Ooooh, man, my dad would like you. His favorite band is Dire Straits, and I think this might be his favorite album too. Me, not so much - once again, I like some songs, but they're not really my thing.
As I said, your relatives seem to have good tastes all around.
I don't post very often, but I must say your #2 choice is very worthy of the spot. I loved your write-up of the songs. 
If I could add one thing: This album is incredibly well mixed and produced! It would definitely make my top 100 if I ever did a ranking.
Great to see you in this thread! I agree about mix, somehow I forgot to mention it in the write-up, but yeah, it's totally amazing. I love how this album sounds.
Brilliant album! I grew up with Dire Straits, and this is one of their very best - I only rank Brothers In Arms above it
Brothers in Arms made my list too, but for me Love Over Gold is far superior.
Giving this some spins and I'm really liking the atmosphere and the mood of this. Thanks for showing me these guys . And I'd say your fav album is Meddle. OR, TDSotM - but I'm not that sure.
Nice to hear that. And, well, you were quite close with your guess... here comes the absolute masterpiece and the best thing happened to music, in my opinion.
#1Wish You Were HerePink FloydGenre: progressive rock1975
Everyone knows this one. I realize this choice is predictable as hell. Still, I can’t help it.
I don’t even know where to start, again, and what to write, because I doubt any words can adequately measure and encapsulate all my thoughts, feelings and emotions when I listen to this album. I doubt even I can grasp what happens with my mind and soul when I’m spinning Wish You Were Here, because for me, it’s the musical heaven right there. You know, if I would really try, I can find a number of flaws in any record from this list, while this is the one and the only exception. Wish You Were Here is a one-of-a-kind album; Pink Floyd never recorded anything better before or after it; then again, Pink Floyd is a legendary, one-of-a-kind band, so I guess it’s only fair. I’m immensely glad I lived to see and buy a new Pink Floyd album, which I never thought I would (even though after two months it still hasn’t arrived, I’m gonna write to Amazon in early 2015, heh - update: I wrote to them and they've sent me another one, and this one has arrived a few days ago. I'm happy.); and I know it’s a tribute to Richard Wright and it’s mostly instrumental, but I’m gonna take what I can and while I can; I’ve never expected it to reach the godlike quality of Wish You Were Here anyway.
So, what was I talking about? You know, I never was a fan of Roger Waters, but I have to give him a lot of credit for that perfect, glorious four Pink Floyd albums run. The Wall missed this list very narrowly and, in my opinion, is the second best album from the band; I’m not a big fan of Animals and Dark Side of the Moon, though I acknowledge and respect their greatness, in fact, the third place is firmly held by The Division Bell in my book; I guess that has something to do with that the two PF members I admire the most are David Gilmour and Richard Wright. And, quite fittingly, they both named Wish You Were Here as their favourite Pink Floyd album. Seriously, I just couldn’t agree more. I love The Wall, but it doesn’t come close at all.
Everyone has those moments in their lives when he or she just stumbles upon this kind of music, the one that affects you, changes you forever; and usually it just, well, happens, all of a sudden. And you don’t know when it would happen, you don’t know this kind of music even exists, or maybe you’re hoping for it, but don’t know where to look, what to seek. And then someone just sets you on the right path, or you find it yourself by sheer luck and chance, and all your perception on music, all you knew and loved, is changed forever. I remember this moment quite well, I was quite young, I was spending the night at my best friend’s parents’ flat, and in the morning his father just turned, no,
cranked Wish You Were Here on his sound system. While at that moment I was only aware of such bands like Helloween and something like that (nothing against Helloween, folks, they’ve made my list too, as you remember), to say I was blown away is to make an understatement of the year. Waking up to the soothing, mellow start of
Shine On You Crazy Diamond; I don’t know, just nothing can beat it. And when at the beginning of the day you’re finally awake and ready to go on and live, Shine On kicks off in full force too. How can a mostly instrumental song be that awesome, that breathtaking? I don’t even know.
