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#22 – I actually heard a song from the Pink Floyd “The Dark Side of the Moon” album being used to flog something or other and I almost fainted, then I almost puked.
Yeah…
It would sure suck if working musicians were paid for their work.
Well, OFTLO, you’re right, to a point; but those particular lads are now established members of the landed gentry – light-years from being ‘working musicians’ – and I’ll also say few deserve their success more.
HOWever – what Cinaedh is clearly alluding to is the appearance of a common or garden-variety ‘sellout’, whereby once-idealistic champions of countercultural values sacrifice those values for personal gain.
Until such time as I see just what product or service is being flogged with the assistance of the Floyd’s music, I’ll have to reserve judgement. But I strongly suspect that it’s something they all agree is not hypocritical of them to endorse by permitting use of their art to promote it. Mssrs. Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright, I believe, have too much character to simply sell out.
#31 and #32
“It would sure suck if working musicians were paid for their work.”
I’m a good capitalist but I guess the 60’s somehow twisted my mind over a few things. Back then, the idea of rock musicians “selling out” was so ludicrous, no-one would even have considered the possibility.
Things change.
“Until such time as I see just what product or service is being flogged with the assistance of the Floyd’s music, I’ll have to reserve judgment.”
I do apologize for not remembering but apparently I’ve destroyed the contents of those particular sectors of my hardware. Now I know what XP feels like.
Speaking of real sellouts – and apropos to your comment –
Pop quiz:
What popular product was promoted with a Stones song that features the unintentionally ironic refrain, “You make a grown man cry”? 🙂
#34 – Lauren the Ghoti
I had to cheat and look it up. Neither Micro$oft nor the Stones seem to have whatever it is that “a soul” used to mean. Perhaps the concept is terminally passée.
Lauren and Cina…
I just don’t care all that much.
For my money, Pink Floyd is probably the most important band of the 1970s, and I say this of an era that ran a gamut with David Bowie and The Velvet Underground on one end and The Clash and The Talking Heads on the other… But do I think any less of the enormous artistic success of Pink Floyd because these guys took some royalty checks to allow some marketers to use a bit of a Floyd classic in a commercial? Frankly… No… And if I were a musician of that, or any reasonable caliber, I’d gladly license my music to help with the house payments… Or in Pink Floyd’s case, the castle payments.
But these guys weren’t magical or somehow more brilliant than anyone else or royal… They were contemporaries of Brian Eno and Fleetwood Mac… Elvis Costello and Led Zeppelin… T-Rex and Depeche Mode (yes, their first LP released in 1977)… So there was a lot of brilliance to go around and all these guys got into the business of creating soundtracks for us to romanticize our youth with for the same reason… to make money.
And I’ll tell you this… In 30 years there will be guys on a forum talking about Radiohead with all the passion and reverence we afford Pink Floyd today, and they’ll be right to do it because those guys are the 21st Century’s first Pink Floyd… and there will be a Toyota Electric SUV with a million horsepower and background music lifted from OK Computer by Radiohead and someone on FutureDvorak.org lamenting how these great icons of rock sold out.
I just hope I’m still here and still listening to new music.
====
And by the way, Start Me Up was Microsoft’s second choice. The first choice was The End Of The World As We Know It but at the time, REM wouldn’t sell them the rights.
You were doing great until the 4th para…
Sorry, but – as Bela Lugosi said – I beg to differ. What you’re saying about PF is exactly what many people deades and centuries ago were saying about the timeless literary, artistic and musical geniuses of their time, dismissing them as transitory. But those people would be sore amazed to know exactly which ones would stand the test of time and are still with us.
Even though they’re not necessarily the very greatest of all among the first of all (of course they’re obviously up there amongst them), I still have no doubt in my mind that Pink Floyd – and the Beatles – will be listened to by our descendants living offplanet. Maybe T Dream, too. Pioneers who also happen to be supremely great have a tendency to last. Others will be revived and brought back from their current relative obscurity, as the rest of humanity catches up belately with their art – as I suspect innovators like Yes and King Crimson may do.
30 years from now, listen for “Radiowho? 😉