Dec 292011
 

Pink Floyd | Piper at the Gates of DawnHere is a list of Pink Floyd Albums below ranging from their first album Piper at the Galtes of Dawn from 1967 right through to their last studio album The Division Bell. There are three main eras of the band whereby the main creative force behind the albums were either Syd, Roger or David.

Although these eras were mainly driven by these individuals, we all know that what made the Pink loyd albums and music some of the best recorded was the input that everyone in the band put forward. Nick Masons sparse drumming and the rich textures and tones from Richard Wright were just as important as Roger’s songwriting and David’s voice and guitar.

Syd Barrett Era

1967 – Pink Floyd – Piper At The Gates of Dawn

Piper is one of my favourite Pink Floyd albums, especially the 30th anniversary edition in Mono I might add! I do wish I was alive in the mid to late 60′s to have had at least the opportunity of going to watch the band live playing the likes of the UFO Club or even a bit closer to home for myself in Liverpool at the Liverpool Empire. Alas, it was not until the 1980s I was born and more than a decade later when I got my first Pink Floyd Album.

Roger Waters Era

The first half of the Roger Waters Pink Floyd Albums era took an experimental underground band from the London Scene and went on a journey of discovery which would lead to 4 of the best albums in recorded music below in the second phase of Pink Floyd album history.

1973 – Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of the Moon

This album broke the band into the real big league and put an end to the magical moments of an intimate and receptive audience for the bands albums in the past. Larger venues would start getting booked and the reach of the bands albums would take on a much larger appeal with the record buying puiblic. This Pink Floyd album features top of the list for people’s favourite Pink Floyd album and rightly so! It is a timeless classic and the recent Dark Side of the Moon Immersion Boxset is a must have for any fan!

1975 – Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here

The great follow up to the Dark Side of the Moon album Wish You Were Here is another of the big albums in terms of commercial success for Pink Floyd. It’s songs were variations on a theme of absence. A popular lyrics from Have A Cigar are “The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think, and by the way… which one’s Pink?”. This was what a cigar toting American concert promoter said to the band whilst booking American dates for the band. Pink went on to become the central character in Pink Floyd album The Wall of course.

1977 – Pink Floyd – Animals

George Orwell wrote a short book called Animals which featured Pigs, Dogs and Sheep, the same characters that appear in one of prog rocks most exciting albums, and one of my favourite Pink Floyd albums too! I could listen to this album over and over again. I think I will stick it on now.

1979 – Pink Floyd – The Wall

This Pink Floyd classic album is currently on tour by Roger Waters in his Wall Live Tour 2010-2013. It tells the story of poor old Pink and his feelings of isolating, the effects of various people in his life to create those feelings and is semi-autobiographical of its writer Roger Waters. It is also loosely based on the story of Syd Barrett, particularly the part in the movie where the cigarette burns down to Pink’s fingers according to an interview with Roger Waters. I got to see this Pink Floyd album being performed live by Roger Waters at the MEN Arena in Manchester earlier in the year and was an excellent show.  I, of course, went there to feel the warm thrill and confusion, the space cadet glow. :-)

1983 – Pink Floyd – The Final Cut

It would seem Roger Waters taking over The Wall writing duties and its production and the movie and everything else was a little too much for the rest of the remaining members of the band to cope with. The Final Cut was essentially a Roger Waters solo album with the others contributing very little to it and for good reason. Roger Waters you naughty ogre! Haha. I don’t think Margaret Thatcher is on Roger’s Christmas card list if listening to the lyrics of this Pink Floyd album are anything to go by! This albums was the last Roger would work on with Pink Floyd and left the band not long after expecting the band to cease to exist. He was wrong.

David Gilmour Era

1987 – Pink Floyd – A Momentary Lapse of Reason

David Gilmour’s first effort at the monumental task of writing a Pink Floyd album resulted in a very much dated and very much derided album by many fans. The production is very 1980s programmed sound and the songmanship is not the strongest from the bands history. Although the album was toured extensively and over-shadowed the efforts of Roger Waters who was doing his solo tour at the time Pink Floyd were on the omentary Lapse of Reason tour. Not the bands best effort in my view.