And what can be said what you haven’t already heard about such underappreciated masterpieces like desperate and brooding
Welcome to the Machine or a bit more upbeat
Have a Cigar, both written by Roger? The band only wrote four songs for the whole record, ending up splitting Shine On in two halves (well, nearly halves), and they just didn’t need anything else, eh? This is the pronounced trait in my top three, the works are concise and to the point, and this is just enough to make my soul weep or celebrate or rock. I don’t want to reiterate all the songs structure and moods, because again, everyone is aware of Wish You Were Here, so I’m not going to describe Shine On both parts in details or make clever puns and jokes about
“Oh, by the way, which one’s Pink?”, but I can’t just leave out the title track out of this write up. For a simple acoustic tune (though it’s not so simple as I recall Gilmour played it on the twelve-string acoustic guitar, or the intro at least), this song is just so longing, wistful and just too beautiful for this world.
You know, I was talking about those albums that change you and your live forever when you hear them. I think most of us here already had those moments, found this record among all the brilliant stuff that got and still gets released around the scene, and that’s perfectly fine and expected… But you never know, and we may all doubt it, and we actually do, but there might be another album here somewhere in someone’s mind or in production that will yet again change a lot of human lives and views on music. And forgive me for making a such reaching assumptions about you guys, and rock and metal fans in general, because I might be dead wrong here, but that’s just what I like to think, and what I actually do think myself; that despite all our expectations from the music we’re listening to these days, weeks, months and years, despite that we probably don’t expect another record that will provide us an unforgettable, rich experience beyond any description, that will dethrone all the records we have on top of our nerdy lists, somewhere inward, in our very hearts, we have this highborn hope that there will be such an album released, no matter the time and cost, that we’ll live to see it. And it’s the different album for everyone reading this, I bet anything on it, because it’s just our tastes can’t be identical, but the fact itself is important, at least for me. The golden era of rock might be over as some musicians and people say, but the rock and metal scene is growing as fast as ever, and with those little stars, those little magnificent bands popping up every now and then, who can confidently say another Pink Floyd-level of band isn’t awaiting us in some near or not-so-near future?
And that’s the thing, maybe some pragmatists will jump on this thread now and say exactly this thing, but for me, this kind of future is uncertain; and that’s what keeps me checking my Facebook feed and this very forum every day, that’s what makes me discover more and more bands, albums and songs, relentlessly spinning one after another in hopes I will find at least something worthy, and at best, well, something outstandingly splendid and tremendously wonderful.
Seeing how many albums from this decade made my list, and four of them even breached my top ten, well, I can conclude this approach is definitely working for me.
Favourite tracks:
Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts I-V,
Welcome to the Machine,
Have a Cigar,
Wish You Were Here,
Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts VI-IXNow, I hope you will excuse me while I’m going to quote and sing those famous lyrics known probably by every person reading this, but it’s just impossible to resist:
How I wish, how I wish you were here
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears…
Wish you were here…And on this emotional, heart-wrenching moment, which is also probably the most uplifting and saddest moment in music I ever know, this list is, sadly, comes to an end. I had a blast listening to all these albums and gathering, assembling them all into a kind of list, and I had good time writing about them, and of course, it was a great fun posting them all here, seeing your reactions and interacting with you here. I would like to mention and thank everyone who helped me discover this music, be that my best friend, his father, or some of you guys here from DTF; my musical taste wouldn’t be quite the same without you. I also want to thank everyone who was following and responding in this thread, namely TAC, Sacul, Shadow Ninja, jjrock88, Tom Bombadil, mikemangioy, Kade, Brent, ThatOneGuy, sneakyblueberry, Mladen, Ville, Zydar, Scorp, Nick, RJ, other Rich, ErHaO, and everyone who responded not that regularly, but still contributed to our discussion. I was doing this list more of less for myself, to see what will come out of my attempt to group those albums into some order, but I hope you’ve enjoyed it too, and maybe discovered something new and awesome too!
I don’t want to make it much longer than it already is, so, well, thank you everyone again! See you in my upcoming roulette if you want to participate, I'm creating the thread for it right now and it will be up in just a few hours, so feel free to join if you feel like it.
And, well, on this uplifting note, this list is over and I'm out!
Topic: Evermind's Top 50 list v. #1 "Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?" (Read 48154 times)