator", Secretariat Don't Wash Dishes, Ananalog, 2017, USA

Ananalog's family beatmaker, Mediavuelta, leads off with a short loop and a track that features a bass drop like a Persian leopard dropping from an ancient cypress to snap your neck.

2. Bahamadia, "True Honey Buns", Kollage, Chrysalis, 1996, USA

Party prep jam sees the Philly rapper pumping the brakes on her girl putting out after a Wu Tang show. Respect yourself; represent your friends well. You can hear that Premier in the two bar loop from a block away.

3. Novos Baianos, "Preta Pretinha", Acabou Chorare, Som Livre, 1972, Brazil

Acabou Chorare topped a Rolling Stone list of hundred greatest Brazilian albums. No song on the album better represents the joyful, communal anarchy exuded throughout than "Preta Pretinha". The group vocal response to Moraes Moreira's lead recalls the mass singing performed by samba schools. It is distinct from the more introspective, individual bossa nova pioneered by the group's mentor, Joao Gilberto. "Preta Pretinha" shares a spot in my heart next to Caetano Veloso's "If You Hold A Stone" because of the communal vocals found in each.

4. Wee, "I'm All Changed", You Can Fly On My Aeroplane, OWL, 1977, USA

Numero reissued Wee and Norman Whiteside's You Can Fly On My Aeroplane a decade ago. The album is a half-hour of hazy, bedroom soul, if the blue sky was your bedroom and a nimbus cloud was your body pillow. I've been fruitlessly working over a sample of "I'm All Changed" for a few weeks.

5. Pete Dunaway, "Supermarket", Pete Dunaway, Som Livre, 1974 Brazil

Back to Brazil via Memphis. In (the possibly tongue-in-cheek) "Supermarket", Dunaway, a Brazilian composer and former music director of Som Livre, straddles stank legged funk in the intro and blue eyed soul in the verses of this four minute masterpiece. Call the guitar a drum. This jam is still too slow to disco.

6. Ice, "Reality", 7" single, Ice (AOTN reissue), 1980, USA

There is currently an original of "Reality" for sale on Discogs for four grandissimi.

7. Marcia Aitken & Trinity, "My Man / Blouse and Skirt", 12" single, Joe Gibbs Record Globe, 1979?, Jamaica

Early lovers dancehall from Marcia Aitken and Joe Gibbs with Trinity toasting on the version half of the mix. After the earnestness of Aitken's side, Trinity pops from the dubwize shower like a dog in heat. His first lines dub her out her blouse and skirt; the last seem to confuse her gender. "She a one girl man."

8. Blood Ulmer, "Black Rock", Black Rock, CBS, 1982, USA

Stomping, acute angled New/No Wave jazz from James Blood and company with great contributions from Calvin Weston on drums.

9. Ivan Ave, "George Duke", Every Eye, Jakarta Records, 2017 Norway

Ivan requests specifics, but stays coy himself in this smoove, heartbroken reminiscence produced by Olso collaborator, Fredfades. "I played George Duke for you," is poetry of the cast off lover (slash music nerd), conveying more frailty than such a potentially corny line has any right to.

10. Birkineh Wurga, "Alkedashim", 7" single, Philips, 1975, Ethiopia

I don't have much insight into this track, recently compiled by Ernesto Chahoud's  BBE release of "stompers" from 1970s Ethiopia. Wurga is the singer. The Army Band, which be heard backing Tlalhoun Gessesse on a few tracks on the Ethiopiques Vol. 17 comp, lays down the stomp.

11. Black Spade, "Dance 4 Me", Hopeless and Romanticizing, Vibe Music Collective, 2018, USA

I might rave about music frequently, but I really mean it when I rave about Hopeless and Romanticizing. St. Louis veteran vocalist and producer Black Spade has put together a mature, coherent soul album and you should listen to the whole thing after this MPR episode. It's Miseducation of Lauryn Hill good.

"Did you forget who showed you how to fuckin watusi?" is the best breakup line written to a fellow dancefloor killer. I know that vibraphone sample, but can't place it. Someone let me know.

12. Neue Grafik, "Dance To Yemanja", 12" single, Rhythm Section International, 2018, France

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T5ZQCudQYA  

If this doesn't bring you joy, it's time to give up. Neue Grafik is on the right with the MPC.

