The Watery Side of the Pink

Folks, the blog has been up and running for more than a year now, but with only 38 posts to show for it. I was going to post something earlier this week, and I started writing stuff, but then I had heaps of work to do this past week, and my social life has suddenly become rather active, what with a number of parties at my place (though with the same people...not that I'm complaining), that I haven't got round to completing these posts. I will do that soon.

But before this blog completely rots away with neglect, I need to post something quick. So I've stolen 15 minutes from work to type this post.

Roger Waters is playing in Australia in February. I was in Bangalore during his concert, but I didn't go, choosing instead to go pub-hopping and drink copious quantities of beer. I can't remember why I did that. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time. This time around, I'm making sure I see the concert. Already bought my tickets.

Penny Lane and I were doing some severe drunken bonding last Friday at her place, and we put a few LPs on the record player and gave them a whirl. One of them was 'The Dark Side of the Moon'. It's been ages since I heard 'Dark Side', let alone on LP. Having consumed sufficient quantities of alcohol, it was a trulyloulysuperduper experience. We also had the usual arguments of how Waters was Pink Floyd and how it all sucked without him. Penny was for Waters and I was trying to get her to see how much Gilmour and the other two chaps contributed to the songs. This went nowhere, and in the end we gave it up.

I used to own my very own LP of the album back in the day. 10th grade I think it was. Floyd still remain one of my all-time favourite bands, thanks in part to Waters' brilliant lyrics and concepts and to Gilmour's world-famous guitar style and tone. While 'The Wall' is my favourite album of theirs, 'Dark Side' comes a close second. Oddly enough, it's because of a very cheesy reason, apart from the fact that the songs are awesome. When the last song - Eclipse - comes to a close and during the fading heartbeats at the end of the album, you hear a mans' voice saying, "There is no dark side of the moon really...matter of fact it's all dark!"

Makes me smile everytime I listen to it.

This is the voice of Gerry Driscoll, who was the doorman of Abbey Road Studios at the time. Incidentally, the manic laughter on 'Brain Damage' is by Peter Watts, Floyd's exec road manager at the time. He is also the father of Naomi Watts, world-famous Hollywood actress.

Another interesting bit of trivia, the name Pink Floyd is derived from the names of Syd Barrett's cats, Pink and Floyd, who in turn were named after two blues musicians from Georgia, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

And with that, the blog lives...