Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Discussions about Pink Floyd and Solo Official Album CDs and DVDs.

Rate This Album

5 - Best
107
75%
4
28
20%
3
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2%
2
2
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1- Worst
2
1%
 
Total votes: 142

brell
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by brell »

It is easy to put it together with Audacity and then play it in one piece in iTunes.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Bigmanpigman »

I've never perceived WYWH as a concept album. It's well documented that when they returned to the studio after the release of Dark Side none of them had any material and they were basically scratching around. Hadrian mentioned there were two distinct themes but you could maybe stretch that to three as Roger has frequently stressed that the title track is not about Syd. I've heard him say it is about 'absence' in a more general sense. Roger was always the driving force for the band's conceptual angles, but he never came up with any great plan for this one.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Hadrian »

brell wrote:It is easy to put it together with Audacity and then play it in one piece in iTunes.
Indeed, and I have a version of that which I found online years ago. However I still think that had it originally been recorded as a single piece we would have had something musically more interesting as a connector between the two halves of the song instead of the 'fade out-howling wind-fade in' one has to resign to now.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Hudini »

There is a difference between a narrative and a concept album. DSOTM has no narrative and some of the songs on it are thematically even more diverse than the songs on WYWH, but no one ever questions its concept.

Though I understand how some people won't accept WYWH as a concept album. And if you do accept is a concept, then you should consider TDB being a concept album too. A loose one at first glance, but much tighter as you get deeper inside. But just like WYWH, I don't think the band originally intended it to follow a general idea, but one just happened.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by moom »

brell wrote:It is easy to put it together with Audacity and then play it in one piece in iTunes.
But have in mind that at the end of the first half there are the Welcome to The Machine sounds as the sax solo fades out, and at the beginning of the second batch there's the wind blow.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by brell »

Hehe. Ok, I replace easy with possible. Of course one cannot totally avoid that. They do it on the Echoes album, though, but there the last two parts are missing.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Hadrian »

Hudini wrote:There is a difference between a narrative and a concept album
I agree that there is a difference. My understanding is that concept album consists of a song cycle devoted to a single theme (example: concept album about loss of freedom, with ten songs covering ten different aspects of that experience). A narrative album is a (tighter) sub-variant of the concept album, with songs telling a story in some chronological progression. The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking - an album which I respect, but find mostly unlistenable - with its timing of the story in minutes and seconds is the prime example of a narrative variant. Another sub-variant of a concept album is a rock opera album - The Wall, of course - which I find bloated, pompous, and least enjoyable (sans the over-the-top theatrical live performance that comes with it).

The Dark Side of the Moon works well as a concept album because lyrics of different songs cover various dark aspects of human existence, so there is an easily identifiable single theme there.

I am not sure the same is true when you look at the four WYWH songs together. In that sense, "Have a Cigar b/w Welcome to the Machine" works well as a great concept single on its own (we, the hypocrites, hate the music industry that made us super rich). "Shine On b/w Wish You Were Here" as a release would work well too (how would one release that on 12'' - A side at 33 rpm and B side at 78 rpm - and how would it be classified? that would be a middle finger to the music industry in 1975, wouldn't it?).

When you put the four WYWH songs together you need to stretch the interpretation to find a single theme binding them together, and that is where the problem is.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

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brell wrote:Hehe. Ok, I replace easy with possible. Of course one cannot totally avoid that. They do it on the Echoes album, though, but there the last two parts are missing.
Use the Echoes version and edit the two parts they've left off. OH BUGGER! Even the Echoes version leaves off the keyboard bit before the guitar bit before the first verse!
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Hudini »

Hadrian wrote:The Dark Side of the Moon works well as a concept album because lyrics of different songs cover various dark aspects of human existence, so there is an easily identifiable single theme there.
But doesn't just about every album ever recorded cover 'various aspects of human existence'? :)

In that sense, WYWH could and should also be classified as a concept album, without any stretching of the interpretation of the term. Because even the songs on DSOTM don't have one single identifiable theme present in each of them but rather a series of intertwined themes working together on a larger scale.

