Monday 30 June 2014

The Best Unreleased Pink Floyd Songs (News, Views and Music Issue 251 Top Thirty-Three-And-A-Third)


You can now buy 'Remember A Day - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of Pink Floyd' in e-book form by clicking here!








Hello and welcome to another in ours series of 'outtakes set that don't exist but should', which we have compiled in the hope that it will fill in some of the 'missing holes' in our planned AAA books sometime in the future. This week it's the turn of Pink Floyd and a crop of unreleased or rare classics that are particularly ripe, given that the Floyd have never really issued a 'true' Rarities compilation (1972's 'Relics' is about the closest) and have only recently started adding outtakes as bonus tracks (although, this being the Floyd, they tend to appear on pricey box sets with free coffee-table coasters rather than on the back of cheaply priced CD re-issues).

CD One:

1) Why Do Fools Fall In Love?/Walk Like A Man/Don't Ask Me/Big Girls Don't Cry/Beautiful Delilah (Joker's Wild, Rare EP, 1965)

Technically speaking our first entry was released, but I'm willing to bet that nobody reading this owns an 'official' copy of what became David Gilmour's first band's only release, made in a limited edition of around 50 copies (although a few copies have leaked on bootleg). There is actually a copy of the album in the British Library's National Sound Archive available for members to hear - although we hasten to add that's probably not where the EP was leaked from! The surprise is that Gilmour sings throughout in falsetto, not in the earthy growl fans have come to know and love and you'd be hard pressed to guess that's him on guitar either, given how traditional the parts he plays are, although Gilmour has always been one of the best mimics in the business (the Floyd hired him to 'sound like Syd' at first, not to build his own style!) You have to say, though, that Joker's Wild sound like a band to watch and it's a shame in a way that circumstances (ie Gilmour's defection to the Floyd) rather got in their way. The band didn't seem to have any hard feelings though: bassist Rick Wills and drummer Willie Wilson stayed in touch with Gilmour, later backing him on his 1978 debut LP 'David Gilmour', although they too sound un-recognisable, the records scene having changed dramatically in the 13 years in between the two recordings!

2) Lucy Leave (Demo 1966)

This one, as well as the next song, are the first known recordings by Syd Barrett. 'Lucy Leave' is the 1966 sessions' sole original and is interestingly far closer to the stop-start acoustic-with-overdubs approach of his two solo albums than anything Floyd go on to do in Barratt's two years with them. A raucous blues soundalike that a group like The Animals would have done well, Syd even has his trademark 'oh no!' (see 'Lucifer Sam') in place on a song that clearly demonstrates a lot of talent even if it's by far the most generic thing in the Syd Barratt songbook. Note Syd's eccentric guitar solo, though, already way ahead of anything else around at the times even if its cut much shorter here than the Floyd would have done it. More than deserving of a proper release!

3) I'm A King Bee (Demo 1966)

This old blues song was done by everybody back in the day (fellow AAA band the Grateful Dead cut it too, with Pigpen singing). Frankly this lazy blues doesn't suit Syd: there was nothing lazy or 'blue' about him (well, not until 1968 anyway and that was still two busy years away!) That said, it's fascinating to hear Barratt at least trying to be conventional for perhaps the only time in his short recording career and that alone makes it an interesting piece for fans to hear.

4) Let's Roll Another One (outtake 1967)

We're into the recording years now and the B-side of the first Floyd single 'Arnold Layne', better known from its finished title 'A Candy And A Currant Bun'. Daring from the beginning, Syd 'shocked' EMI with his original set of lyrics which openly referred to 'soft drugs' (that isn't tobacco he's rolling in the title!) Besides the line change, this is simply a fascinatingly rough early version anyway: we don't get many chances to hear how the early Floyd built up their songs layer by layer and here they sound almost like a garage band (not unlike Syd's solo albums, in fact, although Barrett is very much the figure in charge here, unlike later in 1970). Nick Mason's drums are louder and more aggressive, Rick's organ is more centre stage than Syd's guitar and without all the technical wizardry on Syd's voice and guitar he genuinely does sound 'very frail' at times on this song!

