Animals re-issue including 5.1 mix coming

[theaussiefloydian]

And with the exception of "Learning To Fly" and "One Slip," you can throw AMLOR into the garbage and the world is a better place for it.

Half of "The Division Bell" can go right in there with it.

I must confess I do not understand where this opinion comes from. Of course everything is subjective, but I've never gotten anything but enjoyment from those two albums and Division Bell sits comfortably in my top 5 Floyd albums and was one of the reasons I expanded my listening of the band outside Dark Side and Wish You Were Here.

"High Hopes" is, in my view, the worst piece of bilge Gilmour ever came up with.

And this is even more puzzling. I've never seen this song as anything but pretty solid to really good. I could grant you that it might be one of Floyd's cheesier efforts (mostly in the lyrics department), but everything else is pretty good to me.

Alan Parsons is crap (very well recorded crap)

This is a line I can more understand, but I've always quite liked Alan Parsons Project. I Robot, The Turn of a Friendly Kind and Eye in the Sky aren't my favourite albums, but they very comfortably sit in a category I think of as "I just think they're kinda neat".

[mosespa]

I just find "High Hopes" (and the other stuff I've listed) incredibly dull, boring, monotonous, etc. etc. etc.

I never even owned a copy of "The Division Bell" until 1998 when a neighbor gave me his copy (which he found boring) when he found out I was a Pink Floyd fan...and I was simply too kind to refuse it.

[Kerry King]

Alan Parsons is crap (very well recorded crap)

This is a line I can more understand, but I've always quite liked Alan Parsons Project. I Robot, The Turn of a Friendly Kind and Eye in the Sky aren't my favourite albums, but they very comfortably sit in a category I think of as "I just think they're kinda neat".

Again, I'm being overly harsh in response to other critics. I don't think it's crap. I just don't like it.

Now, about that Animlas 5.1...
actually, my favorite Gilmour intervals (melodic) take place on The Wall. In his solo on Mother.

[theaussiefloydian]

Now, about that Animlas 5.1...

Blimey, we're so off track I half forgot what we were talking about in the first place.
Ultimately however I'm not overly excited for the 5.1 aspect, as I do not have the equipment with which to enjoy it. However the fact that it will allegedly come with a new stereo mix is of far more curiosity to me.

[DarkSideFreak]

Alan Parsons is crap (very well recorded crap), so... yes, ripping him off is crap. But he already "ripped off" pf first. Besides, to exist is to plagiarize.

"The Raven" (which "High Hopes" rips off) was written by Eric Woolfson before he even met Parsons. The song is not related to Pink Floyd at all.

High Hopes is better than ANYTHING Roger has written since The Wall. Amused to Death was a decent attempt but I think like with pros and cons with Clapton it was the other musicians that made some of the songs as good as they turned out.

Right...because the guest musicians totally alter a melody and chord progression of a song.

They wrote "The Ballad of Bill Hubbard". Who knows how much Leonard interfered with the writing of the other songs? We all know Roger likes to claim credit for everything.

[Kerry King]

Alan Parsons is crap (very well recorded crap), so... yes, ripping him off is crap. But he already "ripped off" pf first. Besides, to exist is to plagiarize.

"The Raven" (which "High Hopes" rips off) was written by Eric Woolfson before he even met Parsons. The song is not related to Pink Floyd at all.

The production is influenced by Pink Floyd.

The intro track on Division Bell owes a lot to the Ballad Of Bill Hubbard.

[DarkSideFreak]

"The Raven" (which "High Hopes" rips off) was written by Eric Woolfson before he even met Parsons. The song is not related to Pink Floyd at all.

The production is influenced by Pink Floyd.

Not really though. And this was about the melody. Here's the original demo

[theaussiefloydian]

The intro track on Division Bell owes a lot to the Ballad Of Bill Hubbard.

I have to admit I don't see a lot of similarity. They are both more ambient opening tracks, granted, but I think the reason they're both like that is Pink Floyd had a habit of doing that in general anyway ("Speak to Me", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Part I", "Cirrus Minor").

[Kerry King]

The production is influenced by Pink Floyd.

Not really though. And this was about the melody. Here's the original demo

So you're saying that Parsons engineered one of the biggest hit albums of 1973 and beyond, then put out his own first single/album a couple of years later which was not at all influenced by the band he had so much success with? Okay. I admit that Tales Of Mystery is a much weaker album than DSOTM.

The intro track on Division Bell owes a lot to the Ballad Of Bill Hubbard.

