Count Floyd

I acquired my very first Pink Floyd music yesterday. I never thought that I liked the group ever since seventh grade at the harrowing Brittany Middle School, when 13-year-old stoners were into them. That was about the time that Dark Side of the Moon came out. I resisted, thinking that it might make me get into drugs or something, and might get in the way of my under-age drinking with the local pipe band.

But I heard “Comfortably Numb” (a PF song that I always liked) while watching the excellent movie, About A Boy, so I decided to download it and, what the hell, DSOTM, too.

Beautiful stuff, that. Everyone in the Western World will be familiar with the group’s catchier music, but listening to “Time” you just have to admire the work that must have gone in to engineering all those analog tapes. These boys were well ahead of their time.

Question: Is there a pipe band that’s musically ahead of its time? Unfortunately, competition (or, more accurately, the requirements we set for them and the judges we assign to them) keeps the reins on the creativity of bands. Can a pipe band the musical equivalent of Pink Floyd actually exist today and be noticed? I think not.