The 90's were ending and so was my music choices. Grunge had died when Kurt Cobain left us (however that was) and I was delving deep into the Beatles. But I wanted more. I was emerging from High School and had some frustration in my life. Failed relationships, job woes and just not really having a place where I "fit" yet. I had not discovered my path. So what is a natural music for that type of time in my life? METAL, of course! Shane had got me into Metallica, Megadeth and Pantera. Our band Arsenic played covers of their songs at shows and it really got my blood pumping. I saw Metallica live in 97 and it was a killer show. I was big into Korn too for the year or so they were popular. Something about the sound was just different and I liked it. I even wore the Adidas pants like they did. But then I read an article about them selling the rights for them to wear Fubu clothes instead. It felt like a sell out to me, and I dropped liking them. Plus I was starting to get less angry about things. I wanted something mellower, softer. Something new, something more "me" with more heart to it.
U2 had always been there and I liked them, but never got into them. It was with the release of their album "Pop" that I jumped in fully. Its odd cause its not my favorite by them now. But I went back and checked out all their albums and fell in love with them. I saw them live in 2001 and in 2011. And I plan to see them on every tour they do from now until one of us croaks.
But the REAL game chanter was to come...
Pink Floyd. My absolute favorite band of all time. The undisputed champion. I discovered Floyd through two people. Tim Shoun, who was our guitarist in Arsenic at the time loaned me his copies of The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon. The other person was Ted Gross. We were big into renting these deep movies and writing poems and shit around that time, even back in high school. I had heard about Pink Floyd's THE WALL the movie and we decided to rent it and watch it. I was blown the fuck away. I had already knew a lot of the songs and something about the music just spoke to me. The things I was going through, the failures of relationships I had up till that point, the fact that I always looked to my past to say this fucked me up, or that did too... well, I learned the concept of building a wall around yourself. It took me years to dissect that album to get all aspects of it. I wrote papers in college about it. The Wall stands as my favorite album of all time. From 1997-2000, I bought every single Floyd album, VHS and DVD available. I had huge posters and wall hangings in my apartments displaying my love for their albums. I had rare promo posters and bootleg concerts from all eras of the band. I bought every single book, shot glass, pin set related to them. Easily: My favorite band of all time.
I don't know why really. Something about the lyrics. They were biting, honest and playful. David Gilmour's guitar was a mother fucker. What he could do with one note when he bent it. Man it just travels into someplace, some time inside of you and never comes out. But even with all of this, I had to overcome the pain of realizing the deep bitter divide within the band. Roger Waters had left Floyd and it wasn't a pretty divorce. David and Roger fought hard over the years. It was tough to swallow. How could something I learned to love so much deteriorate like this? Why couldn't they be more like U2, brothers in music till the end? I saw Roger Waters live in 1999 and it was a great show. I had grown to love his solo stuff and the show was half Floyd, half his stuff. It was great. In 2010, I saw him perform THE WALL live in Chicago and it was in my top five favorite concerts I had ever been to. I saw the entire stage show that I had read and dreamed about seeing. Fully modernized and homaging the 1980-81 tour at the same time. But the best part was in 2005 when I read the rumors and got confirmation that Floyd were putting aside their differences and reuniting at the Live 8 show in London for charity. I didn't believe it. After reading and hoping for years and years that they would put aside their fight and do this, I just couldn't believe it. As I read the official statement from Gilmour, I teared up. I got to hear a stream of the show online. My wife went out and got me the music box set and I watched their set twice, tears streaming the whole time. There they were, on stage once again.
And it would be the last time. Rick Wright, beloved songwriter and keyboardist for the band passed away in 2008 from cancer. A devestating blow and a complete guarantee that I would never see a full Pink Floyd concert. Although David and Roger would go on to perform together at a charity show or two and then David played Comfortably Numb with Roger on one of his WALL shows in London in 2011 (with a surprise appearance from drummer Nick Mason), thats as close as we'll likely get. But what I loved about it was at the Live 8 event, you had all these modern bands playing the stages. But it was good old dinosaur rock like Pink Floyd (reuniting after 25 years apart mind you), rusty as hell, they came on and blew the other bands out of the fucking water. Now THAT my friends, is music!
Next in part 4: The 2000s and progressive rock!
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