you might, just might, love 'Wish You Were Here'.

Dire Straits sound like PF, not t'other way round?

Not that I can even hear the similarity myself.

And isn't it a bit rough to criticise an album from 1973 for sounding dated? It *is* dated.

From what you've said, as above 'WYWH' and possibly 'The Division Bell'.

synths from 1973 sound dated - it's the same reason why the intro for Baba O Reilly prevents me from completely loving the song.

But not all music from long ago sounds dated - Muddy Waters, The Beatles (except when they used synths), Stones, Stooges - all sound fresh as a daisy.

...just familiarised myself in the past couple of weeks with Meddle, having been a recent Floyd convert. I've been educating myself one album at a time.

I started with Dark Side Of the Moon. Loved it from start to finish - it only really works as a coherent whole for me - I can't enjoy individual tracks! Radcliffe and Maconie played Time on the day Rick Wright died and it just sounded out of place.

I moved onto Wish You Were Here. Contrary to the thread author, I love 1970s synths! And Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pt1 serves my synth fetish perfectly!

And now I've got into Meddle. I have to say, I'm not as enamoured of it as I am with the other two - I love One Of These Days, and Echoes is interesting but I'm not familiar enough with it yet to know where I am with it (if that makes any sort of sense).

It's The Wall next!

(Big fan of the Australian Pink Floyd - have seen them twice and you don't need to be a Floyd afficionado to enjoy the show! highly recommended...)

Rich

if you liked 'The Madcap Laughs' then you could do worse than check out the Floyd's 1967 debut 'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn'. It's my personal favourite from the Floydian oeuvre, for what it's worth. It has got slide guitar ( but be aware that Syd's take on slide was radically different to most people's ). It's also got 'The Gnome'. The jolliest two minutes twenty in rock history.
'Look at the sky..look at the river
isn't it gooooood?'

and go back to The Wall - it's much better when you're older and more embittered...

But I really love the live version of Echoes on the new Dave Gilmour DVD.

...is great when you're young and embittered too. Actually I enjoy every album they've put out to some degree (I find it hard to love that studio disc of 'Ummagumma', though).

I agree that DSOTM should not be played out of sequence or in separate chunks. I was once in Virgin Megastores and the whole album was playing...out of sequence. It was quite bizarre.

And I'm another who loves the analogue synths of the 60s/70s; they sound far warmer and- well- less 'dated' to me than what was being used by some in the 80s. I often fiddle around on my keyboard trying to reproduce those old Moog/Mellotron sounds, and have some sort of replication of that fabulous treated piano sound on 'Echoes'.

In a way Pink Floyd repeated some of the music on 'Meddle', particularly from 'Echoes' and 'One of These Days' on subesquent releases but somewhat watered down and more slick. That's why I'd go for 'Meddle' - it's where they perfected that sound, lyrics aside (quite a big aside admittedly), while still having some of that earlier musical experimentation.

I'd also go for the first album and 'Barrett'. 'Barrett' used to be available as cheap double with 'Madcap Laughs' - I have that version on vinyl. I think 'Barrett' is worth getting for some good tunes like 'Dominoes', 'Baby Lemonade' and 'Gigolo Aunt'. It's a rockier sound compared to the more acoustic 'Madcap'.

I'd go with Piper At The Gates, Wish You Were here and The Division Bell for a nice taste of each period. I also really like Saucer Full Of Secrets and DSOTM.

I do like Meddle, but I wish they had left that bloody football chant off.

I had to travel some 200 miles in the back of a car with a guy who had just got a new Cd player. He played us Animals. I wanted to eat my own ears off after about ten minutes. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
And he played it twice.

'Animals'. File with 'Ummagumma' I reckon.

It's a film soundtrack, from just before DSOTM. For some reason I bought this on cassette rather than vinyl (the only album I ever did buy on tape at full price) - I can't imagine why. I now have this on cd, and I still like it a lot.

Anyone out there like Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast from Atom Heart Mother? Beyond excellent, especially when suitably refreshed. Title track is awful though. Floyd go Grimethorpe!

I like the cover.

via the magic of a playlist

1. One Of These Days
2. Echoes
3. Fearless (football chant faded out)
4. San Tropez
5. Pillow Of Winds

A better album I think when sequenced this way (and with Seamus removed).

on which Roger Waters vents his spleen with more venom than the majority of punk bands who claimed to detest Pink Floyd ever managed...

The bits you like are probably best represented by the More, Meddle, Obscured By Clouds and Atom Heart Mother albums.

This was deinitely Floyd's most interesting period as they tried to fangle a post-Syd future with David Gilmour's voice and guitar very much to the fore. Live shows from this period, when songs like Cymbelline, Green Is The Colour Embryo and Fat Old Sun were stretched into 10-minute epics sound like some lost psychedelic garage band. If you like Spiritualized, you'll definitely like them. Check out Brain Damage, the Doctor's podcast series.

Albums-wise, I'd say that Dark Side Of The Moon is pick of the bunch, being both sonically adventurous and the most cohesive cycle of songs. Whoever said that Wish You Were Here has no weak moments is kidding themselves. Shine On You Crazy Diamond is lazy blues plodding compared to Dark Side Of The Moon.

And your 15-year-old self was wise to give The Wall a wide berth. Anyone who hasn't grown out of such overblown nonsense by that age is condemned to a life of World Of Warcraft and Terry Pratchett novels.

Erm, in my opinion.