5) Scream Thy Last Scream aka Woman With A Casket (outtake 19677)

A legendary outtake, intended to be Pink Floyd's last 1967 single but quietly rejected by the rest of the band and producer Norman Jenner after concerns about Syd's health (and the comparative low sales of predecessor 'Apples and Oranges', which is only slightly less eccentric. Part nursery rhyme, part sinister horror movie, this song is actually better suited to the Floyd than many of Syd's other songs: Rick's exotic farfisa organ sound is the glue that holds this angry, stabbing song together while Roger and Nick hit a hypnotic rhythmic groove by the end. The silly sound effects of squeaking high voices (Roger's clearly one of them, presumably the other is Syd!0 are also very Floyd. As for the lyrics, well: fun wordplay or a hint at something sinister The lines about watching tv without really watching are very in keeping with Syd's behaviour at the time)? 'Scream thy last scream old woman with a casket, blam blam your pointers point, what'll be to crunch your sisters when she's scrubbing bubbles on all fours...Fling your arms madly old lady with a daughter, mouses and houses, flitting and hitting quack quack, watching the telly till all hours big time..."

6) Vegetable Man (outtake 1967)

'Vegetable Man' is even weirder and must surely have been a cry for help. Syd often has a snarl in his voice when he sings but never before has he turned it on himself before, all on a turbulent wild song that gets more and more out of control the more it goes on, as the narrator becomes more and more out of touch with reality. Or then again, is the joke on us for being fooled by the persona (there's a wicked 'ha ha ha!' chorus, although then again as this bit leads on to the mournful lines 'I've been looking everywhere, but it just ain't anywhere' whose to tell?) In fact a lot of the observations will be used by Roger for the song about Syd 'Nobody's Home' in 'The Wall' 11 years later; you can see why this disturbing song must have had an effect on his old chum watching his decline. The song's got quite a few words so only a sample here: 'In yellow shoes I get the blues, though I walk the streets with my plastic feet, my blue velvet trousers make me feel pink (there's a kind of stink about blue velvet trousers)...I changed my dear and found my knees, I covered them up with the latest cut...It's what I wear, it's what you see, it must be me, it's what I am, vegetable man where are you?' Somehow I doubt the Floyd will ever let these two songs out officially, even though fans have campaigned for their release for some 40 years now.

7) Jugband Blues (BBC Session 1967)

Syd's actual goodbye was this eerie, haunting song that includes the Floyd kiss-off line 'I'm grateful to you for making it clear that I'm not here' and ends with the notorious career-summing-up line 'What exactly is a dream? And what exactly is a joke?' and was first released on the Floyd's second album 'A Saucerful Of Secrets'. This recording we've chosen is the first of a handful of truly great BBC recordings that sadly have never seen the light of day officially. This one dates from 19th December 1967 and the surprising thing is how 'together' Syd sounds - by comparison with everything to come anyway. The band have no brass band to re-create the hectic improvised middle section so indulge in a long organ-guitar battle before the song fades in as usual, Rick adding a sensitive organ and harmony part that touches even more of an emotional nerve than the finished version. Still no actual jugband on the recording, though!

8) The Committee (Film Soundtrack 1968)

Even by 1968 British Cinema standards, 'The Committee' is a weird film. The un-named man at the heart of the film goes hitch-hiking, pretends there's something wrong with the engine of a car he's in and decapitates the poor unsuspecting driver with his own bonnet. However he sews the man's head back on and time moves forward a few decades. By now the man is on a 'committee' and has no memory of the incident until the un-named man draws it out of him. Pink Floyd are a clear shoe-horn in for the soundtrack (which they did about 50/50 with Arthur Brown), being the go-to band for weirdness in 1968, but sadly they don't record any 'proper' songs -their set sounds as if it was improvised while the film was played back to me. At least, the bits of it I can hear sound like that - the two central characters keep flipping talking over it all the time! Still, there's a good five minute extract to be taken from the film without speech even if the master tapes of the Floyd session have gone missing; certainly it's a shame that in this day and age an 'official' albeit rare release by one of the biggest acts on the planet should exist today on in the hands of bootleggers (the film isn't currently available either, by the way, although it's been uploaded complete to Youtube at the time of writing)

