Long Gag of Reason – VG

What does the perpetual feud between members and former members of dinosaur rock Pink Floyd say about our time? Not very clean.

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I know at least three people who would click on this comment: Geisel, Ole Michael, and Odd Thomas.

Hopefully someone else will share my deep interest in the now old rock band Pink Floyd.

So we drive.

Because that’s strange. Pink Floyd – one of the “greatest” orchestras in rock history, with an iconic and special discography, with millions (possibly billions) of fans around the world – never ceases to amaze.

Anyway, I still allow myself to be intrigued, and it’s been like that since I was a little girl, maybe only 3 or 4 years old, I was exposed to weird Pink Floyd music and even more bizarre cover art (young people can google “album cover”) ), at home in my grandmother’s living room at Svedjanveien in Steinkjer.

Credit, and perhaps the blame, for this pathology goes to two of my music-fueled uncles. But enough about it.

Why write a commentary in Norway’s largest online newspaper about Pink Floyd, in 2022, almost 50 years after the group’s most famous LP “Dark Side Of The Moon” (they’ve only released seven “official” LPs since)?

Yes, now you will hear: Pink Floyd is interfering in the devastating culture war, in an almost bizarre way.

In the main roles we find Pink Floyd’s director of today, guitar god and philanthropist David Gilmore (the hero) and the former director of Pink Floyd, the guitarist, conceptual and self-proclaimed “creative genius” Roger Waters (the anti-hero).

These two gray beards have been arguing for (at least) 40 years. A severe irreconcilable quarrel – ugly, ugly and ignorant. When I was a teenager and long gone from Floyd, I threw myself not only into the beautiful and wonderful music, but also into the captivating feud between the two men, who together made so much great music.

I instinctively sympathized with Gilmore, who revived the band after Waters said goodbye in 1985 after declaring the others “pies” without talent (he’s a creative genius, you know).

Gilmour’s Pink Floyd became a totally insane and possibly somewhat improbable success, and Waters ended up dying: sour, sizzling, and troweled, as we say in Tronder.

The recordings “A Momenary Lapse of Reason” (1987) and “The Division Bell” (1994) sold like birch in an electric crunch, and the tours were bigger and more profitable than any other orchestra could show (a possible exception for Rolling Stones). Pink Floyd were one of the biggest bands in the world again, and quite apart from everything else that was happening on the music front, almost as their own genre.

In 2005, they were reunited, and there was complete chaos over everything and everyone. At the amazing Live 8 party in Hyde Park, London, and what a festive time. Four seniors (partially) elicit a smiling interaction. “Pigs may fly,” the English say about what is actually quite improbable.

The pig took Floyd to the wings again for a quarter of an hour (they played four songs, his eyes were not dry). Three years later, keyboardist and sound designer Richard Wright died, and then quarrels began again.

Then came social media.

We are here at the heart of the matter. Floyd’s feud was ugly, but also very entertaining, while the music press continued. On Facebook, it has evolved into pure evil.

It got especially bad in 2018, when the somewhat resurrected Waters, a huge hit with his lavish and nostalgic tours, launched a direct attack on Gilmore over controversies over a remixed version of the album “The Animals” from 1977.

In a rather nasty Facebook video, Waters blasted gallmore Gilmore (and his wife, writer Polly Samson), lamenting the fact that he himself wasn’t allowed to share his stuff on Pink Floyd’s Facebook page, though, ie Waters, left. The band in 1985.

Gilmore, for his part, kept his mouth shut. Waters grumbled, and got John Karen’s backing for Gilmore’s Jane Karen (they together wrote the hit Pigeon Pink Floyd “learning to fly” (1987)), who changed his stance during the race and now pours out his love for Waters as he bucks his former boss Gilmore. Very open scene. on Facebook.

Then Putin launched a ruthless attack on Ukraine.

Gilmore, a philanthropist who sold all his harpsichords (almost all) at a massive auction at Christie’s in London and gave all the money (140 million) to good causes, was furious at Putin’s attack on the neighboring country. Along with drummer Nick Mason, he brought the band’s percussive back together and made one Very Pink Floyd version From the Ukrainian national anthem “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna”.

Very touching, in fact, and also personally, for Gilmore’s son-in-law and mother of one of his great-grandchildren, she is from Ukraine.

For his part, Waters did just the opposite: As a British counterpart to the old far-left extremists in Norway, he blamed NATO for Putin’s war on Ukraine, refused to support President Zelensky and Western governments’ backing of hard-weapons pressure on the Ukrainian people.

fuel launchers, snarls Against Western governments, accuses Zelensky of representing “ultra-nationalists”.

It sounds like an echo of the Kremlin’s propaganda.

This is how the days go by. Every time Pink Floyd (with Gilmour on her head) posts something on Facebook, Waters fans laugh with smiles and troll in the comments section. One can take for granted that some of these have their work in Russian trolley mills.

All the worst of social media — hate, sarcasm, echo chambers, trenches — is represented in Pink Floyd’s Facebook war. Two remnants of experimental rockers, full of SoMe ugliness.

This is especially true of him, then, who once wrote the beautiful and humane text of the timeless classic “I wish you were here”.

Roger Waters now appears in the ready-made ’70s image of Radies completely unable to understand his contemporaries – as a long-term slip of mind.

And in a week the remix of “Animals” will arrive.

I look up to her as a boy.