How did you get into Pink Floyd?

General discussion about Pink Floyd.
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jtull
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How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by jtull »

Well, I'm curious to know how did you get into Pink Floyd?

Me, when I was around 16-17, I was getting into bands such Ramones, Talking Heads, The Cure.. Then, one day I heard ABITW2 on the MTV. Went into a record store and bought Dark Side Of The Moon(not The Wall) because of I was a totally blown away by the iconic prism album cover. Well, as they say, the rest is history. :)
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by BigGame »

I had 15-16 when I discover DSOTM and coud not stop to spinning that disc.
It was my first CD.
Still I think that is masterpice.
For me this album is miles ahead of the rest.
Last edited by BigGame on Sun May 22, 2016 7:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by brell »

I think I was 17 years old (in 1972) when I discovered that "One of these days" was a tune with a band named Pink Floyd. A year later my fiancee (and still my wife after all those years) gave me DSotM as a xmas present. Two years later I bought WYWH and a number of other (older) studio albums (I spent so much money that I almost got divorced). After that there was no looking back.

Oh yes, in 1973 I only had a mono player connected to a mono radio :)
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Follix »

When I managed to make a link between Shine On, Another Brick and Time... «These guys are really good!»

Discovered Comfortably Numb days later and it became an addiction.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Jimi Dean Barrett »

I remember my brother buying ABITWp2 when it came out. I also remember seeing the cover to Animals and I imagined people I knew from School flying where the pig was and that was how they got into School each day. (We live mi!es and miles away from Battersea Power Station!)
And that was that. The opening of "Time" was used as the intro to a school assembly we put together about Dinosaurs.
But it wasn't until 1990 when I came across DSOTM in a shop and I bought it listened to the hell out of it!
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Bigmanpigman »

Told this on another thread but anyway - for me it's all down to 'Time'. In the pub I used to frequent in 1973 I kept hearing THAT guitar solo. I checked out the track on the juke box <ii> and of course it was 'Time'. The flip side, if my memory is correct, was 'Us and Them', which was also getting a lot of play in the pub. This would, of course, have been a promotional disc for juke boxes alone. Literally the following day I went and bought DSOTM, and the rest is history.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Vlad The Impaler »

Hanging out in a friend's basement (very 70's show)...now and again another friend started bringing over records he had...in a two week period I was introduced to Freak Out by The Mothers of Invention and Ummagumma by Pink Floyd (the live album in particular blowing me away). I was in love.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Hudini »

I remember watching the 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' version of 'One Of These Days' on TV when I was 8 or 9, it must have been brand new at the time. It felt a bit scary but strangely compelling. It was the time without internet or any mean to immediately find out anything about what you've just seen on TV so it took me years to realize the name of the band was Pink Floyd. Later on I was exposed to ABITW while in elementary school and while it did appeal to me (mostly the lyrics) it didn't manage to hook me enough. Then sometime in late 1993 or early 1994 I found a box full of my uncle's old records in my grandfather's house, among which copies of 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' and 'A Nice Pair'. I was 12 or 13 at the time so I didn't really understand either DSOTM or ASOS, but I quite liked TPATGOD even though I still had no idea it was the same band that performed OOTD (nor I still knew the track's name). Coincidentally, I saw the same video on TV once again but this time I learned it was Pink Floyd but I still did not know the track name, so I went and purchased literally everything that had the name Pink Floyd written on it. Some of it I liked instantly, like the brand new TDB and WYWH, some of it I liked less, but somewhere along the way I fell in love with the band. Ironically, 'Meddle' was one of the last cassettes I found and I still own the same copy. Worn and torn, but there it is. :lol:
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by jtull »

Nice stories :D
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Massed Gadgets »

I was 15 when I really first got into Pink Floyd. I was aware of the band before that. At that time, The Wall was a recent release and very high in the charts with "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2' all over the radio. A couple of years earlier, in a Grade 8 music class, some of the students had put on a presentation about Pink Floyd and played some tracks off DSOTM (which, interestingly, I recall disliking when I first heard them! <.8.> Fast forward a couple of years later to Grade 10, a friend mentioned this album that had 'one whole side being just one 23-minute long song'. I'd never heard of anything like this before, so I went with my dad to the record shop an he bought me Meddle (I remember the attendant there saying to my dad, "You're son's going to love this album, but you won't!'. Well, I did love it. I put it on my stereo, put this bluish green light bulb I had in my lamp, and lay back with the headphones on and listened to it. At the end of side one, I was blown away. I couldn't imagine a better album side existing. Then I put on Side 2 and listened to Echoes. Needless to say, it was cathartic. After that, I devoured everything Floydian I could find. (And yes, the next time I heard DSOTM, I loved it! :D )
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by mosespa »

I might have been nine years old and my best friends older brother was telling us about this great new song about a guy who busted through a wall and screamed at a teacher to leave the kids alone. "Holy Moly, it's just like breaking the wall," were lyrics that he quoted to us.