I have to admit I don't see a lot of similarity. They are both more ambient opening tracks, granted, but I think the reason they're both like that is Pink Floyd had a habit of doing that in general anyway ("Speak to Me", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Part I", "Cirrus Minor").

High clean notes on the guitar, bending, slightly bluesy. Melodic. Ambient synth. Similar gentle percussion/drums. Come on, man.

Speak To Me is not melodic. Cirrus Minor is a whole other era. Shine On is probably a template for both of these tracks. Just like Have A Cigar is the template for What Do You Want From Me (Just listen to the first 8 bars).

[theaussiefloydian]

High clean notes on the guitar, bending, slightly bluesy. Melodic. Ambient synth. Similar gentle percussion/drums. Come on, man.

A not insignificant amount of Pink Floyd could also fit any of those descriptions. It's not alien to me that they would do similar things.
And moreover the atmosphere of the two tracks are completely different. If you said one was ripping off the other and they both had the dark, dour mood of "Bill Hubbard", I might agree you're onto something. But one is an introduction that serves no purpose but to be a backdrop. The other is a quiet jam to introduce the more organic jam approach of The Division Bell. They are significantly different.

Speak To Me is not melodic. Cirrus Minor is a whole other era. Shine On is probably a template for both of these tracks. Just like Have A Cigar is the template for What Do You Want From Me (Just listen to the first 8 bars).

The melody was far from the point. My point was Pink Floyd like more ambient intros so it wouldn't be much of a surprise that they'd continue to do that in future Pink Floyd albums and solo projects - and in fact they did. "Castellorizon" from On an Island. "When We Were Young" from Is This the Life We Really Want? They might be very different in some ways but they are quieter, almost ambient intros to an album. That was my main point.

[ZiggyZipgun]

They didn't have to listen to a Roger Waters album to hear Jeff Beck - even Rick pointed to "Where Were You" from 1989 as a direct influence on one of the Broken China tracks. Also..."Signs of Life"? Same structure, and dating back to Gilmour's home demos from the late '70s. And in a strange twist, Jeff Beck has acknowledged being strongly influenced by David Gilmour - he didn't break away from his heavier jazz/blues fusion and become known for more atmospheric playing until much later in his career, following well after both Knopfler and Gilmour.

[DarkSideFreak]

Not really though. And this was about the melody. Here's the original demo

So you're saying that Parsons engineered one of the biggest hit albums of 1973 and beyond, then put out his own first single/album a couple of years later which was not at all influenced by the band he had so much success with? Okay. I admit that Tales Of Mystery is a much weaker album than DSOTM.

I'm not saying that. Quit playing games with my words! Both things can be true at once. 1) Eric Woolfson wrote that melody (and large parts of the "Tales" album) before he even got involved with anybody from the PF circle, and his writing is stylistically quite different from anything that Roger, David or Rick would write. Woolfson had a background in musical theatre. Likewise, Andrew Powell's orchestral arrangements are among the most elaborate in all of pop music - at this point PF had only done AHM with a brass section and choir, and Ron Geesin's work on that was rather different from Powell's writing. 2) Of course Parsons used a lot of tricks he used with PF too, or learned from them. The reverse wah-wah in "Voyager" and several other tracks is just one example, the usage of delay another - and his compositions (mostly instrumentals like "A Dream Within a Dream" or "I Robot") often veer very close to PF. His arrangement would also give a song like the aforementioned "The Raven" more gravitas but still; it remains a fact that Woolfson wrote it ca. twenty years before "High Hopes".

[mosespa]

And thus the implication is that Gilmour ripped it off.

I've been saying that for decades.

[Kerry King]

I wasn't playing games with anyone's words! I said the production on Tales is influenced by Pink Floyd. Darkside Freak says not really. I disagree. We're all entitled to our opinions.

Woolfson didn't create his songs in a vacuum. He's not particularly original. I like High Hopes far more than The Raven. It's all recycled.

They didn't have to listen to a Roger Waters album to hear Jeff Beck - even Rick pointed to "Where Were You" from 1989 as a direct influence on one of the Broken China tracks. Also..."Signs of Life"? Same structure, and dating back to Gilmour's home demos from the late '70s. And in a strange twist, Jeff Beck has acknowledged being strongly influenced by David Gilmour - he didn't break away from his heavier jazz/blues fusion and become known for more atmospheric playing until much later in his career, following well after both Knopfler and Gilmour.

Irrelevant.

As for Bill Hubbard, I suppose Gilmour paid no attention to what Beck did on ATD? Gilmour is influenced by Beck, too. It's not a one way street. I think people just like to argue.

[DarkSideFreak]

I've now made a separate thread for this:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25634