9) Green Onions/Tomorrow's World (TV Soundtrack 1968)

TV this time and a typical Floyd appearance backing a film of some vaguely 'modern' looking light appliances on everyone's favourite gadget show 'Tomorrow's World'. One of Gilmour's first appearances with the band, note how similar his style is to Syd's, although it's Rick's organ part that's central to the song, as on many of the early Floyd songs. More interesting still is a Floyd run through of Booker T and the MG's hit 'Green Onions', played Floyd style with a snarling, harsher tone than Otis Redding's old band ever managed and sacrificing the intense groove of the original for a more laidback charm. Shame the presenter has to ruin it by talking about 'relays' over the top though!

10) Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (TV Soundtrack 1968)

Tony Palmer's seminal 1969 documentary 'All You Need Is Love' started off as a one-off attempt to look at the current music scene in 1968 titled 'All You Need Is Loving', parts of which are frequently recycles on 'Sounds of the Sixties' and all the later BBC music compilations. The Floyd are in the film a lot, despite suffering from post-Syd syndrome and cook up what must be the single best version of 'Set The Controls' (another song from 'Saucerful') I've heard - and believe me, I've heard many (this song stayed in the Floyd setlists longer than most!) Wjat's slow and languid on records builds up little by little until it's reached a crashing crescendo on the TV show, with Gilmour's guitar sounding more like a chainsaw as it slashes left and right into the song while Nick Mason does a 'Keith Moon' and all but destroys his drum kit. If only the band had done the song like that on the record!

11) Point Me At The Sky (BBC Session 1968)

The Floyd have been quite open down the years over how much they hated their batch of post-Floyd singles. The general feeling is that they should have realised they were an 'albums' band sooner and given up such childish things as pop records and as a result these recordings are blooming hard to get hold of today, this one in particular. Perhaps the Floyd would have liked the single more had it turned out more like this fractionally later BBC recording, which is much more 'them' - there's an instrumental break in the middle that's not so much pop as avant garde, all screaming chaotic sound effects and whacked harpsichords. The band also sing the main song slower and more mournfully, turning lines like 'If you survive till 2005 I hope you're exceedingly thin' sound more like a eulogy than comedy. David and Roger have already got their 'contrasting personalities' trick down to a tee, too, with Gilmour on the verses and Waters on the chorus. a madcap finale lasts a lot longer than the record, too, before coming to a sudden full stop and trailing off on a final sad-sounding 'goodbye'. The band were right to wave goodbye: their follow-up UK single was rush-released...eleven years later!

12) Embryo (studio outtake 1968)

The only 'finished' and unreleased song by the Floyd 'accidentally' leaked out on an American compilation titled 'Works' and frustratingly still hasn't appeared on anything else official yet. The song should have appeared on 'A Saucerful Of Secrets' although in live terms the song was only performed regularly across 1970 and 1971, suggesting the band might have been considering reviving it for 'Atom Heart Mother' or 'Meddle' (the 'middle' section played live, with screaming seagulls, is in fact a dead ringer for the middle of 'Echoes' from that last album). A doomy sort of song, it sounds atone with other songs Roger Waters was writing back then (most notably his film soundtrack with Ron Geesin 'The Body') and concern the very Dark Side Of The Moon-theme of an innocent waiting to be born into a world of corruption. It's superior to many of the songs of the time, actually, inspiring one of the greatest David Gilmour 'breakout' solos of them all when the poor child is born at the end. A true lost classic. Sample lyric: 'All this love is all I am, I'm so new compared to you...warm glow, moon glow, always needs a little more room, waiting here seems like years, never see the light of day...All around hear strange sounds gurgling in my ear, red the light and dark the night, I feel my time is near"

13) Murderotic Woman (BBC Session 1969)

Or 'Careful With That Axe Eugene', the B-side of the above song that was given a while variety of wild and wacky names down the years (the band title it 'Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up' when it appears in the 'Zabriskie Point' film, for instance). This John Peel session is less dramatic than the rest and sounds more like a proper song, with Gilmour even trying his hand at a bit of Chuck Berry in the middle as he tries to fit in with the established band sound. There's less screaming, too, and almost a 'quiet' end to the song; of all the Floyd's recordings of the unhinged axe murderer this one is the one most sad and regretful, which might not be as interesting as the released 'demented' version but is still worth a listen!

