Pink Floyd

April 17, 2001 10:21 PM

Pink Floyd to release a "Best of" collection, scheduled for November this year. November can't come soon enough.
posted by 120degrees (17 comments total)

No disrespect to Floyd (loved some of their middle-catalog stuff) but somehow this doesn't seem to make the "MeFi worthy" category to me. Perhaps it's because it's not universal enough? (i.e. you have to have an opinion on Floyd to care to post.)
posted by gen at 10:30 PM on April 17, 2001

"MeFi worthy", what a bunch of malarkey. Somehow this is worse than the toilet post?
posted by jessie at 10:40 PM on April 17, 2001

That one best of, sorry dont remember the title, always rubs me the wrong way. So much of their stuff is conceptual and best listened to album by album. The collection of singles is a lot like a bad college radio show by a PF obsessed DJ.

You're better off taking the money you expect to spend on this and buying an album you don't already own.
posted by skallas at 10:40 PM on April 17, 2001

I would never get so excited about a 'best of' album. Its all stuff you've heard before anyway.
posted by howa2396 at 10:44 PM on April 17, 2001

If any band would suffer due to a "Best of" album, it would be Pink Floyd. It was all about the album for Pink Floyd. The flow of "The Wall" or "Dark Side of the Moon" was incredible, and a best of would not do it justice. It's like making a "Best of" Sgt. Pepper.
posted by jeanhank at 10:58 PM on April 17, 2001

skallas, i believe you're refering to A Collection of Great Dance Songs [note: the reason for linking to amazon is for the discussion in the reviews section re: the title of the album being a joke, conveying the band's sneering attitude towards compilation albums - a rather funny coincidence, in light of this announcement].

as i recall, owning that album in college and claiming to "really be into" floyd was like owning Legend and claiming to "really be into bob marley," at least by music snobs.


far as i'm concerned, if i doesn't have both parts of "shine on you crazy diamond," it aint a best-of.
posted by gangcandy at 11:53 PM on April 17, 2001

Plus, they already had a Greatest Hits album in the form of A Collection of Great Dance Songs.
posted by waxpancake at 11:54 PM on April 17, 2001

Whoops, beat me to it. (Same Amazon link, too.)
posted by waxpancake at 11:54 PM on April 17, 2001

That collection doesn't have anything on it from any of the non-Waters albums. Of course, some may consider that a feature, but I kinda liked several songs from The Division Bell.
posted by kindall at 1:02 AM on April 18, 2001

This will actually be their fourth "greatest hits" compilation -- Relics and Works cover the stuff Columbia didn't have the rights to when they put together the aforementioned Great Dance Songs. Plus the box set Shine On makes five.
posted by jjg at 1:02 AM on April 18, 2001

Those waiting for the Floyd Best of thing are like moths to a flame. It works like this: before the late 19th century there wasn't an easy way to capture and store entertainment. Thanks to Edison and a handful of others, we can now carry our personal best ofs for the past 130 years of history via vinyl, eight-track, cassette, CD, mp3, DVD, VHS, betamax, laserdisc or any number of other ways. In fact we don't have to carry anything. The very air itself is constantly filled with "the best of the sixties seventies and eighties."

I bet that's the real cause of cancer too. Radio waves bombarding us nonstop all our lives. But only when it's carrying Madonna, Garth Brooks, Bruce Springsteen or Little Richard. Chuck Berry, Enya, David Bowie, Kate Bush and BB King vibrate into people and cells quietly rejuvenate to stave off death. j\k

We are recycling, or perhaps even regurgitating, creativity and inspiration of past generations instead of constantly going for something completely different. Rather than moving forward, our culture is swallowing itself. Cyclically returning to Disco or Swing or Punk when we should be creating something entirely new. This is like a snake trying to crawl back into its shedding skin, or a butterfly climbing back into its cocoon. Is Prince really revolutionary? Arguably no. Brittney Spears? Definitely not. Locally in your area I bet there's somebody proving that trees falling in forests do make sound but if nodody's listening what's it matter? In my neck of the woods, these guys are really on to something. That's just one example, but sometimes even locally, people are just reinventing the wheel.

Pink Floyd was great. Freddie Mercury was great. Janis Joplin was great. And y'know? That's great. But the story about Soddom and Gomorrah where Lot's Wife looked back behind her and turned into a pillar of salt: that story was great too. But I don't wanna see it turned into a premise for a weekly sitcom, y'know whut ah'm sayin'? Boston suggested we Don't Look Back and that's the best advice recorded since 1877. Commercial interests which own this stuff want to repackage the old and present it as new, and we consumers buy into it like gullible lemmings.

It's gotta stop.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:19 AM on April 18, 2001

yeah man, right on!
posted by insular at 2:27 AM on April 18, 2001

The sneery A Collection Of Great Dance Songs has always infuriated me - I mean, heaven forbid that anyone would want a compilation of songs you could dance to, rather than albums full of, say, neurotic Rog writing bad poems about his childhood.

As skallas says, save your money and buy an album you don't already own. I find it impossible to believe anyone involved needs the money, except possibly poor old Syd Barrett, and you could always go and buy his recent best-of instead.
posted by freakytrigger at 2:36 AM on April 18, 2001

"I find it impossible to believe anyone involved needs the money"
I don't know, these guys seem like poor money managers to me. I think the bottom line here is that no one is buying Pink Floyd music for commercials so they had to find some way to squeeze some blood from the old catalog.
Hey, I know, a "best of" album!
I used to love these guys, but the Final Cut was crap and everything after it was easily ignored. If they're too bored, tired, jaded, or washed-up to write some new songs and make some new music (as per Zach's inspired suggestion above) perhaps they should find some other way to turn a buck that doesn't convert their past achievements into a cheap commodity.
Musicians make music. Business men make money
[Cue opening bass line from "Money": Doop dee do-doop. Doo doop doop deee-doop.]
posted by Outlawyr at 3:46 AM on April 18, 2001

If it doesnt include the 22 minute long "Echoes" from Meddle, it's not a greatest hits album as well.

But, maybe this will spawn another tour.
posted by Espoo2 at 10:47 AM on April 18, 2001

pink floyd (well, the current bloated iteration anyway -- the syd stuff was ok) just need to shuffle off to laser town and leave me alone. and they can take all that other boomer bullshit with them.
posted by maura at 12:37 PM on April 18, 2001

best of? what will they do with the other 600 MB of space on the CD?
posted by machaus at 1:28 PM on April 18, 2001