13. Moacir Santos, "Haply-Happy", Saudade, Blue Note, 1974, Brazil / USA

I'm always curious about Blue Note oddities, like Sabu and Arsenio Rodriguez's Palo Congo or Solomon Ilori's African High-Life. Saudade is not quite a total oddity, but with a large ensemble, multilingual vocals, moderate Brazilian influences, a dozen tasteful guitar solos from Lee Ritenour, and the lovely quilted chicken cover art, it surely isn't standard Blue note post-bop. Santos was a beloved jazz composer and educator from Pernambuco.

14. Beverly Glenn-Copeland, "Erzili", Beverly Glenn-Copeland, GRT, 1970, Canada / USA

If Black Spade is revelation 1A from my spring of music discovery, Beverly Glenn-Copeland is revelation 1B. "Erzili" is the final track from Glenn-Copeland's self-titled 1970 folk, jazz, art song masterpiece. It's like Nina Simone fronting CSNY with Lenny Breau on lead guitar. No wait, that actually is Lenny Breau on lead guitar.

This album and Glenn-Copeland's 1986 Keyboard Fantasies are both available on Bandcamp.

--1pm--

Orquesta Harlow - SilencioThe Notations - I'm Still HereBlackman Akeeb Kareem - Awa Na Re Paulett Winley & Tanya Winley  with Harlem Underground Band - Rhymin' & Rappin' ESG - Get Funky Juaneco y su Combo - Caballito Nocturno Son Little - Joy Anthony Johnson - Dancehall Vibes M.A.K.U. Soundsystem - MND (Music no muere) Willie Colon & Ruben Blades - Dime Los Graduados - Abrazo Costeno Earth, Roots and Water - Awakening

--2pm--

https://ananalog.bandcamp.com/album/history-lessons-vol-3-stuck-in-the-present

1. Franco & TPOK Jazz - "Sansi Fingomangoma"

2. Joe Bataan - "I Wish You Love, pt. 2"

3. Boston Cream Party - "Marcellus"

4. Cortijo y Su Combo - "Aqui estoy ya llegue"

5. Donald Byrd -  "Lansana's Priestess"

6. Abelardo Carbono - "Palenque"

7. Dirk Powell - "Prettiest Little Girl in the County"

8. Lee Fields & The Expressions - "You're the Kind of Girl"

9. Funkadelic - "I'll Stay"

10. The Psychedelic Aliens - "Gbe Keke Wo Taoc"

11. Sexteto Manaure - "Bajo el trupillo guajiro"

12. Josephine Foster - "Child of God"

13. John Fahey - "When the Catfish is in Bloom"

14. Sabu Martinez & Arsenio Rodriguez - "Rhapsodia del maravilloso"

15. Tal National - "Kountche"

16. Ralfi Pagan - "Sere para ti"

17. Vashti Bunyan - "Just Another Diamond Day"

18. Boston Cream Party - "Psychedelic Baby" 

Beginning this and every subsequent Friday from 8-10pm, Peter Rabbit will feature on WPRB 103.3FM. The signal can be caught between Philadelphia and NYC, or you can listen online at wprb.com.

         The next era of Pink Floyd would shed the ideological vagueness of its Eternal period for more psychological and politically concise messages. This transition from cosmic reverie to socially-relevant critique was accomplished by a manipulation and reintegration of the past into the band’s music. This past-centric era primarily includes Pink Floyd’s work between 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon through to 1983’s The Final Cut, although the use of the past as subject material was apparent as early as Barrett’s dismissal, with Waters’ unreleased song “Incarceration of a Flower Child” representing an early effort in reintegrating the band’s past. Along with the ghost of Syd Barrett, the death of Waters’ father in World War II before Waters ever knew him, account for the two most important historical subjects in the music of this era of Pink Floyd. These subjects have a common nature in that they are both personal to Waters, they have both caused difficult emotions including resentment, loss, and guilt, and they are both easily extended into broader metaphors which have implications in the social lives of listeners at large.

         References to Syd Barrett in Pink Floyd are well known to Floyd fans. After Syd appears for the last laugh on the transitional Saucerful of Secrets, he is referenced obliquely through the Dark Side of the Moon and in songs on Obscured By Clouds. Certainly the heroin burnout equals death of youth culture conclusion to Barbet Schroeder’s petulant More must have resonated with Barrett’s former bandmates as they scored the film. It was not until the physical (and almost unrecognizable) reappearance of Syd in EMI’s Abbey Road studios during the initial sessions of Wish You Were Here that Waters would reintegrate [Syd’s ghost specifically][pause] into the the band’s music. Barrett’s brief and timely appearance gave Waters the character around which he could develop his thematic interests of loneliness, lost dreams, and exploitation by the music industry. Far enough removed now by the mid-1970s from the real person, Floyd could use the image of their founder, whose youthfulness was burnout, and monetized by the pigs, who was too idealistic and individual to cooperate with the systems, who was left raving mad and completely alone, as a complex metaphor relevant beyond Barrett for the suffering and alienation that we experience in a modern, capitalist society. Though specific references to Barrett are present in every song on the album, the lyrics are left open enough to interpretation to invite the listener to place themselves in the narrative. Thus, the lyrical content, or subject past, central to Wish You Were Here is Barrett and the early history of Pink Floyd.

