BOOKED

i read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad....

A day in the life- the beatles


i only got to know about the death of richard wright, the keyboardist of pink floyd from a small comment, in a guardian blog - just an aside really - by one of the guys discussing about the death of the american writer david foster wallace a few days back.

like many of you i was saddened by david foster wallace's suicide . although i'm not unfamiliar with his name , i am completely ignorant of how good he was as a writer. i've never read any of his works and so the sadness was more on an intellectual level. but richard wright was completely different.

the moment i read that little oh by the way, richard wright died today in that guardian blog i had a lump in my throat and i wanted to cry. here is a band that is my all time favorite, that has given me so much listening pleasure , that has produced some of the most amazing rock music the world has ever known and now one of the key members is gone forever. it is as if one of my loved ones has passed away.

i came to discover pink floyd music a long long way back when i was in my late teens. it was the dark side of the moon - perhaps their most famous album and arguably the best rock album ever . the first time i came to know about the band was through a now defunct local music magazine fanfare but didn't actually bought the album until i was in matriculation college and i've never stop listening to this album even to this day. i've probably listen to this album thousands of times. but an interesting aside; one of the band members -nick mason the drummer i think it was - surprisingly mentioned in one of their video albums the making of the dark side of the moon released recently (2003) that he has never in his life listened to the album in it's entirety.


over the years i've collected all their studio albums ( and some lives and videos) from the earliest the piper at the gates of dawn (1967) to their last the division bell (1994). i remember the second album (after the dark side of the moon) that i bought was relics and i was completely drugged out by careful with that axe eugene. it was the tail end of 'far out, man' days and i was firmly on this side of the fence although i'm proud to say that i've never touch any drug in my life. pink floyd music was and is drug enough for me. in those days like today you can devide music lovers - like anything else- into those with eclectic taste and those who listen to assholes like cliff richard.

there was this art house cinema near where i stayed during may matriculation days that used to play all sort of art house movies like padre padrone , decameron and many others and one of the movies i went to one wintry night was live at pompeii and i was spaced out by songs like a saucerful of secrets and decided there and then to collect all their albums which i managed to do in time. around the same time or perhaps a bit later i used to listen to a sydney radio station 2JJ (two double J) at night. I would have listened in the day time as well but for the fact that i stayed far away down south in tasmania at that time and i could only get the sydney reception in the middle of the night. and so i listened to this great deejay george wayne - amazing that i can still remember his name after all these years- playing all the great prog rock songs by the like of king crimson, genesis (peter gabriel era), hawkwind, yes and the rest. and the thing i remember about him was that he always played echoes (pt 2 here)from meddle - which really spaced me out.

i could go on and on about their albums , how completely 'spaced out' their atom heart mother is, and so is the album wish you were here and animals and the wall and even their later albums are far superior than most of the rubbish that we get these days. i may be still stuck in the brain addled days of the seventies when it comes to music but the sad fact is they don't make this kind of music anymore. today we are barraged by hip hop rubbish and three minute ditties by silly girl singers and i'm nostalgic for those spaced out days and the ultimate spaced out song is none other than the great gig in the sky from the dark side of the moon a song composed by richard wright ...and sadly now rick is gone. i miss him dearly already. RIP