Pink Floyd

Classic Rock radio may have squeezed this one drier than dry, but Dark Side remains an unparalleled achievement (the anal retentive masterpiece has been on the charts for 24 years). Interestingly, one reason Syd Barrett got kicked out in 1968 was his desire to add saxophones and a female singer to the group.

One of Britain's most successful and long lived avant-garde rock bands, Pink Floyd emerged
relatively unsullied from the mire of mid-Sixties British psychedelic music as early
experimenters with outer space concepts. Although that phase of the band's development
was of short duration, Pink Floyd have from that time been the pop scene's preeminent
techno-rockers: four musicians with a command of electronic instruments who... More >

With its technological mastery and its conventional wisdom once-removed, this is a kitsch masterpiece--taken too seriously by definition, but not without charm. It may sell on sheer aural sensationalism, but the studio effects do transmute David Gilmour's guitar solos into something more than they were when he played them. Its taped speech fragments may be old hat, but for once they cohere musically. And if its pessimism is received, that doesn't make the ideas untrue--there are even times, especially when Dick Parry's saxophone undercuts the electronic pomp, when this record brings its cliches to life, which is what pop is supposed to do, even the kind with delusions of grandeur. (Grade - B)