reverse e n t r o p y

Pink Floyd cover.  Maybe I am a singer again.  

I have this strange tendency when I record covers to not listen to the song beforehand, so I invariably forget parts; the positive side of that is that any cover I do has a unique quality.  Why do a cover just to sound exactly like the original version?  The goal should be to “uncover” (pun intended) emotional nuances not fully realized in the original.  Sometimes it’s just accidental, though.  In this case I realized after finishing the basic track that there was an additional verse not included in the album lyrics, so I had to scrap any thought of trying to reproduce the bridge solo, unless I wanted to scrap a few hours of work.  A song can only be so long anyway!

Pink Floyd has been one of the more influential bands in my life.  I remember hearing the songs from The Wall on the radio (back in my day, whippersnappers, we had radios!) when they were first released; I was about nine years old.  I was amazed by how eccentric yet melodic and catchy the compositions were.  The lyrics probably made me want to be a poet or something like that.  The production, although maybe leaning too far toward the disco-y on songs like “Run Like Hell,” still holds up.  It’s transcendent music, probably because it is so deeply personal.

After becoming a voracious fan who would even buy their early “difficult listening” psychedelic albums (cf. Ummagumma), I went to see Pink Floyd (sans Roger Waters) at a huge stadium in Philadelphia for the A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour.  Despite the lasers and the giant pig balloon, it was kind of a snoozer, since it’s the sort of music that fits better with lava lamps and introspection than an outdoor public spectacle.  Without Waters there wasn’t much of an edge, either.  He was, after all, the main songwriter and shriekmaker of the band.  I think it was the first time I drank a whole beer (at age 16).  It rained a bit, and this goofy dude in front of us wore a poncho made out of a lawn and leaf bag and danced non-stop to all the songs.  In irritation, my friend and I asked him why (since PF isn’t exactly a dance band), and he said, “It’s Floyd!!!”  

Roger Waters’s solo Radio KAOS show, which I saw a few months later, was much more energetic, creative, and exciting…and danceable, for those inclined to get slightly jiggy with their Prog Rock fossils.