14) Seabirds ('More' Film Soundtrack 1969)

You can buy the complete 'More' soundtrack on CD now and we have in fact reviewed it already on this site. But what's this: watching the film on youtube it turns out that there's a whole song missing from the record! What's more, it's a bona fide song as opposed to instrumental like much of the album and an interesting sounding one too: Gilmour sounds like he's playing with a wah-wah guitar pedal and Roger sings lead vocal, sounding by turns angry and regretful(with David taking over for the brief chorus). The lyrics are hard to make out but worth listening out for as they sound like a neat precursor to the 'at one with nature' theme of two key Pink Floyd works of the future: 'Echoes' and 'Dark Side Of The Moon'. Here's a sample, with apologies for any mistakes caused by the two irritating pair of poncy French actors trying to drink wine in the foreground that makes it rather hard to hear: 'Mighty waves come crashing down, the spray is lashing high into the eagle's eye, shrieking as it cuts the devil wind, calling sailors to the deep surf, but I can hear the sound of songbirds in my ear...Surf is high and the sea is awash, a haze of candy floss, glitter and beads, rocks that we sat on and watched in the sun, that was too hot to touch...I can hear the sound of songbirds in my ear and can see you smile'. Like most of the Floyd's soundtrack of 'More', this song appears to have nothing to do with what's happening in the film!

15) Fat Old Sun (BBC Session 1969)

I've always had a soft spot for Gilmour's lovely, lazy song about warm summer's days and feeling tranquillity with the world. But this 15 minute epic beats the record hands down: being live the band sound more fragile, more tense somehow as Gilmour's nostalgic narrator sounds like he's longing for rest rather than enjoying it while he sings. The band even add an entire middle-section which cuts in after the song has ended on the album, Gilmour's fierce but triumphant guitar solo diminishing over time before the band leap sideways and go down a different path, Roger stabbing away at his bass line while Rick's dreamy 'ba-da-da' organ riff starts shooting off left and right, virtuoso leaps of colour that weave throughout the rest of the band. It isn't long before the lovely sunny day in the sunshine has turned into a rainstorm, hitting the sort of intense when-are-they-going-to-let-go repeats of the riff that will later make 'Echoes' so thrilling. When the band finally do let go and let the tranquil embrace of 'Fat Old Sun' embrace us again (singing the song over again in its' entirety), this time it sounds even more wonderful and idyllic by comparison to what's just gone before. The Floyd were wizards at conjuring up drama from nowhere and even with all the official released treasure to go with, this unofficially available recording might well be the best single example of that. The Floyd desperately need a 'proper' BBC sessions set sometime soon - and this performance of this song had better be on it or else!

16) Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast (Only Live Performance 1969)

Some Floyd songs stayed in the setlists for years, never changing - others came and went quite quickly. 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast', the eccentric closer to 'Atom Heart Mother', was only played live once as a special 'Christmas treat', which is a great shame - partly because the band are clearly enjoying themselves and partly because it's an even better musical adaptation of my own breakfasts! Lasting half an hour, this is an epic version with quite a few new bits thrown into the 'medley' and lots of 'gaps' in the action where not a lot seems to be happening (the band The band even brew up on stage in the middle (you can hear the kettle whistle and everything!) and while there are sadly less sound effects than on the record if anything the band play rather better here, with a natural fluency they didn't quite have in the studio. The similarity between the first half of this song and The Beatles' 'Dear Prudence' is even more pronounced too! Yes, marmalade, I like marmalade...

