Coming out March 24, 2023, Pink Floyd will release the 50th anniversary box set celebrating Dark Side of the Moon. The new set is $300 and contains a remastered album on vinyl and CD, performance DVD and new-to-vinyl Live At Empire Wembley Pool, recorded back in 1974.
There's also a big book, replica singles, stickers and more. It's all quite cool. I will probably just order the 1974 live vinyl and call it a day. I already have a 2016 DSOTM remaster vinyl and $300 is a lot of cash but this is going to sell like crazy. You can pre-order now at the link in the post below.
The European Union has a law requiring musicians to release recordings before they hit the 50 year mark, or they lose rights to the songs. This means tracks, maybe deemed not good enough for studio release, often get shelved until the 50 year mark comes around and (these days) artists do a dump to streaming platforms. The tracks usually don't stay on platforms for too long, so check them out while you can - Variety has a nice explainer of the entire situation.
For our purposes, we are just going to celebrate being able to listen to new (old) Pink Floyd tunes that give us an insight into the band's working and creative process at the time before Dark Side of the Moon was recorded and released.
Below, you can hear "Money" before it was finalized for DSOTM. "Money (Live At The Palais des Sports, Saint Ouen, France 1 Dec 1972)."
Here's another DSOTM noodling - called "The Travel Sequence"
Here's "Time / Breathe (In The Air) (reprise) (Ultra Rare Alternative Version)"
Thanksgiving is behind us and now we are on to the December holiday season.
A big thing happened this week: folk superstar Donovan returned to the scene with new music, including a song with Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. That's our Sunday's Best for the week.
Donovan's upcoming new album is Gaelia: The Sulan Sessions and features all sorts of artists, including Gilmour. The album comes out officially December 15.
The Donovan - Gilmour track is called "Rock Me" and you can hear it below. I cherish any chance to hear new guitar work by Gilmour so this is great!
We didn't ask for it, but Roger Waters has released a new version of the Pink Floyd classic "Comfortably Numb." Appropriately called "Comfortably Numb 2022," the song is a reimagined take on the original and definitely darker. This new version is in A Minor and there is no long guitar solo that made the original so famous. The original has David Gilmour playing the guitar, so of course the solo is awesome.
I think I like this new version. It is definitely a whole different mood and probably good for Waters and his tours. Of course, I would like it better if Waters and Gilmour would just get along and play the real version together, live, but whatever. That probably won't happen.
Pink Floyd released the track "Hey Hey Rise Up" months ago to support Ukraine after Russia invaded. The b-side of the single is the older track "A Great Day For Freedom." The catch, of course, is that this is a new version of the older song. The version below is known as "A Great Day For Freedom 2022"
In the YouTube notes to the revised version of the song, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour writes:
For this limited edition release, David Gilmour revisited The Division Bell track ‘A Great Day For Freedom’, he has reworked the song using the original tapes which feature Nick Mason on drums and Richard Wright on keyboards, along with backing vocals from Sam Brown, Claudia Fontaine and Durga McBroom. The track was composed by Gilmour with lyrics by himself and Polly Samson. Speaking about the song in 1994, Gilmour said, “There was a wonderful moment of optimism when the Berlin wall came down – the release of Eastern Europe from the non-democratic side of the socialist system. But what they have now doesn't seem to be much better. Again, I'm fairly pessimistic about it all. I sort of wish and live in hope, but I tend to think that history moves at a much slower pace than we think it does. I feel that real change takes a long, long time.”
Talking about the inspiration for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ Gilmour commented, “Any war, but particularly a war that is started by a world superpower against an independent democratic nation, has got to raise enormous anger and frustration in one. As I said before, I have a small connection there; my daughter-in-law is from Ukraine. And the band Boombox are Ukrainian people that I already knew, not well, but from some time ago. It’s an enormously difficult, frustrating, and anger-making thing that one human being could have the power to go into another independent democratic nation and set about killing the population. It’s just obscene to an extent that is just beyond my belief.”
1/3 Using A Great Day For Freedom as the B-side of the new Pink Floyd single, Hey Hey, Rise Up seemed like an obvious and relevant choice. And David has, for some time, wanted to record a simpler more direct version of the song.
2/3 So here it is, with a newly edited video taken from a Pulse rehearsal during Pink Floyd’s two-week run at Earl’s Court, London, in 1994. The recording, using the original drums and bass by Nick and David, has keyboards by Rick and backing vocals by Claudia, Sam and Durga...
3/3 ...taken from the Pulse rehearsals. New piano, Prophet 5 synthesiser and Hammond are played by David, as on the original demo.https://t.co/lo3Zv6HzkU
Pink Floyd, featuring David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Guy Pratt (bass) and Nitin Sawhney (keyoboard) created a new song "Hey Hey Rise Up" to benefit the people of Ukraine. The track features Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukraine on vocals and Khlyvnyuk is in a band called BoomBox.
This is the first new Pink Floyd music in forever. Endless River came out in 2014 but that was mostly from The Division Bell sessions. I was in junior high when my beloved Division Bell was released!
Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 12:55PM