          The insane origins of Pink Floyd via Syd Barrett have lent the band a degree of ominous credibility. This credibility is leveraged on Dark Side of the Moon, where a fine line is walked between identifying madness as a frightening inevitability, and in proposing madness as the only escape from the trudgery of modern life. Pink Floyd’s elegy to Barrett, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” suggests that Barrett’s meteoric dropout from society, his becoming insane and irrelevant to the machine, permitted him to retain a semblance of his gleam. What would be labeled as a tragedy, could be recast as a dubious victory.

          The musical content, or object past, of Wish You Were Here reinforces the lyrical message by establishing a perspective of remembrance at either end of the album. This is accomplished by splitting the lengthy “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” into parts one through five on the first track of the album and into parts six through nine on the final track of side two. The musical space built in “Shine On” is oceanic, utterly subsumed by Rick Wright’s synthesizers, the pace is languid and passive, and David Gilmour’s guitar is as fragile and bluelaced as china. The keyboard drone over which Gilmour plays in parts one and two slurs the progress of time. We are choked in the nostalgia, in the loneliness long before the lyrics have opportunity to identify our feelings. The instruments gradually suggest and suggest the vocal melody, but for nearly nine minutes it is withheld and we are left to long for the expression of our built up emotion. The lyrics are sung from the perspective of an individual in the present remembering a lost person of his past: “Remember when you were young / you shone like the sun” begins the first verse. The singer admits to having no knowledge of the crazy diamond’s present, “Nobody knows where you are / how near or how far,” but continues to implore this lost youth to shine on. Of course, the present is unknown and only the memory of this person can shine on. Never in the album does the Barrett character get to speak for himself, and we should be clear that the need to reintegrate this past is more to express the band’s guilt over Syd’s lingering absence/situation, their own past in the music industry, and social alienation and exploitation in general. The insane origins of Pink Floyd via Syd Barrett have lent the band a degree of artistic credibility, the real, lived darkside to the artistic moon that the rest of the group propped up in orbit after their founder’s firing. If their classic albums were not laced with the threat of insanity, a horror that seems possible through Barrett’s ghost, would the powerlessness that Waters’ lyrics warn us of be taken seriously? Surely any diamond has great value. Pink Floyd’s elegy to Barrett, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” suggests that Barrett’s meteoric dropout from society, his becoming insane and irrelevant to the machine, is the only way to overcome the machine. What would be labeled as a tragedy, could be recast as a victory.

          We flash back to the events that contributed to the ruin of this lost person in “Welcome to the Machine” and “Have a Cigar,” where inescapable, brutal industry have begun to exploit the individual. These lyrics of these two songs are applicable to the industry pressure to conform and produce hit material that the early band suffered in 1967 and to the Floyd of 1974 who were struggling to follow up on the massive success of Dark Side of the Moon. The car radio transition from “Cigar” to “Wish You Were Here” forces the many listeners who would indeed listen to this song on the car radio over the decades into an awareness of their previous experience with the song, and to insert themselves within the loneliness narrative. Our past as listener was integrated with the music before it was even heard. “Wish You Were Here” deals with the recent loss of the friend. Here, the Barrett figure is still visible, still present. Afterward, we are returned on the wind to our original perspective of remembrance with the completion of “Shine On.” The sustain and portamento of Gilmour’s lapsteel at the beginning of the second half of “Shine On” plays a similar role to Wright’s droning organs in parts one and two, slurring time and connecting the past to the present, albeit with more simmering rage and agency than the keyboard parts. The perspective of remembrance returns with the completion of the verses. Preceding the resolution of the song is the now obligatory funk interlude (via “Echoes” and “Any Colour You Like”) identifiable by Nick Mason’s quarter note, hi-hat pattern. Thus, the song order brings us from a self-aware remembering of the past, to scenes from the past, and back to the distance of memory. Although the final, major key synthesizer part suggests an emotional resolution, perhaps an artificial resolution, to the loss of Barrett, his past would reappear, less prominently and melded with Waters distillation of his own self in The Wall.