17) Moonlandings/Moonhead (TV Soundtrack 1969)

We finish the first disc with what was arguably the most heard Floyd song of all by 1969. So why don't you recognise the title? Well, you probably never knew what it was called before (if indeed this improvised piece had a name as this might be the invention of a bootlegger). The Floyd were the BBC's first port of call when they wanted something 'space age' on telly as we've already seen on this list, so they seemed a natural choice for the BBC's moon landing coverage. Yes, that's right - they played at the very end of the broadcast around midnight over a 'summary' of the day's events, so in all fairness a lot of people had gone to bed, but even so: an awful lot of people stayed up to watch a piece of history and the overall viewing figures for the moon landing (in Britain at least) is well inside the top five most watched programmes of all time. By Floyd standards this improvised instrumental isn't that great - it's simply another rummage around the band's usual 'safe' options of rolled gong, moody bass lines, intense organ chords and squealing, alien guitar-work, but it does echo nicely the surrounding shots of Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins playing golf on the moon's surface, etc!

CD Two:

18) The Beginning/Green Is The Colour (BBC Session 1969)

Alas we can't include the whole of the Floyd's dual epic rock suites toured across 1969: 'The Journey' and 'The Man' and thankfully recorded at the BBC for posterity. Pretty much all of it was made up of previously released songs anyway. 'The Beginning', for instance, was really 'More' song 'Green Is The Colour' adapted to give it a more jazzy feel and Gilmour is having fun scatting away over the top while drenched with disorientating sounding echo. Less fey than the finished version and with a marvellous segue into 'Beset By The Creatures Of The Deep' (yet another 'Careful With That Axe Eugene' - we told you they liked changing the name!) this extract is about the most different to the finished recording - and about the best.

19)Echoes (Live 1972)

The epic of the Floyd's live set in the pre-Dark Side years bar none, there are several great versions of this epic 20-odd minute song doing the rounds that are all subtly different and all worth hearing. We've plumped with a version played live on the 1972 tour (when the song was new) in Lille, France which is actually one of the rougher versions of the song (Dave's and Rick's harmonies are far more strained than elsewhere) and yet the 'feel' of this song is spectacular. Gilmour's guitar has never sounded more like an injured beast, Rick's organ is a healing balm of tonic and Roger and Nick's rhythm section has a real rock bite and attack throughout the song. 'Echoes' is one of those songs that sounds different every it you hear it anyway (is this song really about the distance between human beings or their capacity to make connections if they really want to?), but this version of the song sounds particularly desperate and fatalistic.

20) Crumbling Land (Unedited Version, 1973)

This is another one of my favourite Floyd songs, albeit one far less well known. The story behind the Pink Floyd's work on the Antonioni film 'Zabriskie Point' is long and chaotic: to put it briefly, the director hired the Floyd and then asked them not to sound like themselves and ended up using only three of their songs out of the dozen or so submitted for the film (Jerry Garcia is one of the other people hired to fill in the rest!) 'Crumbling Land' is one song that did make the film, a lolloping folk-rock song with an acoustic vibe quite unusual for the Floyd and no doubt inspired by Gilmour's love of the genre (it's a very CSNY sounding song - Gilmour will go on to use Crosby and Nash as his backing singers during a 2006 tour). The finished version is a compact three minute bouncy little song about rising and falling that's far more polished than most other Floyd songs from this period; the unedited near-six minute version, though, is a wilder beast, taken slightly slower with heavy-handed drumming from Nick that adds a real rock feel to the song (especially during the chorus) and even more CSN-like harmonies from Dave and Rick (one of the few chances get to hear them singing together rather than 'competing', despite the lovely blend they clearly have). The song slowly falls apart, turning into a terrific bass and drum battle between Roger and Nick as they jam away for a minute or so. The song then plays out with the 'complete' sound effect heard on the end of the track - an eerie speaker-bouncing chaos of noise and destruction that severely jump-cuts which when heard in full turns out to be the sound of a carnival float passing by followed by a lorry coming to a full stop right next to the microphone!

