Shine On You Crazy Diamond

My initiation to Pink Floyd was in 1971, the days when music could only be purchased on 12 inch ‘records,’  which are now called vinyl. I hear that ‘vinyl’ has made a bit of a comeback: go figure. In 1971 I was barely into my teenage years, trying to be cool, and managed to scrape together enough change to purchase a record. I walked down to the music store (I did a lot more walking in those days: it probably took me forty minutes to walk there). There was an album, Meddle (by …the progressive rock band Pink Floyd), displayed in a rack by the entrance. The cover looked cool (apparently it’s a representation of an ear underwater, gathering ‘ripples’ of sound), so I bought it, took it home, and listened to it in my bedroom (my parents couldn’t stand my musical taste, so I’d found a way to beg and borrow old stereo equipment; for example, a friend of my Dad’s gave me a set of woofers, tweeters and associated equipment, and I built speaker enclosures out of particle board: I wish I still had the speakers; they sounded fantastic). Man, I loved that album! Especially the song Echoes, a twenty-three minute opus that took up the entire side two of the record. I’d never heard anything like it. I backtracked through their catalogue and found many more songs that I enjoyed, but Meddle was the album that seemed the most cohesive and lyrical (although I could have done without the song Seamus, but nothing is perfect…).

My friends didn’t enjoy Meddle nearly as much as I did, but when The Dark Side of the Moon was released in 1973, almost everybody agreed that Pink Floyd was pretty darn cool. And I kept buying their albums, but stopped after The Wall.

The Wall was released in 1979 and many point to this album as Pink Floyd’s crowning achievement. It was a fine album, with some glimmers of genius (e.g.: Comfortably Numb), but it has always felt a little too over-produced to me, and I would rank The Dark Side of the Moon as the nadir of the band’s achievements; it was created at just the right time, and spoke to the soul of the youth of that moment. Still, it is another album — Wish You Were Here (1975) — that I think contains the best music that Pink Floyd ever created (and at least two band members — Richard Wright and David Gilmore — have named it as their favorite Floyd album). I dearly wanted to go to the Wish You Were Here concert  when it came to Vancouver, but I couldn’t afford the $10.75 ticket, which seemed a small fortune in those days.

Much of the content of Wish you Were Here was inspired by Syd Barrett, who’d had a mental breakdown and left the band in the late 60s. The album is also an outlet for the band’s criticism of the music business, particularly the songs Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar (my least favourite track on the album, especially after I heard a disco version on the radio late one night; many years ago, but the memory haunts me).

For me, the Floyd piece that has aged the best is Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a nine part composition that is split in half to bookend the other songs on Wish You Were Here (Parts I-V start the album, and Parts VI – IX end the album). Shine On was surely inspired by Syd Barrett, who even showed up one day in the recording studio; ironically, the band members didn’t recognize him at first; he had gained a lot of weight, and shaved his head and eyebrows. When he was finally recognized, his old friends had difficulty communicating with him and it was the last time any of them saw Syd.

Roger Keith ‘Syd‘ Barrett passed from this world in 2006

Shine On you Crazy Diamond is a hauntingly beautiful piece; some of the opening sounds were produced by rubbing wet fingers on the rims of wine glasses filled with differing levels of liquid; somehow this, together with the circumstances of the recording session with Sid Barrett, helps to create a meditative mood that pervades my being and remains long after the song is over.

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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 in the crossfire of childhood and stardom

Blown on the steel breeze.

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Come on you target for faraway laughter,

come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,

rode on the steel breeze.

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Come on you raver, you seer of visions,

come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

 

Lyrics by Roger Waters

 

The Rolling Stones; 50 years and counting

The Rolling Stones — the band’s name was inspired by a Muddy Waters’ song, Rollin’ Stone — consider July 12, 1962 as their first performance, which took place on the stage of the Marquee Club in London. At the time, the group was; Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, Dick Taylor, and Tony Chapman.

It was their music of the late 60s and early 70s that has a special place in my heart and memory; and, in particular, the three albums they created back-to-back-to-back that I think was the pinnacle of their artistic output: Beggars Banquet (1968), Let it Bleed (1969), and Sticky Fingers (1971). Their best music was wonderfully multilayered, unlike most rock.

I searched high and low for my absolute favourite Stone’s album, Let it Bleed, but could only find Sticky Fingers, an excellent album, but darker in tone, with songs like Sister Morphine and Dead Flowers.

The music of the Rolling Stones, along with rock bands such as Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin, and Little Feat, are inextricably tied to my past.

While my wife and I drove to Cosco and back for groceries, we listened to Sticky Fingers, reminiscing and reveling in the deep cuts that we haven’t heard in years. I had bittersweet flash-memories of High School and College, of some friends that didn’t make it, and others that took different paths. I sent silent prayers to all of them.

It’s odd to see clips of the Stones performing as old men; I’ll always see them in my mind’s eye as the young, revolutionary, bad-boys of rock.

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Rhythms

It was a gorgeous sunrise.

There were no smokers on the patio, so I took my coffee outside.

Two men lounged at the opposite side of the patio.

One of them was a large Asian, probably in his mid-thirties. He wore a light-grey dress-shirt, a thin black tie, black suit, black boots, and mirrored sunglasses. I decided he was Yakuza.

