The THIRD 100 from 1971. #1: Echoes (1 Viewer)

[FairWarning]

Very nice list here.  A lot of great deeper cuts.

 

[Pip's Invitation]

Glad you were able to give the demographic what it craved, Pip. It seems to have been a nice meeting of personal taste and quality aligning with others' tastes. You've given an FFA recognition to some art forms that would be lost to history as a pop music footnote if not for the survivors and lovers of those scenes. 

Thanks. It is a little easier to do that when 200 songs are off the board and the areas that were un- or under-addressed are not too difficult to identify.

 

[zamboni]

1. Echoes -- Pink Floyd (from Meddle)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53N99Nim6WE

This is an undeniably impressive and important song, not only for Pink Floyd's career, but for the development of the rock scene in 1971. I even have a post at the end of Bracie's thread asking where it is. 

The song was developed from several different exercises and experiments and combined into one glorious work (original title: Nothing, Parts 1-24). Each passage is stunning and reveals new things on repeated listens. The pinnacle IMO is the "funky section," which starts just after the 7-minute mark and lasts until about the 11-minute mark. Roger Waters and Nick Mason lock into a tight groove while Rick Wright interjects with ominous organ squalls and David Gilmour absolutely destroys on slide guitar. But the rest of the work is just as thrilling. The passage after the "funky section" is one of the most radical and experimental the band ever committed to wax (and they did a lot of that in their early years), featuring ungodly sounds Gilmour made by plugging a wah-wah pedal in the wrong way (which Mason later said was a mishap they kept because it sounded so cool.) The first 7 minutes and the last 7 minutes are more in line with what you'd expect to hear from a prog band of the era, and more than anything else from Meddle or their records before it point toward the sound they would assume for the rest of the '70s that would make them icons. 

The Live at Pompeii version may be even better. 

After 1975, live performances by the band or its members have been rare, but I have been fortunate enough to catch two of them. Echoes opened the first 12 shows on their 1987 North American tour, one of which (at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia) I attended, and Gilmour performed it (with Wright in his backing band) on his 2006 tour, which I caught at Radio City Music Hall. 

Thank you all for paying attention and following along, which made the work I put in to compile this list more than worth it. 

Nailed it, as I knew you would.

I'll also give a shout out to Gilmour's 2006 performance at Gdansk, which I believe was the end of the tour you saw. It's up there IMO with any of Floyd's renditions, including the studio version and Pompeii. The funky part starts at the 6:35 mark and lasts a full 5 minutes, with great interplay between Gilmour and Wright. This version was particularly sad in that it was Rick's last recording with Floyd before he passed two years later (right before the Gdansk album was released). 

 

[Pip's Invitation]

Nailed it, as I knew you would.

I'll also give a shout out to Gilmour's 2006 performance at Gdansk, which I believe was the end of the tour you saw. It's Up there IMO with any of Floyd's renditions, including the studio version and Pompeii. The funky part starts at the 6:35 mark and lasts a full 5 minutes, with great interplay between Gilmour and Wright. This version was particularly sad in that it was Rick's last recording with Floyd before he passed two years later (right before the Gdansk album was released). 

Yep, that's a great version. Gilmour stopped playing it after Wright died because he associated it with Wright (who sang the co-lead with Gilmour and wrote most of the first section that is reprised toward the end). Similarly, when Mason began touring with Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, he did not perform Echoes because he associated it with Wright, with the exception of a tour called "The Echoes Tour."

Members of Ween and some of their friends have a side project called Echoes where their entire set consists of a very long version of Echoes. 

 

[BroncoFreak_2K3]

1. Echoes -- Pink Floyd (from Meddle)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53N99Nim6WE

This is an undeniably impressive and important song, not only for Pink Floyd's career, but for the development of the rock scene in 1971. I even have a post at the end of Bracie's thread asking where it is. 

The song was developed from several different exercises and experiments and combined into one glorious work (original title: Nothing, Parts 1-24). Each passage is stunning and reveals new things on repeated listens. The pinnacle IMO is the "funky section," which starts just after the 7-minute mark and lasts until about the 11-minute mark. Roger Waters and Nick Mason lock into a tight groove while Rick Wright interjects with ominous organ squalls and David Gilmour absolutely destroys on slide guitar. But the rest of the work is just as thrilling. The passage after the "funky section" is one of the most radical and experimental the band ever committed to wax (and they did a lot of that in their early years), featuring ungodly sounds Gilmour made by plugging a wah-wah pedal in the wrong way (which Mason later said was a mishap they kept because it sounded so cool.) The first 7 minutes and the last 7 minutes are more in line with what you'd expect to hear from a prog band of the era, and more than anything else from Meddle or their records before it point toward the sound they would assume for the rest of the '70s that would make them icons. 