21) Fingal's Cave ('Zabriskie Point' outtake 1973)

One of the many discarded songs from 'Zabriskie Point', this is a churning tough little rocker, a sort of denser version of the title track from 'Obscured By Clouds' with Roger's murky bass particularly loud and central in the mix and Gilmour letting fly on a particularly expressive multi-tracked twin guitar parts. It's hard to know where this song would have fitted into the film - knowing Antonioni this noisy rocker would have been used behind a serene scene rather than an action-filled one!

22) Rain In The Country ('Zabriskie Point' outtake 1973)

Our final 'Zabriskie Point' track is a lovely folk-rock multi-guitar instrumental that only features the rest of the band near the end. The central guitar lick is not unlike that from the later 'Pillow Of Winds' song (see 'Meddle') but the mood is noticeably lighter and bouncier. With some lyrics this would have made for a fine catchy hit single, in fact - but catchy hit singles weren't what the Floyd were about at all by 1973! If you're interested in more 'Zabriskie' outtakes have a look out for the rare double-CD set of the sessions which did come out officially and features another four Floyd songs that didn't make the film.

23) On The Run ('Pompeii' Soundtrack 1973)

Among many other highlights, the Floyd's concert in an empty Pompeii ampitheatre is notable for the brief glimpses of the band at work in Abbey Road (little did anyone who saw the film at the time know, but the band were actually working on 'Dark Side Of The Moon'). This is the first of two mini-glimpses into how the album sounded early on, with Roger Waters playing around with his beloved MIDI synthesiser to the same pre-recorded backing we all know and love from the album, but with notably different results. This improvised 'On The Run' is understandably rougher, but I reckon it's more exciting too, especially when Roger loses his way and gives the paranoid narrator the sound of tripping over his own feet on his dangerous journey signifying 'the pressures and dangers of travelling'.

24) Us and Them ('Pompeii' Soundtrack 1973)

Meanwhile Rick is at work on his masterpiece, which as yet is still an instrumental (first conceived of for the 'Violence Sequence' in 'Zabriskie Point' - and now out officially as part of the 'Dark Side Of The Moon' box set), Roger not having written any words for it yet. Played slightly slower, with nothing much besides piano and sax, the song sounds just as beautiful, with Ricks' gospel-meets-blues chord changes already tugging at the heart strings even without the songs about division, racism and distances. An impressive version of an impressive song.

25) Great Gig In The Sky (Live 1973)

The 'Dark Side' 'Immersion' box set also included an early live performance of Rick's other song for the album, 'The Great Gig In The Sky', back when it was still titled 'The Mortality Sequence' and featured a priest talking about death instead of Clare Torry's improvised vocals. There is a live recording from the very first live performance of 'Dark Side' (the famous one where the tape broke down during 'Money' and the Floyd had to abandon halfway through - not a very auspicious start for their most famous creation!) that's even more different however, which sounds even more like a hymn with great long pulsating organ chords and the 'speech' comes in on its own during a 'break' in the song rather than all the way through. I'll be going on in my eventual review of 'Dark Side' to say that one of the major reasons for its success was that the band had already toured it for months before recording it and had ironed out all the edges - none of the ten album songs changed more over the months of touring than this one!

26) Money/Time (Demo 1973)

Roger Waters aired a brief 30 second snippet of 'Money' during one of the many 'anniversary' documentaries dedicated to the album (this time a radio one in 2003) and hopes were high that the full demo would turn up on the 'Dark Side' box set. Alas it didn't, but the two minute demo has turned up on bootleg. The song turns out to be a slow, moody, very much blues-based song compared to what it turned into later and the sudden time switch from convoluted quadruple time to 'common' time which makes the song isn't there yet. However, what's interesting is what is already there: Roger has a quick go at recording some basic sound effects including a couple that made the finished album (dropping money into one of his wife's pottery creations for instance) and the lyrics are complete already. Time is rougher and shorter and doesn't have the sweet chorus, pounding drums or gracefulness just yet. The lyrics are there, though, along with the central theme of running out of time, sung here by Roger in a folk-blues drawl that would have done Bob Dylan proud.

