Why I Love....

Just a nice thread idea on wakinglimb which inspired me to gush over Wish you were here.


Wish You Were Here





Squeezed between Pink Floyd's two tens of million selling and universally praised behemoths, 1973's Dark side of the moon and 1979's The Wall. Wish you were here is often overlooked by all but the most committed Floyd fans. Only more recognisable than Pink Floyd’s other overlooked classic from their 70’s heyday, Animals, thanks to the instantly recognisable title track Wish You Were Here.

As Bob said with Purple Rain it is probably not my favourite Pink Floyd album, that honour changes from week to week between the ‘big four’ (Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall). But as with Purple Rain sums up everything that is great about Prince, Wish You Were Here sums up everything that is great about Pink Floyd who are often, much like Prince, dizzyingly diverse in their sound.

From their earlier psychedelic drug induced ‘Barret era’ sound stretching from 1965 to 1971 with the release of Meddle. To their classic Prog Rock sound fusing Water’s stunning lyricism and Gilmour’s and Wright’s keen ear for a tune. And then the closing era of the ‘true’ Pink Floyd sound (Gilmour’s subsequent slaughter of the Pink Floyd name with Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell just doesn’t count. ) With Water’s ego leading the band to eventually become a vehicle for Water’s political critiques, first evident in Animals and finally overbearingly present in The Final Cut. It can be hard to know where to start.

Wish You Were Here, lying around about the middle of their discography draws everything from its surrounding albums. Everything that had made them great and everything that would continue to make them so. From the powerful instrumental and lyrical minimalism of Shine on you crazy Diamond Pt 1 - 5, which sets the theme for the rest of the album which as the title suggests is a theme of absence and lost relationships on a general wide reaching level and a very touchingly personal one with this I particular acting as an ode to the bands former leader Syd Barret


Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

Arguably some of Water’s best lyrics interlaced with some of Gilmours most emotional almost ‘vocal’ guitar playing which seems at times to mournfully reply to the questioning lyrics.

Parts 6- 9 carries the same message and neatly closes the album, Wish you were here carries the same theme and needs little description but its common Verse - Chorus layout squeezed into a relatively short (For Floyd anyway) running time of 5:40 minutes, which is a song structure that would become used more as the band became less experimental in its later years. it’s a heartfelt anthem that despite its massively airplay does not grow old. This and Comfortably Numb are both fine contributions to the karaoke industry but still maintain a strong message.

Have a Cigar and Welcome to the Machine also share a relatively normal ‘later’ Floyd song structure but are similarly brilliant, more scathing and satirical of the music industry which had now welcomed the band with open arms but still maintaining the theme of loss in a different sense.

Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar. you’re gonna go far, fly high,
You’re never gonna die, you’re gonna make it if you try they’re gonna love you.
Well Ive always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think. oh by the way,
Which ones pink?


I like to think of Wish You Were Here as the litmus paper for Pink Floyd, it draws from such a wide range of the bands sound that it is impossible to dislike completely, I mean the title track is worth the admission alone.

Harry Potter and the Midnight Launch

Despite not being particularly enamoured with the books, I stopped reading them with Goblet of Fire a good 4-5 years ago, and not actually having seen any of the movies. I still counted down the hours until the books global launch at 12:01 BST. I’ve always been a sucker for good hype, even for products that I didn’t previously want and definitely didn’t need, the hype always sucked me in.

The hype from my other great love, games, also achieves the same effect. There is rarely a console launch that goes by that doesn’t draw the same feelings of jealously and greed from me. I didn’t want the PS3, it was overpriced and had virtually no titles that interested me and it still doesn’t months after its release, however I still watched the queues on the news and I mentally counted down to midnight and visualised those shiny, happy people holding the console in their arms and then begun speculating a few hours later what fun people were having with it, without me.

Even more ridiculously I felt the same feelings with the launch of the PSP, despite giving up on handheld gaming with the Nintendo SP after Pokemon released me from its addictive grip making the idea of handheld gaming more pointless than ever. But still, those lucky people playing Spiderman 2 well into the night taunted me relentlessly.

I wasn’t even just indifferent to Harry Potter. I was against it, it annoyed me. It was over hyped for as far as I could see no good reason. Even a few Potter fanatics would agree the writing is pretty average. So the success of the book and the subsequent movies made me even more certain that I would never read a Harry Potter book again.

So why at 11.57pm British Summer Time did I go out of my way to watch the release of book and observe the first lucky few in queue outside Waterstones receive their copies of JK Rowlings long anticipated book with a ridiculous smile on my face (And awoke this morning to find the 7th book staring me in the face on my bedside cabinet)? Partly the unrelentless hype all over the internet, Partly a simple piece of journalism from BBC arts correspondent David Sillito reminded be that maybe Harry Potter wasn’t all that bad.

There's between 1,000 and 1,500 people here. The queue stretches all the way around Waterstone's, which is Europe's largest bookshop, then spills out onto the street and continues as far as the eye can see.

And I think I've worked out why...

JK Rowling published the first Harry Potter book 10 years ago, when the core audience was about eight or nine years old.

Half of these kids are now 18, and they've just finished their A-level exams.
It's like the ultimate rite of passage. This is the end of childhood for thousands of people.

They're graduating with Harry.


“I’m not graduating with Harry!” I exclaimed disappointed, feeling more left out of a launch than ever.

My resistance to the craze softened and my traditional pessimism faded. I had enjoyed the first four books, I had finished them, that’s an achievement In itself as I traditionally leave most books I purchase half read.

Whether you like them or not its hard to deny the series is a brilliant page turner, crafted inside a rich fascinating world populated with similarly rich characters. Yea her writing may not be up to much at times and the attention the series has received may not be entirely deserved but then it rarely is.

