Pink Floyd

In a Facebook conversation yesterday and today I am reminded of one of the formative musical experiences of my youth: attending Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" tour concert in, I think 1973, at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. I was around 14 and should not have been going to concerts without an adult. Which makes it all the more memorable and wild. I'll talk about that specifically some other time, if anyone is interested.

Pink Floyd was a huge influence on my thinking at that age and I was the gleeful mark for their double album set "Ummagumma," a reissue of two earlier releases, some of which included the now-legendary Syd Barrett. It was trippy music, scornful of societal convention, ambiguous in its message, childlike in its playful interplay of groove and raw sound and wise to the ways of traditional musical drama. The words represented the tip of the iceberg, the story unfolded in the music and that's a lesson I've never forgotten. "Ummagumma" had such pensive titles as "Careful With that Ax, Eugene"--as I recall it was a long instrumental but for one line, the title, which crescendoes into a scream. Ha! Beautiful.

Classical music offers far more interesting examples of all these things and eventually I was won over by the longhairs, particularly those who similarly pushed the envelope of listener expectation: Ives, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Varese and most of all Messiaen--they became the heroes of my college days. While I've lost my taste for Pink Floyd's music now--to adult ears its posturing, self-conscious and pretty superficial, particularly when the lyrics make sense--I'm grateful to it for its part in luring me into a larger world.