27) Magritte (Roger Waters TV Soundtrack 1978)

What is it with AAA stars and the painter Rene Magritte? Paul Simon wrote a song about him, Lindisfarne's Alan Hull paid a fortune to have one of his paintings on an album cover - and Roger Waters took time off from writing 'The Wall' to compose the music for this little seen TV documentary. In truth Roger's work consists of curious sound effects and some basic rhythms rather than proper 'songs' - ore like his work for 'The Body' than most of his Pink Floyd creations. Even so, its impressive just how much of the de facto 'Pink Floyd' sound Roger is able to create on his own and how much his 'natural' sound is that of the band circa 1972, long after the others seem to have left it all behind. He even does a fair impression of Gilmour's sweeping guitar in 'part five'. 

28) Comfortably Numb (Demo 1978)

This song was taped as an instrumental with Dave scat-singing along to the chorus during sessions for his first eponymous album in 1978 and pounced on by Roger when the band were discussing how best to make 'The Wall' later that year. By the sound of this demo - which sadly was left off the 'Wall' box set - Gilmour has the melody for the chorus finished but didn't know what else to do with it - Roger added the lyrics, the verse melody and the space for Dave's guitar solo. Even shorn of those amazing lyrics and a good half of the song, though, the beauty of the demo shines through: you can easily see why Roger wanted this song so badly for what was to become the last great co-written song between two old friends.

29) Hey You (Demo 1979)

'The Wall' 'Immersion' box set includes a terrific two CD's worth of Roger Waters demos for 'The Wall' (as well as one or two from his other project of the time that became his first 'proper' solo album 'The Pros and Cons Of Hitch-Hiking'). However there are quite a few gaps in there too, including the demo for this beautiful song which will end up starting the second half of the double album. Like the ones that made the set its fascinatingly similar and yet fascinatingly different to what made the finished album: most of the lyrics and the screaming guitar solo are there already, but the 'hope' is missing: there's no 'don't give up without a fight' line, Roger sounds sad rather than hopeful, going down at the end of most lines and instead of 'worms' the character Pink is trying to 'break the chain'.

30) The Hero's Return (Part 2) (Rare B Side 1983)

This one is rare rather than unreleased, appearing on the B-side of the rare single-only 'When The Tigers Break Free' and sadly missing from any CDs of 'The Final Cut'.'Part 2' of the song pickups where 'Part 1' left off, with the hero-soldier-turned-nasty-teacher still be-crying the fact that 'his' generation were wiped out to save the next one who answer back to him. Only instead of the silence that accompanies the memory of a dead pilot desperately trying to contact his base the song screams in with another tirade of abuse: 'Jesus Christ I might as well be dead! I can't see how dangerous it must feel to me, training human cogs for the machine, without some shell-shocked lunatic like me bombarding their still soft shells, with sticks and stones that were lying around in the pile of unspeakable feelings I'd found, when I turned back the stone, turned over the stone, of my own disappointment back home...' While far from the subtlest of Roger Waters' songs, I've always had a regard for 'The Hero's Return' which manages to balance making the evil teacher both a figure of hate and of sympathy and adding an extra verse makes this song feel even more rounded and complete.

31) Le Carrera Panamericana (Film Soundtrack 1992)

Of all the strange projects Pink Floyd have done down the years, this is one of the strangest! Car enthusiast Nick Mason encouraged both David Gilmour and band manager Steve O'Rourke to take part with him in the dangerous 1992 re-creation of the Mexican land rally. Gilmour crashed his car, causing his navigator O'Rourke to break his leg, but Mason and his co-driver rally champ Valentine Lindsay did rather well. You could forgive the Floyd for being sick of the project after taking part, but they still offered to do the soundtrack for the resulting video, which 'borrowed' songs from their 1987 album 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' as well as adding six new songs ('Country Theme' 'Small Theme' 'Big Theme' 'Carrera Slow Blues' 'Mexico '78' and 'Pan Am Shuffle') None of them are what you'd call 'missing classics' and are very much incidental music rather than 'proper' songs, but even so it's always nice to hear more from Gilmour's guitar and Nick Mason actually plays drums on this album - unlike most of 'Momentary Lapse'!