How is WYWH here too different from that?
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by moom »

Jimi Dean Barrett wrote:
brell wrote:Hehe. Ok, I replace easy with possible. Of course one cannot totally avoid that. They do it on the Echoes album, though, but there the last two parts are missing.
Use the Echoes version and edit the two parts they've left off. OH BUGGER! Even the Echoes version leaves off the keyboard bit before the guitar bit before the first verse!
Looks like Brell and Hadrian have a lot of editing to do :lol:

Wait, hang on there for a second...

Well, I tried to search for a fan edit like this, no results. But maybe you'll have better luck ;)

Update: Okay... upon some search I have found this:
WYWH The Extraction version, whatever that means.
And there are 3 30-second audio clips, and listen to one from the SOYCD. ;)

Now I'm gonna go and search for this release.

Update 2:
Okay, again. I have found out that it is possible to get those tapes ;)
HOWEVER! That part that I heard in the preview clip is not present there, for some reason!
And SOYCD in general is the master mix, not the final one.

So, more searching for me. Till I get back, here are the images of this supposedly bootleg:
http://www.rootsvinylguide.com/ebay_ite ... on-version

http://www.verzamelaars.net/veilingvind ... 03029.html

*during the search* I'm starting to wonder if the preview clip is actually faulty... others are not, though.

Update 3:
Alright. I've still no idea about that preview clip, but I have something to Hadrian and Brell and the likes. ;)
Apparently there's another bootleg called Wish You Were Here (Ceci Nest Pas) [Re-edited 2012], a double one, that has SOYCD as close to what these two members want as possible. The version on disc 1 does not have the WTTMachine sounds at all making the transitional fade-out and -in sound quite natural :) Since we're not allowed to post links, you'll have to search for it by yourselves.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Hadrian »

Hudini wrote:How is WYWH here too different from that?
For something to be a concept album, there has to be a single unifying theme binding the entire material together. I am really not convinced that WYWH has one.

The Man and The Journey from 1969 would have been the very first (double) concept album by Pink Floyd, had it been recorded (....well, at least The Man part, album A, as a day-in-a-life dawn-until-dusk kind of thing; the narrative variant too! I am not sure how The Journey part, album B, would have jelled - not really impressed there from what I know).

By the way in his latest interviews Roger Waters talks about his new and yet untitled concept album, whose theme is "Why are we killing children?" (...it will be a promising lazy Sunday afternoon easy listen yet again, no doubt...). He explains that he comes up with the overall concept first, then writes the lyrics, and then finally the music - turning lyrics into songs. At the same time, he is envisioning the stage show that will go with it. All of this is, of course, the concept album form at its apogee, but it is still a good illustration how different it is from 10 new songs we have slammed together for a release (the non-concept album).
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Hudini »

Hadrian wrote:For something to be a concept album, there has to be a single unifying theme binding the entire material together.
Not really. There can be several different themes working together which may or may not be present in all songs on an album, hence the expression 'loose concept'. Even all songs on DSOTM don't have a single unifying theme to them. Even 'The Wall' which is indisputably a narrative concept album (some may even call it a rock opera, which it really isn't in a purest sense) has several themes so different that some songs taken out of the context just don't feel they belong on a same album whatsoever.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Hadrian »

I am not sure what a concept album without a single main overreaching concept is supposed to be, but I found this interview with Roger from October 1975. It shows that the process of WYWH album creation involved much stumbling around in the dark.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Bigmanpigman »

Hadrian wrote:I am not sure what a concept album without a single main overreaching concept is supposed to be, but I found this interview with Roger from October 1975. It shows that the process of WYWH album creation involved much stumbling around in the dark.
That's a cracking read Hadrian. Some great quotes from Roger giving a real insight to the creation of the album.
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Re: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Post by Bigmanpigman »

Also.......the comments about Genesis were particularly amusing. As it panned out they became big hit - makers, appearing regularly on Top of The Pops. I know for a fact that Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford were hugely thankful for Phil Collins leading them towards the riches that came their way. I would love to find out which member of the band Roger was referring to :lol: