siderealxxx wrote:Does everyone else think that Roy Harper's vocal on Have A Cigar sounds exactly like a cross between Davids and Rogers?! I can hear elements of both their voices in it, it's quite strange. Or is it just me?! Listen to it... you'll see!
Roy Harper singing on HAC is a myth, it was really either a studio-made composite of Roger and Dave's voices or old Barrett doing an Alan Smithee on WYWH.
To me, this is an ode/apology from the band to Syd Barrett. Not ONE of you wrote about that!!!Shame, Shame(lol!)
Haunting music, great guitar riff & an indictment on what the music bizz can do to "Artists" who are to pure for the pop music B.S. The fact that Syd showed UP at the session when they were mixing Shine on is in a way mildly prophetic. They asked him what he thought & Syd said the song sounds "a bit old" & when they went to replay it Syd supposedly said" Why bother, you've already heard it once"!!! AHHHHHH, pure Syd. But he was in a bad way, so who REALLY knows.?! I could pass on "Have a Cigar" but the rest of this album is the best they EVER did without Mr. Barrett.
Best of the best. Far and away my favorite album of all time.
On every single other Floyd album, I can find a song (even just one) to complain about on some level. This album is damn near perfect from front to back.
I respect the opinions of those who disagree, but... well, I suppose it takes all kinds of nuts to make a sundae.
My favorite Pink Floyd album! It is perfect, start to finish, and wonderfully cohesive musically and thematically. Even though each song sounds so different, it fits into the whole in the best way imaginable. I think it is also their strongest emotionally: a sad and desperate record, true (I love that a user above used "cold" to describe the emotional atmosphere - exactly right!), but with glimpses of light and warmth, too. I think it is both musically and emotionally & lyrically even more complex than its much-lauded predecessor as well as the fantastic albums that followed it.
Though Obscured by Clouds is my favorite of the previous era (AHM -> Darkside), I do think Wish is even better, because whereas OBC's brilliance comes from its off-the-cuff nature, showcasing an extremely strong band just as they are, Wish You Were Here sees Pink Floyd harnessing their powers to truly craft a masterpiece, an utterly perfect record (which they obviously tried, but IMO ultimately failed, to do with Darkside).
And just to add my own voice to the mini-controversy above, I love Roy's vocals on Have a Cigar!
Also, I can't find the post now, but I totally agree with whoever said that they never listen to any one of these songs alone - they must always listen to the whole album. This is the case for me with many Floyd records, but this one above all!
Oh happy days. I remember that Alan (Fluff) Freeman played this in full. We had just bought our first house in Boston (Lincs) and I listened as I painted. I taped the broadcast but then I bought the album on LP then, in the 80's on CD.
I thought Animals was good too but nothing ever came near to this.
Their last album that made you think of the future despite the lyrical concerns of looking back.
The final part of SOYCD really should have been on the Echoes best of. And it's the piece of music I'd choose above everything else to remember Rick Wright by.
I also like the quiet vocal underneath Dave's vocal on WTTM. So I gave it 5!
I know how much Animals is loved on this forum, but it always seems like three steps back compared to the strides forward of this album.
I love this album for many reason's I feel the song Welcome To The Machine about Hollywood and being any kind of star in the Lime Light same with Have A Cigar. Wish You Were the song is a very touching song about Syd but it could be about anyone who has lost a loved one. Same with Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
Wish You Were Here was the third entrant into my Floydian collection
schoolchums assured me if I dug Dark Side, then this one was their masterpiece, and they werent wrong
I bought it on a summer roadtrip with my mum when I was about 15 and spent days looking at the cover in the car, hundreds of miles from my record player, wondering what this could possibly sound like, with all the white space, and the burning business man and the faceless dude in the desert dressed like something from a Rene Magritte painting (I already knew who Magritte was at this point you see, being an artclass geek)
this is the one I usually name as my favourite, although when I intellectualise it I conclude Dark Side must be better because its more cohesive ... but I really like listening to this one more, especially when Im in the right mood, a bit exhausted and lonely and nostalgic, then all sweeping instumentals at the beginning and the reprise at the end can really take me places
and I can relate to the clearly stated themes of selling out and losing important relationships more than I can the vaguely defined concept of the previous album
very favourite part is Shine On Pt VI, the long slow build up to the steel guitar solo is one of the most tensionrasing moments in their catalog, and that solo does a lot of wild peaking and twisting around ... it was years before I figured out what that weird sounding instrument was though, it sure doesnt sound like any Hank Williams toon
I think the rearranged version Gilmour did in his Meltdown video is the best live version
Roger needs to sing it though, the song requires his ragged hounddawg howl to convey the desperation, Dave cannot do the vocal justice
folks a few pages earlier expressed disappointment they got an outsider to sing Have A Cigar
I think its brilliant, someone who's not even in the band sings the line "which one's Pink?"
the album cover shows the faceless dude, their own pictures are nowhere to be found, I dont think their names are even given, theyd already sent cardboard cutouts in their place to a press conference for their previous album, and would open their 1980 concerts with a Surrogate Band
having someone else completely sing a song about their own corporate sellout was a perfectly conceived prank, especially considering the song gets lots of radio play and complete newbensteins are assuming the person singing must be someone named Pink
I fell flat on heel and ass, when this album hit the streets.
Not knowing that it was dedicated to Syd till long after, it was just another peak of PF on their graph. And when reading the background of the theme, I just had another eye (ear-)opener - and the album revealed a new aspect.
Simply can't put a finger on it now (I have become comfortably...)
It's so well written, well played and well produced, that you can't hesitate to say "Did he give it five stars or only four? ... in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself!"
No, I'll give it 5/5 'cause it's DSotM and beyond...
Only thing I dislike about my album, is the fact that I threw away the black plasticcover!
If I could, I would kick my teeth out for lesser!
P.s.: Am I the only illiterate, to get stuck in all these abbreviations... SOYCD, WTTM, TBH, and the likes?
Okay, I can decode it, but it sometimes takes a while to do so and then I've forgotten why I was looking for the title in question, ha ha...
Last edited by Meandthem on Sat Aug 13, 2011 5:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
Excellent album! Gets a 5 from me. Conceptually, it's much tighter than Dark Side to the point where I think there's an actual narrative going on, with the Syd Barrett aspect of the album being introduced first, followed by the attacks on the music industry and tying those two ideas back altogether. While I will say that SOYCD and the title tracks are both great, my favorite song on there is "Welcome to the Machine", from the overlapping hivemind vocals to the synth. I always get goosebumps from the audio at the end. It's an amazing album through and through and an appropriate successor to their biggest hit.