          The impact of the Second World War on Roger Waters’ family is the other important historical past that is manipulated in this era of Pink Floyd. Nicolas Schaffner recalls, “[Eric Fletcher Waters] was only thirty when he died, slain along with forty thousand other British soldiers in a reckless British campaign to capture the bridgehead of Anzio from the Nazis. His third child, George Roger Waters, had been born only a few months before [...]” (15). This loss would provide Waters with ample bricks his Wall and tattered banners for the Final Cut, although his anti-militarism had already been stated in “Corporal Clegg” and “Us and Them.” The Wall has us follow Pink, a strung out rock star conglomeration of Waters and Barrett, who lost his daddy in the War, has his feelings suppressed by an overbearing mother and sadistic school teachers, cannot connect to his wife and loses her to another man, and finds himself completely isolated from the rest of humanity by a vast wall made of bricks from his own past. Events from Waters’ past, such as the discovery of King George’s mass-produced letter of condolences to his mother, are extracted and given new, more universal context within Pink’s experience on the album. As we hear in, “Another Brick in the Wall, pt 1,” the first and most frequently identified brick in the wall is the loss of Pink’s father. The father’s death, supposedly in defense of the nation against fascist aggression, appears meaningless as Pink and a massed audience with him turn fascist to cope with the repression of their emotions. The expression of the personal loss of Waters’ father empathizes with the generation of English who lost family in the war, and raises the questions of if and how we are learning from that absurd violence. So as to not reduce the album, it should be understood that war is one of many targets at which Waters levels his sarcasm, and the number of wall metaphors pursued on the album is exhaustive.

          Though the number of tracks on The Wall is vast for a Floyd album, the tracks are organizable into overlapping subsets that share musical and lyrical themes, such as “Another Brick In The Wall, parts 1-3,” “Happiest Days Of Our Lives” and “Run Like Hell”, or “The Thin Ice”, “Mother”, and “Goodbye Blue Sky.” As the album progresses, intervals, rhythms, time signatures, and tonalities are carefully stacked, like the individual bricks of a wall, so that the album gains unity from repetition of its musical past. For example, the ominous militant stomp of “Empty Spaces” recalls the un-syncopated, new wave funk of “Another Brick In The Wall,” while the whole note, minor arpeggio played by the guitar in “Empty Spaces” reappears in “Hey You” at twice the pace, and then again to sinister effect in “Waiting For The Worms.” The ooohing vocalese that concludes Gilmour’s part at the beginning of “The Thin Ice” (“ooooh, oooh, oooh, baby blue”) is recalled throughout the album in “Happiest Days Of Our Lives,” “Mother,” “Goodbye Blue Sky,” and “Don’t Leave Me Now.” Dialogue, here more literal and literary than previous spoken words in the catalogue, is inserted throughout for the sake of the narrative. Plot driving dialogue plus the bomber, chopper, and classroom sound effects reveal a theatrical layer that would be articulated in the live performances and the film adaptation of the album. The inclusion of WWII film soundtracks throughout mediate our now passive inheritance of this history, and cast doubt on our ability to learn from the pain of the war.

          1982’s The Final Cut, much of the content of which culled from the same pool of songs that became The Wall , raises a more narrowly focused critique on right-wing recourse to violence in an era after World War Two where national leaders should know better - “What happened to the post-war dream?”  Specifically, the United Kingdom’s conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands was the impetus behind The Final Cut. Contemporary world history is primary subject matter: Nixon, Reagan and especially Thatcher are lampooned, nuclear oblivion looms on the sunset horizon, and everyone is concerned about competing with Japanese industry. Waters implores his audience to look at their past [MUSIC Possible Pasts], and learn from the pain we caused ourselves. The death of Eric Waters is recalled, but cleaned of its psychological Wall metaphors and held up as a history lesson. Two fictitious, but potentially historical, characters pick up the message of Waters father to elaborate the impact of the war, the Hero of “One of the Few” and “The Hero’s Return,” and the Gunner of “The Gunner’s Dream.” Both songs are sung in first person. The Hero is a pilot who has returned alive, becomes alienated from his wife, and cannot escape the ghost of the Gunner’s last words. The Powell and Pressburger-like character of the Gunner has a dying dream of a just and peaceful society. We are encouraged to “take heed of his dream,” but are then introduced to the world leaders who clearly have let the dream fail. The album is generally structured in this way, alternating between a requiem for what should have been and voices unsympathetic to learning from history. This requiem - interruption format is most evident on “Not Now John,” where Gilmour’s gotta get on with industry part cuts off Waters’ hesitant, conscientious reprise of “One of the Few.” The Final Cut is Pink Floyd’s most overtly historical and political album. Its shared origins with The Wall are obvious, but through a more proactive integration of the historical past, the latter album communicates a strong, more concise, and arguably less universal message. Waters’ attempted dissolution of the band in 1985 concludes the era of Pink Floyd most invested in utilizing the past.