So the hype has gotten me again, well the hype and a bit of good journalism. I shall be rereading the series over this summer, having spoilt the ending of the 7th book myself before the release It may seem a little pointless, but I deserve giving the series a second chance, enjoying the journey along the way.

And of course. I don’t want to feel left out.

I just need the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth books to make a go of it now.

Planet Earth - Prince

Prince Rodger Nelson the artist formerly know as Prince but now formally know as Prince is back

The music is unpredictable as the man himself ranging from the funk rock of the lead single Guitar, the r’n’b ballad of Future Baby Mama and the fusion of rap and soul in Mr Goodnight.

Also unpredictable is the quality of the tracks themselves, which range from the great to the cringe worthy. The unashamedly funky Chelsea Rodgers with its brilliant baseline providing the foundations for Prince to wax lyrical about arguably his favourite subject, women, with triumphant sounding trumpets thrown into the mix heralding the arrival of another quality Prince track.

Guitar also stands out, comparisons have been made with early U2 but I haven’t heard any early U2 so I couldn’t possibly comment. All I hear is a quality track and a obvious choice for the albums lead single, the melody is simple and immediate unlike most singles it doesn’t get old, no doubt down to the two excellent solos that grace the track and make it clear that Prince does indeed love his guitar and remains us what a underrated guitarist he is.

However the rest of the album does not fair as well, the remainder of the album drifts apathetically between mediocre and cringe worthy, as Prince indulges in some stripped down ballads which only serve to remind you how weak he is lyrically without any funky bass lines or guitar riffs to hide behind.

From Prince hopping on the same eco warrior bandwagon that fellow 58’ babies Madonna and Michael Jackson have long been members of with his Earth Songesque song to save the world Earth, title track Planet Earth. 50 years from now what will they say about us here?
Did we care for the water and the fragile atmosphere? Like Earth Song its come across as quite corny and like Madonna asking Wembley Stadium to “Jump if you want to save the planet” slightly condescending and insincere, nice bit of guitar at the end though..which is nice.

All in All it is another ‘ok’ Prince album, he has definitely recovered from his near suicidal dip in the 90’s and continues to maintain a respectable form since his comeback with Musicology. Had it not been for the masterstroke or ‘sell-out’ depending on how you look at it of taking a lump sum from the Daily Mail to give away this album for free this album would have slipped into the bottom half of the charts with little buzz or interest. The mismatch between Princes music and the profile of the Daily Mail raised a few eyebrows but this album for the most part is quite average easy listening, something that you could imagine the 50 something readership of the Mail enjoying.

Perhaps Prince is feeling his age.

The future of the music industry

All the fuss being made lately over Prince giving away his latest album, Planet Earth, free as a covermount with the Daily Mail of all papers, has made me wonder on the future of the music industry imparticular recorded music. A spokesman for Prince gave reasons for his move on his site...

"Prince feels that charts are just music industry constructions and have little or no relevance to fans or even artists today."

Quite a big statement so will this be the opening salvo in a new battle beteewn 'true' artists and the established record labels? A free music revolution if you will.

It's well known that acts get very little income for themselves from album and single sales, the real money is earned, for the artist at least, through touring and record deals themselves. It is of course not the first time Prince has given away albums for free, he gave away his 2004 release Musicology free at live shows for his lucky fans. Radiohead also famously considered giving away Kid A, when the album was leaked on to Napster weeks before its official release, Thom Yorke commented in an interview with Time magazine. "it encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do."

So...can we expect to see artists giving away their latest album on their offical websites in order to gain as much exposure as possible? Well no not really. The 'big four' and all record labels alike won't have to lose any sleep over some sort of free music revolution lead by artists such as Prince. Big labels are still required for distribution and putting the spotlight on artists, only a few veterans with an already established fanbase could reasonably expect to tell their record label what they intend to do with their latest album. Starbucks aren't going to tell Paul Macartney where to stick it if he decides to give away his next album for free, he is too much of a asset to their brand. The same is true at the other end of the specturm, tiny unknown bands are already giving away their music for free at gigs and on the internet and have been doing for probably decades now that will never change.

It is the staple 'average' reputation bands that would realistically have to demand change for the status quo to change in favour of the artist, but groups like Kasabian, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire and Editors can't propose to give away their latest album with the Daily Mail or they would be out of a job well at least find themselves a few rungs down the ladder with a smaller label. Artists such as these need their music to provide a living unlike unknown bands they dont have a normal 9 to 5 job to fall back on, (And they probably wouldnt want one anymore) unlike Prince/Madonna/The Rolling Stones they haven't accumilated enough money to make money on real estate or have enough reknown to release their own brand of cooking sauces.

So basically in conclusion, nothing will change. Not for the time being at least, the internet has and will continue to shift the power in the recording industry away from the established labels and towards up and coming artists. That is already evident from the number of unmanufactured acts that have rose to prominence over the past few years.

With it being cheaper and cheaper to record music to a decent standard in your bedroom, upload it to your bands myspace and use your mates CD burner to produce a few hundred albums, on some cheap discs you got down Tescos, It has never been a better time to be a new artist.

Music should always be an artform and form of entertainment first but it is unreasonable to expect established acts to sacrifice themselves for this cause, they also need to make a living from their trade. Its unreasonable to expect these artists to 'stick it to the man!', martyr themselves for creative freedom and give away their music for free. Anyone suggesting this makes them sell outs obviously has a very unrealistic view of how music works nowdays. Maybe we will look back on Prince's actions as the start of the free music revolution but more likely we'll look back and see it as another action in giving us cheaper more accessible music.

Which isnt bad is it?