Pink Floyd

I just listened to Pink Floyd's The Wall for the first time in a long time. In contrast, I listen to their Dark Side of the Moon, Animals, and Wish You Were Here more often. And now I think I know why.

The Wall is brilliant on the whole, but in order to tell the whole story, it has to end up containing more filler. Some of the songs are not really songs but just "stage business," as it were. (Actually, The Who's Tommy suffers from the same problem.) The other three Floyd albums I mentioned above are all pretty much filler-free: every track is a great piece of music in its own right, and not just part of the storyline.

Miles on his favorite bands

While we were on vacation in the U.S., Miles told someone about his favorite bands: The Who for something violent, XTC for something cool, and Phish for something beautiful.

On Buddy Holly's lyrics

Ben Zimmer does some nice things with Buddy Holly's lyrics here and here. I especially like how he connects "Not Fade Away" to the stuttering "Why don't you all f-f-f-fade away?" in "My Generation."

From Underture to Aerial Boundaries

Miles has been getting into The Who, which is okay by me. He especially likes "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Baba O'Reilly" from Who's Next, as well as "Overture" and "Pinball Wizard" from Tommy. My favorite bits of Tommy are "Sparks" and "Underture."

So I remember watching Michael Hedges play "Underture" at the Varsity in Palo Alto back in the eighties. He described how he used to sit on his back porch listening to Tommy, which is a rock opera, and how he thought that was very cool, a rock opera, and that operas have overtures, which Tommy does, too, but that Tommy has an "Underture," which he thought was very cool. Then he leapt across the stage and began "Underture" with a big, swinging power chord that would have made Pete Townshend proud.

Remembering all this, I checked whether there's a video of Michael playing "Underture" on youtube. No luck. So here's "Aerial Boundaries" instead, making me all nostalgic for all those times I had the joy and privilege of hearing Michael play, back at the Varsity in Palo Alto.