His companion was about my age, maybe a few years younger. Judging by his faint accent, he was originally from Eastern Europe. He was wearing tan jeans, a pale-yellow polo shirt, and slip-on loafers. No socks. His skin had the orange tinge of a tanning booth user. His hair was thinning and he tried to hide the fact; unfortunately, in the breeze, it accentuated the obvious: he assiduously raked the strands back into position with the fingers of his left hand. He was KGB.

They were having an interesting conversation; but, as they were at the other side of the patio, my eavesdropping was hindered. They were talking about music styles — jazz, classical, and rock — and how that related to the concept of positively charged ‘holes’ , instead of electrons, as a definition of current flow. Then they started discussing the ramifications of a deterministic universe.

Just when the discussion was getting heated, a Harley cruised into the parking lot. The biker was a massive man with tattooed biceps the size of my thighs. His Harley burbled and farted with an impulsive array of base-blasts. Not only couldn’t I hear the conversation over the bike’s blatting, but it was as if the Harley’s entrance was a signal to Yakuza and KGB; they got up, shook hands, and left in opposite directions. It all seemed so spontaneous. Or was it choreographed?

The biker stopped close to where I was sitting; my inner-organs resonated to the rhythm of the engine’s exhaust. I felt an odd anxiety, a compulsion to get up and walk away, but I was enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and forced myself to remain in the seat. Soon, however, the fumes from the Harley made me nauseous, so I stood up and started to walk home.

Within half a block I remembered that I’d wanted to buy something from the store beside the coffee shop. I stopped and turned around, but I couldn’t force myself to retrace my steps.

I walked to the park and sat on a bench. There was a young man sitting on the grass, picking at the nylon strings of his guitar. The breeze blew faint notes to me and I recognized the song; a Pat Metheny melody that often recurs in his music.

I walked over and dropped a toonie into the guitarist’s hat; a pale-grey fedora, which sat upside down beside him. There were a few other coins inside, and an old, wrinkled five dollar bill.

“Thanks, man,” the guitarist said, and continued to play. It was then that I realized he wasn’t playing Metheny; it was a Beatles tune (more precisely, I suppose, a Lennon/McCartney composition): perhaps he’d changed songs while I’d walked over.

I nodded to the guitarist and moved over to sit on a smooth boulder by the water. I could still hear snippets of the guitar, and I could also hear the pleasant, muted music of children playing on the other side of the field. The children’s squeals and laughter ebbed and flowed with the rising and falling of the wind through the leaves of the trees.

The breeze caressed me with the pungence of Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius); obnoxious to many, but an aroma I love.

The anxiety that had followed me from the coffee shop dissolved.

 

Art Blakey

Art Blakey began his musical career at church, where he learned to play the piano.

In his early teens he was the pianist in his jazz band until he was persuaded (purportedly at gun point by the owner of the club where they were playing)  to move from piano to drums (a young Erroll Garner — another jazz giant — took Blakey’s spot at the piano), thus  launching one of the great careers of jazz. And Blakey — in a similar manner to Miles Davis — was instrumental in further launching the careers of many young jazz stars.

In 1948, Blakey was influenced by the polyrhythmic drumming techniques he was introduced to while visiting western Africa, and these influences helped pave Blakey’s path from a bebop to a hard bop drumming style.

In 1954, Blakey, along with pianist Horace Silver, formed the first Jazz Messengers quintet (with Lou Donaldson (alto), Clifford Brown (trumpet), and Curley Russell (base)). It was The Jazz Messenger groups that cemented Blakey’s legendary status in the history of jazz.  Horace Silver left the group in 1956 and The Jazz Messengers were fully under Blakey’s control (for an example of Horace Silver’s oeuvre see, in particular, Song for my Father (1964), the inspiration for Steely Dan’s Rikki Don’t Lose that Number — specifically the base-line).

For me, the highlight of Blakey and The Jazz Messengers came in 1958 with Moanin’, one of my favorite songs. There are other gems on the Moanin’ album (including the lyrical Along Came Betty, and The Drum Thunder Suite, which shows off Blakey’s power and versatility), but Moanin’ is the song that blows me away: it begins calmly and the rhythm roils comfortably, but when Lee Morgan’s solo begins, it transports me to a higher reality. I could listen to the song over and over; and I’m not the only admirer, it’s a hard bop classic.

Art Blakey passed from this world in 1990, but his soulful, powerful drumming — infused with the funky-blues rhythm that helped formulate hard bop jazz —ensures that his spirit will live on as long as we remember, and listen to, his music.

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Music for Enlightened Elevators

A short list of some excellent jazz music. The cuts are listed chronologically, except for A Love Supreme, which I had to put last, because whenever I listen to it I’m unable to listen to anything else for a while.

Night in Tunisia, Stan Getz, from West Coast Jazz, 1955

 Blues Walk, Lou Donaldson, from Blues Walk, 1958

One for Daddy-O, Cannonball Adderly, from Something Else, 1958

Moanin’, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, from Moanin’, 1958

 Take Five, Dave Brubeck Quartet, from Time Out, 1959

 Freddie Freeloader, Miles Davis, from Kind of Blue, 1959

Bolivar Blues, Thelonius Monk, from Monk’s Dream, 1963

Question and Answer, Pat Metheny, from Question and Answer, 1989

Lennie’s Pennies, Charlie Haden, from Quartet West, 1991

Afro Blues, John McLaughlin, from After the Rain, 1995

‘Ques Sez, Garry Burton, from next generation, 2005

A Love Supreme¸ John Coltrane, from A Love Supreme, 1965