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Great Gigging
Well, shit.
I know this is a song for Syd, but Wright - whose contributions to the band were easily taken for granted - was responsible for good portions of this. If Floyd rarely spoke with his voice as it lurched along its career arc from playful goon to anguished victim, his patient, thick riffs both perfectly complemented the similar styles of Gilmour and Mason and provided a solid sonic landscape upon which all the drama could play out.Plus, this recording from a date on the Animals tour is one of my most prized CDs. The quality might be erratic, and there're those unfortunate fade outs in the 2nd track to cover missing sections (the version I owned on LP just stopped and re-started, yikes), but the band was fucking on that night. Most every song was elongated to good effect, including a ferocious seventeen-plus minute version of "Pigs (Three Different Ones," the lovely lost coda to "Pigs on the Wing, Part II," and an awesome encore of "Careful with That Axe, Eugene."
Together, these two halves of "Shine On" stretch past thirty-six minutes. When the song gets lost and jammy, it does so in a fiery, sloppy way that makes you feel the final section's peace is earned.
This was an LP I wore down to the nubs. I was a married dude then with a
relationship going sideways, a very bad back and a job in retail that
sucked.
I had learned to meditate and used this music as my mantra to get
off. I had been a dedicated jock and would usually use running or riding my
bike to get off but the bad back ended that. I was living the Canadian
version of the American dream or perhaps nightmare and it was killing me by
inches.