2014-11-08

What the fuck is your problem, Pink Floyd?

Hey Dave, leave them fans alone.
Oi! Where's the fucking bar, John?
Oi! Where's the fucking bar, John?

Our love for Pink Floyd will be eternal and is not limited to one of the roughly six or seven different incarnations, although we can be happy they didn't have as many personnel changes as, for instance, Yes, dog beware. We unconditionally love proto Floyd, vintage Floyd, classic Floyd, acidic Floyd and diet Floyd that transformed slowly into newborn Floyd. They all had their pros and cons, so to speak, their highs and lows and we have never understood the fan-wars that automatically start when Pink Floyd announce a new album. Just go and have a look at the two main fora: A Fleeting Glimpse, from Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band negationist Col T, and their eternal enemies, the deaf, dumb and blind Neptune Pink Floyd copycats. The good thing is that the announcement of a new Floyd album had the two fora starting internal wars for a change, instead of constantly pissing each other off.

Not that the Church and its Reverend are any better, au contraire. Amongst Sydiots it is the general rule to bitch and to fight, to diss each other on sight, that's the things we do...

While Pink Floyd have made the most heavenly music in the world, and we repeat: in all their incarnations, we have some difficulties with Pink Floyd, the business mogul and their foul-mouthed representatives who will not blink once when, for hard cash, they lie and deceive, to quote one of the minor poets.

Grab that cash

Wolfpack, at the Late Night forum, recently came up with a 2011 discussion, from Neptune Pink Floyd, of a fraudulent 1994 Saucerful Of Secrets reissue (it was also discussed at Steve Hoffman's place).

Not wanting to sound too anoraky but apparently the 1994 European EMI CD release, pretending to have a 1992 Doug Sax remaster, did not use that particular tape, but an old, sloppy one from somewhere in the eighties.

Let us rephrase that again to let it quietly sip in.

Laughing all the way to the bank.
Laughing all the way to the bank.

In 1994 EMI (Europe) was advertising and selling remastered Pink Floyd CDs, only what was baked on the disk was not a remaster at all but a murky old version (EMI modulated the volume here and there to cover up for their cheating). This can be clearly heard on the A Saucerful Of Secrets track that has a distinct 'snap' around the 2 minutes and 30 seconds mark, with a 5dB volume drop for about 5 seconds, a problem that was partially solved by Doug Sax on his 1992 remaster. The EMI fraud, we can't think of any other name to define what they deliberately did and that may have literally run into the millions, was not only limited to the second Pink Floyd album but perhaps on seven so-called remasters: A Saucerful Of Secrets, Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall and A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. A detailed overview, with links and soundbytes, can be found at the bottom of this article.

Yes, these are the people saying that home-taping is killing music. By the way, not a single Pink Floyd, or ex-Pink Floyd, -member objected apparently. But of course this was twenty years ago and surely the geriatric Floyd have gotten softer by now. Well... apparently it has only gotten worse...

Charade you are

The thing is that Pink Floyd, and any other popular and self-respecting band, consists of two parts, what is not always fully understood by the fans. There is a cultural or artistic pillar with the performers exclaiming their angst, fear, hope, friendship and love in their songs. There is also an economic or capitalistic division where these same performers, represented by their agents, publishing and record companies, try to sell you as much junk as is humanly possible. Only... they don't call it junk but Immersion sets, compilations, remasters, even if these remasters aren't remasters at all.

While fans were eagerly awaiting The Endless River, the Floyd's latest album, the band and its record company were trying to create a buzz, which has pretty much succeeded. To the outside world at least. Hardcore Pink Floyd fans, those crusty old dinosaurs with big wallets, felt a bit neglected.