32) Ruby Takes A Trip (Gilmour TV Soundtrack 1992)

Almost as weird is David Gilmour being asked to compose the music for a TV special featuring comedienne Ruby Wax. Despite the title, Gilmour puts together rather a straightforward sort of instrumental mood piece for the soundtrack sandwiched into lots of little 'bits' (about 30 in all) and plays largely for a few seconds at a time with his guitar. To be honest slogging through them all is a task even for a Floyd aficionado like me, but there's a decent ten minute suite that could be edited together out of this if a bootlegger ever has the patience.

33) The Colours Of Infinity (Gilmour TV Soundtrack 1994)

We end with Gilmour's 'other' TV soundtrack, this time for a documentary about...wait for it..refractals. Yes, this belated follow-up to the Floyd on 'Tomorrow's World' 26 years earlier is an Arthur C Clarke special on the mysteries of space. Despite another very Floyd-like title, the resulting music could have been by anyone with a decent ability to play the guitar and doesn't sound like Gilmour per se. Again, though, there's an interesting edit of the best of this music that could be made and Gilmour's last 'new' studio recordings for a whacking 12 years deserve to be better known than they are at present.

Hidden Bonus Tracks:

We've been ending our series with examples of 'spoken word' passages as a 'hidden bonus track' and what better way to end this set with the complete interview with Floyd Roadie 'Roger The Hat', the highlights of which were of course used on 'Dark Side Of The Moon' (presumably the other interview tapes - including five with the members of Wings, busy recording 'Red Rose Speedway' in the next door studio at Abbey Road - are intact somewhere too, but this is the only to leak on bootleg so far). Roger is the most fascinating of characters whose raucous laugh crops up a few times across the album and his interview is full of the most interesting comments (as well as a lot more 'dig its') when heard in full, even adding an 'evil bastard' as Roger Waters tries to get him to think about death. Apparently his take on 'violence' as heard on the end of 'Us and Them' was inspired by a car driver who nearly knocked him off his bike into the path of another car ('His last words to me were 'long haired git' and retribution was close at hand...definitely justified yeah...if you give them a short sharp shock and they won't do it again, dig it? I mean he got off light because I could have given him a thrashing, I only 'it 'im once. Hahahahahahahaha!!!')  This is Roger the Hat on death: a hippie chick reads his 'head' and tells him he loves new experiences: 'Death? Wow! What is it man, you tell me? ...I won't have had it before so I'll be alright, live for today gone tomorrow that's me. I Don't worry about it, never have done...something new innit?...One of those things that never goes out of fashion innit? Hahahahahahahaha!!!!'


Right, that's all for this week - join us next week when we'll be looking at the top thirty-three-and-a-third unreleased Neil Young songs!

A Now Complete List Of Pink Floyd and Related Articles To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:




‘Wish You Were Here’ (1975) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-1975.html

‘Animals’ (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/pink-floyd-animals-1977.html

'The Wall' (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-76-pink-floyd-wall-1979.html

'The Final Cut' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/pink-floyd-final-cut-1983.html

'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' (1987) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/12/pink-floyd-momentary-lapse-of-reason.html

'Amused To Death' (Waters) (1992) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-96-roger-watters-amused-to-death.html


The Best Unreleased Pink Floyd Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-best-unreleased-pink-floyd-songs.html

Surviving TV Clips 1965-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-surviving-tv-clipsfilm.html

Non-Album Songs 1966-2000 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-non-album-songs-1966-2009.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part One 1965-1978 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Two 1980-1989 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums_31.html


Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Three 1990-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html

Landmark Concerts and Key Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/pink-floyd-landmark-concerts-and-key.html

Essay: Why Absence Makes The Sales Grow Stronger http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/pink-floyd-essay-why-absence-makes.html
Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)