Some time after that, I was at the local roller rink and a song which I had never before heard began to play. The bouncy guitar immediately grabbed my ear and when the singer opened with "we don't need no education," I knew that it HAD to be the song that Kevins brother had been telling us about. It gave me chills. I could tell that this was a fantastic song already. The chorus spelled out for me that it was, indeed, that song. I had to leave the rink before I could ask the DJ what the name of the song was, but I was determined to find it.

Not long thereafter, I found myself in the record section of a local department store, scanning the week's Top 40 list for that song. If it was getting played at the roller rink, I reasoned, it HAD to be in the record section of K-Mart. I ran my finger down the list, stopping briefly on "Another Brick In The Wall (Part Two)" by some guy named Pink Floyd. Not recognizing the name or being certain that the title was what was sung in the chorus, I made a mental note to come back to it if nothing else on the list seemed to match.

Nothing did.

I haven't always been the arrogant cock that I'm known for being; I was still quite uncertain of my powers of deductive reasoning. It wasn't until I got the record home, put it on my stereo (my grandparents raised me, so I was pretty spoiled,) and heard that bouncy guitar coming out of my own speakers that I felt my confidence rising. All the same, it still wasn't until the voice(s) sang "We don't need no education" that I finally realized I could exhale.

Not long after that, Kevin insisted that I come over and check out these albums his older brothers had brought home. One by a "new" group called Rush and an album by that Pink Floyd guy called "Dark Side Of The Moon" with this real creepy laugh in this one song.

But that's a story for another time.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Phantom Turnip »

I had never even heard the band's name before, and I don't think I had ever heard a single Pink Floyd song in my entire life. It was my 19th birthday, and I was angrily clicking through Pandora skipping every track it showed me. Pandora really kind of sucks, in retrospect. But one song got me to stop skipping and listen: "Wish You Were Here", by Pink Floyd. I had never heard of them before, and I instantly loved the song. I explored the entire album after that; it was the first time I had listened to anything with songs longer than four minutes, and the first time I had listened to any instrumental rock music (the extended sections of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"). I was hooked, and the rest just fell into place. Maybe having Wish You Were Here be my first PF album is why I prefer the Gilmour-era and pre-Dark Side era the most.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by NineToTheSky »

I heard Arnold Layne on Radio London in 1967 and thought 'I really like the sound of this'. Then I saw that there was a concert called 'Games For May' at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, went to it, and I was hooked. I next saw them at the UFO in Tottenham Court Road in July - and I still have the original Hapshash and the Coloured Coat CIA v UFO poster. I have never looked back since.

Some of the other performances that still stick in my mind are the 1968 Hyde Park concert (truly magical). John Peel said of it: I always claim that the best outdoor event I've ever been to was the Pink Floyd concert in Hyde Park, when I hired a boat and rowed out and I lay in the bottom of the boat, in the middle of the Serpentine and just listened to the band play. I think their music then suited the open air perfectly. It was - it sounds ludicrous now, its the kind of thing that you can get away with saying at the time and which is now, in these harsher times, sounds a bit silly-but I mean it was like a religious experience, it was that marvellous. They played A Saucerful Of Secrets and things. They just seemed to fill the whole sky and everything. And to coincide perfectly with the lapping of the water and the trees and everything. It just seemed to be the perfect event. I think it was the nicest concert I've ever been to. I couldn't agree more - although I was on dry land, not in a boat.

The 'More Furious Madness From The Massed Gadgets Of Auximenes' tour (they gave their tours wonderful names!) and the performance at Mothers in Birmingham (where they recorded Umma Gumma) were wonderful.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by Chaim »

I was in a band when I was a teen and occasionally I visited the bass player's house. His sister had some records and we listened to some of them (his sister was never there). I think Dark Side Of The Moon was the only Pink Floyd record she had, but it was enough. We were hooked and listened to it constantly. Either me or the bass player (I think it was him) later had a cassette or Collection Of Great Dance Songs (or something like that) and we loved that too. Then he bought The Wall. I bought more and more Floyd albums myself. So we sort of discovered the band together, but I don't think he ever bought many of their albums whereas I bought all of them. Early on there was a cassette (no idea where I got it from) that contained cover versions of obscure Floyd tunes (Burning Bridges, Obscured By Clouds etc.). Pillow Of Winds, I think, as well. It also contained well known songs like Arnold Layne and See Emily Play. (I think it may have been by this project: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/studio-99-mn0002036325) Anyway, I fell in love with those songs and kept buying the original versions. I have no idea when these things happened chronologically, but DSOtM was what got me hooked initially.

Incidentally, the bass player's sister also had Duke, Trespass and A Trick Of The Tail by Genesis in her collection. We fell in love with A Trick Of The Tail and to this day it's my favorite Genesis album and one of my favorite albums ever.
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Re: How did you get into Pink Floyd?

Post by MoreOrLess »

I'd obviously heard some of the more successful material but picking up my dads old Vinyl copy of Ummagumma on a dull days in the early 90's and luckily choosing the live disk. I'd never really heard music like Set the Controls of Careful With That Axe before and it didn't just turn me onto Floyd but expanded my musical horizons generally.