          The music of Pink Floyd encourages association with monumental concepts of Time - the past, the future, the eternity of space and death, or our own human history that echoes across generations. The broad scale of these concepts may obscure specific meanings in this music that is rich with meaning, but by tracking the music’s position with regard to concepts of Time, one can discover philosophical and political purpose. Though I will comment on Time in earlier and later versions of Pink Floyd for the sake of organizing the development of the music, this presentation will focus on the music of the Roger Waters-led Floyd of the mid-1970s through to Water’s attempted dissolution of the band after The Final Cut (1982). Following the primordial psychedelia of the Syd Barrett-led Floyd and the early-1970s band that positioned itself as technological lords of soundscape rock, and preceding the re-formed Floyd that re-stated the songs of its past in a different context for massive global audiences, the late-1970s Floyd made excellent use of its historical and musical pasts as both subject and object material. Specifically, the absence of Syd Barrett and the impact of the second World War on Waters’ family are developed into complex metaphors to critique modern societies whose people have become alienated from one another, subjugated to capitalist systems, and prone to war and violence. The utility and historical validity of these historical subjects are supported by an integration of the musical past into self-affirming structures and repeated musical experiences.

         Roger “Syd” Barrett, the dominant songwriter and musician in the first lineup of (The) Pink Floyd, created music that was acutely original, music without obvious precedence. Both in concept and in execution, the Barrett-led Floyd created primordial psychedelia that constantly flaunts expectation. Pop gives way to feedback washed free improvisation, chord progressions unfold in chromatic semi-logic, and solos do not reference the theme. Barrett’s lyrics favor personal experience and imagery rather than collective histories and statements.

          In this iteration of the group, performance and improvisation take precedence over composition. In step with London’s progressive, hippie culture of the mid-1960s, Pink Floyd performances often were a scene for spontaneity and social anarchy, with relatively radical group improvisation the dominant musical feature. The Pink Floyd found themselves performing in what were conceived by the organizers of London’s radical culture as multimedia, audience participatory events, rather than mere concerts. Looking back over the Floyd’s performances at the UFO club, which for a time was the capital of London hippiedom, Peter Wynne Wilson recalls, “Syd’s improvisations would go on for extended periods, but would be absolutely immaculate. The music was wonderful and the audience rapport was total. UFO was an exceptional experience - everyone was rooting for the same direction and the same goals” (Schaffner, 47). Others, including Barrett’s bandmates have suggested that a high ratio of rubbish was being performed, but clearly some appreciated the social potential of the scene. In an environment where the disintegration of structure is valued as highly as the development of structure, performances of a piece could vary wildly from night to night. In stark contrast to the mega-tours of the early 90s, whose audiences expected to witness recreations of the band’s recorded music, these audiences expected to experience the unexpected. To a large degree, The Pink Floyd’s music was unburdened by the past, remaining free to express the (perhaps mostly Barrett’s) immediate present.

          Following this logic, perhaps the recorded output of Barrett’s Floyd could be considered of secondary importance to the live performance. Nevertheless, Piper At the Gates of Dawn and its contemporary singles succeed in engaging the listener in a performative experience. The physical, aural space occupied by the recordings on Piper is dense, singular and admirably consistent. This recorded space separates the album contemporary albums, occupying a sound that is neither live nor typically studio. This original sound space, along with the mixing experiments, extended improvisations that are barely tied to themes, and the inclusion of traditionally non-musical sounds confirms Piper as a performative recording. [this shit might be oxymoronic]

         Barrett’s departure or dismissal from Pink Floyd due to mental illness and erratic behavior deprived the band of its font of instant creativity, and to continue, the subsequent Pink Floyd(s) would require new purposes and structures.  Long, mostly improvised performances were already common in Barrett’s Floyd. With an avant-garde reputation to uphold, and with the quasi-anarchic trappings of psychedelia to be cast-off, the remaining Floyds plus David Gilmour began to fill the performance time previously saturated with miniature, improvised chaos with carefully structured compositions. So, while the kinetic, maximalism of Barrett’s Floyd is often best appreciated on minute scale, the next Floyd of the late-60s and early-70s thrived on glacial, carefully balanced compositions that fulfilled their structure on a large scale.

