Scot and Jeff talk to Anthony Fisher about Pink Floyd.
Introducing the Band
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Anthony Fisher, writer/reporter for The Week, Daily Beast and others, producer of The Fifth Column podcast, and Writer/Director of the award-winning indie feature film “Sidewalk Traffic” — a comedy drama about new fatherhood, depression, and holding on to your dreams and letting go of your baggage. Available on iTunes, Amazon, Youtube, Google Play, and most major VOD platforms. Follow him on Twitter at @anthonyLfisher and read his work here.
Anthony’s Musical Pick: Pink Floyd
Gravity bongs at the ready — it’s time to travel out into interstellar space, as Political Beats finally covers one of the true big beasts of classic rock, Pink Floyd. Anthony’s introduction to the band hits a lot of the same notes that most younger fans will recognize: hearing “Comfortably Numb” as a kid, with his mom saying “ugh this music is boring” as he sits there listening to Dave Gilmour soloing, transfixed. Jeff tells his amusingly quotidian “intro to Floyd” story, which could alternately be titled “the first time Jeff got high.” (Yes, it too involves “Comfortably Numb.”) Jeff then goes on to discuss how, as his musical tastes developed (and his preference for avant-garde wackiness grew), he found himself hanging on to Floyd’s earlier, ropier, more improvisational and instrumental years over their later commercial mega-hits.
KEY TRACK: “Comfortably Numb (live August 1988)” (Delicate Sound Of Thunder, 1988)
From Blues-Rock (?!) to Space-Rock: the Syd Barrett Era, 1965-1968
Fans know this already, but the rest of you may not: Pink Floyd, the sine qua non space-rock/psychedelic/hyper-stylized programmatic group of the classic-rock era, began life as a BLUES band. And they were terrible! Just truly, goofy, silly-sounding stuff. Floyd really only found their voice with the emergence of doomed frontman Syd Barrett’s songwriting voice, a highly psychedelicized British pastoral style supplemented by the band’s predilection for lengthy live instrumental freakout jams. The gang is actually surprisingly ambivalent about the Barrett era of Floyd, despite the fervor of its cult fans: neither Scot nor Jeff have much time for the tweeness of Barrett’s songs about gnomes, the I-Ching, and currant buns, but everyone enjoys the bonkers insanity of “Bike” and Anthony points out that “Astronomy Domine” is one of the most muscular, threatening psychedelic masterpieces of an era rife with them. Jeff points out that he owns 27 separate performances of “Interstellar Overdrive” alone, by way of arguing that this is the true masterpiece from Floyd’s debut LP The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967), while Scot and Anthony also single out “Lucifer Sam,” a song about a housecat that is way better than that description might make you think it is.
During this part of the show, Jeff works an interstitial conversation in about Pink Floyd’s five early non-album singles, all of which he considers top-shelf. “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play” are already well-loved (and well-known) enough as Syd Barrett tunes to need no introduction or defense, but Jeff is at great pains to point out that “It Would Be So Nice” and “Point Me At The Sky” are, if anything, even better, and inexplicably underrated by both band and fans alike. Jeff also points out how pivotal Rick Wright was to Floyd at this point in their career; Roger Waters was actually an afterthought in 1967-68, and it was Wright who carried the most singing, performing, and songwriting weight behind Barrett until 1969. People, go listen to the wistful sadness of the B-side “Paintbox.”
The discussion of Wright carries the gang into A Saucerful Of Secrets (1968), where all agree that his “Remember A Day” is a highlight (indeed, probably the best song on the record). Jeff rates Saucerful significantly higher than either Anthony or Scot do, but then he has an avowed preference for ho