The Live at Pompeii version may be even better. 

After 1975, live performances by the band or its members have been rare, but I have been fortunate enough to catch two of them. Echoes opened the first 12 shows on their 1987 North American tour, one of which (at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia) I attended, and Gilmour performed it (with Wright in his backing band) on his 2006 tour, which I caught at Radio City Music Hall. 

Thank you all for paying attention and following along, which made the work I put in to compile this list more than worth it. 

Love the Live at Pompeii version of this song.

Great List!

 

[zamboni]

Members of Ween and some of their friends have a side project called Echoes where their entire set consists of a very long version of Echoes. 

As long as we're adding Echoes covers, I've always loved the California Guitar Trio's version - just three wizards on guitar with no vocals. Performance back in 2012

 

[zamboni]

Love the Live at Pompeii version of this song.

The actual Pompeii amphitheater has a great exhibit dedicated to Floyd's performance there, just in case you ever happen to be in the neighborhood. Saw it back in 2019 and had a hard time leaving it.

 

[wikkidpissah]

1971 Beat Club performance of Yours Is No Disgrace

Amazing song in its own right in the studio, but to watch them doing it live with all its intricacies is even more special.

Howe's work is so valuable to that product - sets the rythmic tone like Keith Richards, solos like a regular guitar god AND fills like a drummer. astounded every time -

 

[wikkidpissah]

1. Echoes -- Pink Floyd (from Meddle)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53N99Nim6WE

This is an undeniably impressive and important song, not only for Pink Floyd's career, but for the development of the rock scene in 1971. I even have a post at the end of Bracie's thread asking where it is. 

The song was developed from several different exercises and experiments and combined into one glorious work (original title: Nothing, Parts 1-24). Each passage is stunning and reveals new things on repeated listens. The pinnacle IMO is the "funky section," which starts just after the 7-minute mark and lasts until about the 11-minute mark. Roger Waters and Nick Mason lock into a tight groove while Rick Wright interjects with ominous organ squalls and David Gilmour absolutely destroys on slide guitar. But the rest of the work is just as thrilling. The passage after the "funky section" is one of the most radical and experimental the band ever committed to wax (and they did a lot of that in their early years), featuring ungodly sounds Gilmour made by plugging a wah-wah pedal in the wrong way (which Mason later said was a mishap they kept because it sounded so cool.) The first 7 minutes and the last 7 minutes are more in line with what you'd expect to hear from a prog band of the era, and more than anything else from Meddle or their records before it point toward the sound they would assume for the rest of the '70s that would make them icons. 

The Live at Pompeii version may be even better. 

After 1975, live performances by the band or its members have been rare, but I have been fortunate enough to catch two of them. Echoes opened the first 12 shows on their 1987 North American tour, one of which (at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia) I attended, and Gilmour performed it (with Wright in his backing band) on his 2006 tour, which I caught at Radio City Music Hall. 

Thank you all for paying attention and following along, which made the work I put in to compile this list more than worth it. 

speaking of great guitarists..........

THIS is what made the Pink Floyd you younger folk became so attached to. for those of us who'd piled into vans & and VW busses to see the Floyd @ Boston's Music Hall (the band's avowed favorite venue in the world) for Saucerful, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother (where they put speakers around the hall and Richard Wright manipulated the movement of sound with a giant silver joystick so you could hear Alan cross the hall during his Psychedelic Breakfast), Meddle was the beginning of the end. For all its success, Dark Side was deemed a sellout by the faithful.

Unfortunately, all they saw was the difference, failing to recognize within it the outgrowth of the murderous songstrength of which David Gilmour was capable. The great space and profundity that he first created in Echoes became a soundscape in which we could invest ourselves before Gilmour's dreamy vocals world assure us that our worlds were real & valuable and tuck us in safe to rest up for the next (and gave room for Waters to later vent his righteous outrage). The Glimour epics are not complicated, especially by prog standards, and kinda prove that complexity alone will always defeat itself. The highest music captures the meaning we want life to have, and it's simply not done much better than here.

thx, Pip, for the real (if not best) 1971, music's greatest season.

 

[Binky The Doormat]

really enjoyed it Pip - thanks for the great ride man! 

 

[BobbyLayne]

Glad you were able to give the demographic what it craved, Pip. It seems to have been a nice meeting of personal taste and quality aligning with others' tastes. You've given an FFA recognition to some art forms that would be lost to history as a pop music footnote if not for the survivors and lovers of those scenes. 

here, here 

Great job @Pip's Invitation was fun to follow, much appreciated