          The music of this second era of the group encourages association with eternity -- or cyclical Time, balanced in the past and future, rather than the spontaneous present of Barrett’s era. In concert standards “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and “Careful With That Axe Eugene,” esoteric lyrics unfurl within quiet, creeping opening sections followed by violent crescendos, and ultimately a return to the quiet from which they began. These songs are harmonically sparse, relying on simple, hypnotic, repeated melodic figures and the rise and fall in drama of an arc structure for much of their effect. Pop song structure and any fashionable artificiality that can be found  in it is eliminated; rhythm, melody and harmony are simplified and set to building atmosphere and tension.

         Lyrically, eternal Time beyond human influence is evoked in the outer space imagery of “Astronomy Domine,” and the day - night cycles in “Let There Be More Light,” “Remember a Day,” “Set the Controls...,” and “A Pillow of Winds.” The lyrics of “Echoes” contain a wealth of eternal imagery, to the vastness of the ocean in the first verse, the  “I Am The Walrus” identity mirror of the second verse, to the previously mentioned day-night cycle in the final verse.

          An evocation of eternal Time can also be identified in the mood of the shorter, pastoral songs that occupy Waters’ quarter of Ummagumma, the soundtrack to More, side two of Atom Heart Mother, and parts of Meddle. Situated between dreamy, sunglazed psychedelia, childhood nostalgia, and the artificial British primitivism not uncommon in the music of many of Floyd’s 1970 contemporaries, songs like “Granchester Meadows” and its supposed sequel, “Fat Old Sun” recall time before man was alienated from nature, a nonhistorical time that is more nostalgia or fantasy than history. Acoustic instruments and recorded nature sounds like the birds in “Granchester Meadows” and “Cirrus Minor”, minimal modern, electronic sounds (excluding healthy amounts of dreamy reverb and Leslie swirl), sparse arrangements, and soft, nearly lackadaisical vocals all draw the listener into a pastoral dream of time before modernity. Even the Mapuga tribe chorus on “Absolutely Curtains” suggests eternal, pre-historic Time.

           In this era of the eternal, the recorded album replaced the performed event of the Barrett era as the premiere venue for hearing Pink Floyd, and the studio grew in importance as a compositional tool. This growing preference for the studio is evidenced in the various film soundtracks completed between 1969’s More (dir. Schroeder) and 1972’s Obscured By Clouds / La vallee (dir. Schroeder), which was more lucrative and likely less taxing work than touring the circuit. The Gilmour-augmented Floyd produced much of their own recordings after Piper, displaying an increasing adeptness in and reliance on music technology.  Nicholas Schaffner describes the Floyd having composed “Echoes” and the tracks that precede it on Meddle over the course of a month booked at Abbey Road, “Without having composed anything in advance [...]” (164).

          The technological distance developed in this atmosphere aided in saving Pink Floyd from relying on the presence of any rock idol personality to connect with listeners. Perhaps the perfect image to mark the end of this era is that of Adrien Maben’s Pink Floyd at Pompeii film, where the band performs for no audience save the filmmakers, surrounded first in a shell of their equipment, and then on all sides by the eternally preserved death of the ruins. Music for eternity, for the sake of music.

1. Hedzolleh Soundz - "Edinya Benya"

2. Fuzzy Mountain String Band - "Protect the Innocent"

3. Josephine Foster and the Victor Herrero Band - "Los Cuatros Muleros"

4. The Trinikas - "Remember Me"

5. Madlib and Freddie Gibbs - "Harold's"

6. Albert Ayler - "Bells"

7. Eddie Palmieri - "Revolt / La Libertad Logica"

8. Rufar Dos Tamborins - "Caminho de minas"

9. On'ka Davis - "Ain't Nobody Teach Nobody Nothing"

10. The Kolettes - "Who's That Guy?"

11. T.P.O.K. Jazz - "Azda"

12. Jorge Ben - "Frases"

13. Abelardo Carbono - "Palenque"

14. Townes van Zandt - "Standin'"

15. Alonso Lovo - "La Gigantona"

16. Lootpack - "Whenimondamic"

17. Bra Sello & The Mgababa Queens - "Akulalwa Soweto"

18. Ornette Coleman - "What Reason Could I Give?"

19. Tal National - "Kaani"