We won't repeat everything we wrote in The loathful Mr. Loasby and other stories... but Floyd acolytes have been insulting, intimidating and legally threatening the Fleeting Glimpse webmaster because he dared to publish the news of a new album after Polly Samson and Durga McBroom had already done so. For the last six months, their legal division has deleted lots of archive material from YouTube, which they are of course entitled to (leading to much speculation about an immense 2017 Piper / Saucerful Immersion set). Floyd gave the Harvested organisation a one day warning to stop their illegal activities, namely archiving and restoring Floyd concerts and weeding these to the fans, for free. Basically Harvested did what they expected Harvest to do, but the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band tape that was bought and immediately buried by EMI and/or Pink Floyd shows that they had no intent releasing it. The Gyllene Cirkeln tape, same story. When the Floyd buy a tape, it is not to praise, but to bury it.

Draconian measurements, so it seems, and sometimes taking innocent victims with them, like censoring a video from the Men On The Border band, because it happened to cover a Syd Barrett song.

Update 2016: The Gyllene Cirkeln gig has been officially released now, as part of The Early Years box-set. See: Supererog/Ation: skimming The Early Years.

Row, row, row your boat... Courtesy of Rocco Moliterno.
Row, row, row your boat... Artwork: Rocco Moliterno.

The odd couple

In their interviews Gilmour and Mason look nothing like rock stars, they are amiably chatting about their latest release, and they could easily be mistaken for elderly countrymen, retired landlords discussing the sweet life of rural Great-Britain. While they are quipping how sweet their friendship was with Rick Wright and how this record is a tribute to him, their copyright gamekeepers are shooting at the poachers. Did Roger Waters knew he was predicting the future when he turned Pink into a crypto-fascist on The Wall album?

Sometimes the Floyd's hammering attempts are bluntly pathetic.

On the 9th of October one track of the album, Louder Than Words, was premiered on BBC radio (and later repeated on a few other stations), but unlike the seventies, people were not holding a cassette player with a microphone in front of a transistor radio. In the twenty-first century radio stations can be captured on the internet and songs can be sent to the world wide web with a simple right-click. Copies were almost uploaded immediately and put on Soundcloud, YouTube and other places.

A day later A Fleeting Glimpse, who are again big buddies with Floyd's management, warned their forum members that Warner would be hitting hard on those fans seeding the track and most copies disappeared after a few hours, except the one on the BBC website.

We shall not stop until all illegal copies of Louder Than Words have been destroyed!
We shall not stop until all illegal copies of 'Louder Than Words' have been destroyed! Artwork: Felix Atagong.

The Church is aware of at least four Pink Floyd fans who listened to advanced copies of the album, but who were explicitly told to not to express their opinion about it on Pink Floyd forums. This happened less than five days before the official launch and after all great music magazines, Q, Mojo, Uncut, Rolling Stone had already published their reviews.

All this secrecy and bullying can only mean one thing. That the album is a big bummer and that the record company does not want the fans to realize that before they buy the album. And if it's not, there remains only one question:

What the fuck is your problem, Pink Floyd?

Well, there is only one way to find out...

(This is part one of our The Endless River article, part two or the actual review can be found here: While my guitar gently weeps...)


(The above article is entirely based upon facts, some situations may have been enlarged for satirical purposes.)

Many thanks to Danielcaux, Rocco Moliterno, Wolfpack and countless people on the NPF and Fleeting Glimpse forums.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad character.
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Different Saucerful versions (back to article)

The different versions are discussed, in detail, on the Neptune Pink Floyd forum: "Saucerful" on CD - defective??. Danielcaux compared the different A Saucerful Of Secrets CD versions and posted some clips on Soundcloud (about 34 seconds each).

EMI 1994 'fraudulent' remaster (with the obnoxious glitch, probably dating from the sixties) : https://soundcloud.com/o0d/stcfthots-1994-emi-asos-cd
Doug Sax 1992 remaster (repairing the glitch, more or less): https://soundcloud.com/o0d/stcfthots-shine-on-doug-sax
Echoes (Best Of, 2001 remaster, another attempt to repair the mistake): https://soundcloud.com/o0d/stcfthots-echoes-best-of
James Guthrie 2011 Discovery remaster (almost identical to the Doug Sax version): https://soundcloud.com/o0d/stcfthots-2011-discovery-cd

and how it should really sound:

Works CD version, 1983 (the only version that hasn't got the glitch): https://soundcloud.com/o0d/stcfthots-works