Pink Floyd, "Careful With That Axe, Eugene"
I expect to be out and about today, mostly with wonderful personal stuff, so here's some more filler. The Floyd, today, with a '73 performance of one of their live staples, "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" (also recorded and performed under other guises, e.g. "Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up").
A personal inversion that I may or may not have remarked on in the past: when I was young, my favorite Floyd stuff probably tended towards the later Waters stuff (e.g. The Wall) while in my old age I increasingly go back to those core performances from the early '70s when The Floyd were really in their prime.
While "CWTAE" (as it's frequently labeled on boots) goes back to the late '60s, '73 (when this version was apparently filmed) was a good year for the band: the year previous, they'd recorded a tossed-off soundtrack for Barbet Schroeder that remains one of my personal top-three Floyd records and just a few months before this was apparently filmed they'd released another one of my top three faves and (arguably) their masterpiece. As much as I love Wish You Were Here (easily my favorite Floyd album) and really, really like Animals, it probably didn't get much better than 1973 for these guys: Dark Side Of The Moon was a hit but it hadn't ruined their lives yet, they'd just renegotiated or were in the process of renegotiating their record deals (Dark Side would be the last Floyd album to be originally distributed in the U.S. on Capitol's struggling Harvest subsidiary; Floyd was in the process of working out a much better American distribution deal with Columbia even while they recorded Dark Side), the boys were still getting along and weren't yet dealing with the personal difficulties that would begin to flare up during the "Household Objects"/Wish You Were Here sessions. It makes for good music, is the important thing.
I could go on and on like that, you know. Hope everybody's enjoying their Saturday!
While "CWTAE" (as it's frequently labeled on boots) goes back to the late '60s, '73 (when this version was apparently filmed) was a good year for the band: the year previous, they'd recorded a tossed-off soundtrack for Barbet Schroeder that remains one of my personal top-three Floyd records and just a few months before this was apparently filmed they'd released another one of my top three faves and (arguably) their masterpiece. As much as I love Wish You Were Here (easily my favorite Floyd album) and really, really like Animals, it probably didn't get much better than 1973 for these guys: Dark Side Of The Moon was a hit but it hadn't ruined their lives yet, they'd just renegotiated or were in the process of renegotiating their record deals (Dark Side would be the last Floyd album to be originally distributed in the U.S. on Capitol's struggling Harvest subsidiary; Floyd was in the process of working out a much better American distribution deal with Columbia even while they recorded Dark Side), the boys were still getting along and weren't yet dealing with the personal difficulties that would begin to flare up during the "Household Objects"/Wish You Were Here sessions. It makes for good music, is the important thing.
I could go on and on like that, you know. Hope everybody's enjoying their Saturday!
Comments