1994 – Pink Floyd – The Division Bell

David and his now wife Polly Samson wrote The Division Bell as Pink Floyd’s last studio album. Although it still has a heavily “programmed” sound to it and is slightly dated in comparison to the timeless Dark Side, it is still a very good album and popular with fans. The P.U.L.S.E Tour (and subsequent VHS/DVD) are very popular with fans and your narrator here heard his first Pink Floyd song from a C90 Cassette of PULSE live – Wish You Were Here in fact. I have been a fan of the band ever since.

So, there you have a list of Pink Floyd albums with some random comments in between some of them! Please feel free to leave comments about your favourite albums, your thoughts on the various Pink Floyd eras and anything else really. Peace.

Jul 112009
 

David Gilmour has released 3 solo studio albums and 1 live album outside of Pink Floyd during his career and has worked on many more with other people!   His last album from 2006 was On An Island which he toured quite extensively.  I was lucky enough to watch him at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, England.

1978 – David Gilmour Self Titled Album

David Gilmour is the first solo album from Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour, released in May 1978 in the UK and on June 17, 1978 in the US. The album reached #17 in the UK and #29 on the Billboard US album charts and was certified Gold in the US by the RIAA. The album was produced by Gilmour himself, and consists mostly of bluesy, guitar oriented rock songs except for the ballad So Far Away.

The album was recorded at Super Bear Studios in France between December 1977 and early January 1978 with engineer John Etchells. Then the album was mixed at the same studio in March 1978 by Nick Griffiths. The cover was done by Hipgnosis and Gilmour.

The album’s only single was “There’s No Way Out of Here” which flopped in Europe but did extremely well on American FM rock radio. The song was originally recorded by the band Unicorn (which Gilmour produced) in 1976 as “No Way Out of Here” for their album Too Many Crooks and was later covered by New Jersey stoner metal band Monster Magnet on their Monolithic Baby! album.

The album is a Joker’s Wild reunion of sorts, with Rick Wills and Willie Wilson joining Gilmour for the recording of the album.

One of the tunes he wrote at the time, but did not use, evolved into the Pink Floyd classic “Comfortably Numb” from The Wall. However, one song included on this album, “So Far Away”, used a chorus progression not unlike the chorus to “Comfortably Numb”, albeit in a different key.

The instrumental song “Raise My Rent” includes bits that would later be resurrected in the Pink Floyd songs “What Do You Want from Me?” and “Keep Talking”.

A slightly different version of the song “Short and Sweet” can also be found on collaborator Roy Harper’s 1980 album, The Unknown Soldier. Musically, “Short and Sweet” can be seen as a precursor to “Run Like Hell” (also from The Wall), with its shifting chords over a D pedal point, and a flanged guitar in Drop D tuning.

David Gilmour was re-released by EMI Records in Europe as a digitally remastered CD on August 14, 2006. Legacy Recordings/Columbia Records released the remastered CD in the US and Canada on September 12, 2006.

1984 – David Gilmour – About Face Album

About Face is the second solo album by the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, released in March 1984. The album was co-produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour. Two songs were co-written by Gilmour (music) and The Who’s Pete Townshend (lyrics), the rest by Gilmour himself. In May of the same year, fellow Floyd counterpart Roger Waters released his first official solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking.

2006 – David Gilmour – On An Island Album

On an Island is the third solo album by David Gilmour, best known as a lead vocalist and guitarist for Pink Floyd. It was released in the United Kingdom on 6 March 2006, Gilmour’s 60th birthday, and in the U.S. the following day. It is Gilmour’s first new solo album in 22 years. The song “Castellorizon” received a Grammy Award nomination for best rock instrumental.

The album has achieved platinum status in Canada, selling over 100,000 copies in the first month of its release, and sold over 1,5 million copies worldwide.

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