Pink Floyd Suing Record Company EMI over Download Royalties

[Flying pig437]

....Why would you want to hear that album with "Shine On Part 1", a sudden cut to "Wish You Were Here", then "Shine On Part 2"? The two sides are seamless suites, leave them alone!

I don't like the other 2 songs.

[Peter Beasley]

But it could be argued that for all the times PF or one of the PF guys performs, say, Money or Comfortably Numb or Shine On Parts 1-5 in concert without the rest of the album, they themselves have established a precedent that it's okay to listen to the songs as individual pieces out of context of the rest of the album.

Excellent point. I wonder if the Floyd claim any pre-DSOTM albums as seamless concepts which shouldn't be 'unbundled'? The image of a judge cross-examining Roger to explain the concept behind 'Breast Milky', 'Funky Dung', etc springs to mind.

'Meddle' a concept album? Of course not, but I suppose there would be some who would argue it is and that you can only fully appreciate 'Echoes' if you listen to 'Seamus' first.

[J Ed]

its not a question of the earlier albums being seamless concept albums, its a question of whether the album is meant to be listened to as a whole
like every Beatles album starting from Rubber Soul, the early floyd albums consist of a deliberately sequenced succession of songs in contrasting styles and moods
prior to Rubber Soul Beatles albums were considered, at least by their record company, as a random grouping of 14 songs that might as well be singles
following that landmark songs were no longer expected to stand on their own but could work in the context of what preceded and followed, allowing for a greater range in experimentation
do we need to listen to Seamus first to understand Echoes? probably not, but Seamus itself only works as a brief humorous leadin to Echoes ... indeed all the songs following One of These Days work purely as a sequence of moods rather than as potential singles in their own right

the expectation that a song should work entirely on its own, and if it doesnt its not a very good song, is an expectation of the mp3 age, and these Floyd albums were all products of the lp age, which followed different rules ... good for them for anticipating and legally preventing the revisionist dismemberment of ther lives work

and should they themselves choose to resequence their own songs for concert setlists or compilation albums, thats their decision regarding their own property, which they seem to work pretty hard at getting right ... the transitions Dave and Roger use in concert tend to be repeated over and over again for years once they stumble on one that works