Keep the change you filthy Animals

I mentioned that Pink Floyd was a twisting knobs in the studio kind of band. Now that their original deal with EMI is over, i can tell you that their deal was a lower percentage of sales in return for unlimited studio time. I can also tell you that that's not a deal: it's the made up thing that Pink Floyd thought was a good trade off. In reality, from a bookkeeping standpoint, the band pays for everything. A record deal has always been, and will always be, a corporation buying a band's music outright and using it to turn their own profit. When that profit is really good, they let you keep the change. Pink Floyd got to keep millions off the trillions of dollars their music actually generated. We can argue about expenses and legal fees and what have you, but Jason Newstead can tell you that once he passed his probationary period, they let him in on a little secret called money management (not of the venture capital variety) and he never had to work another day in his life before the Black Album even hit the shelves, because James and Lars may have their personal quirks, but they learned real quick how to effectively scream get off my lawn. Some people watch their friends nose dive into an empty swimming pool and say no thanks, i'll keep every penny you drop and save it for later.

Still though, Roger has a point. Money is only useful for spending, and how many people really dream of being super famous and homeless at the same time. I own 4 mansions and 12 airplanes, but i actually live at 37 different Ramada Inns with our lunatic road crew. Yay.

I'm getting off topic again. Roger Waters read Animal Farm one time and said "Storm. Make me a giant inflatable pig so i can hate our fans and use that anger to write a rock opera."

Does anybody like Animals? I've heard it a couple times but i can't recall any of the songs except Pigs on the Wing. Maybe i can and i forgot they were from Animals. Either way, not a high profile album in their catalog.

Except for it's relationship to punk rock. It's Johnny Rotten's fault. He started it. He didn't mean to, he just didn't realize that he was the inventor of sarcasm by writing "i hate" on his Pink Floyd t-shirt. He liked Pink Floyd. I don't know that he himself ever read Animal Farm, but Waters and Lydon both clearly agreed that Conservative 70s Britain was pretty terrible. Nick Mason thought punk was awesome and gladly produced The Damned's second album at the same church complex they turned into a studio after the EMI deal was over for Animals.

"Dogs" is Gilmour's best work according to critics (and his only contribution since he left to be with his wife and newborn baby like an adult, and Roger and Nick accidentally deleted all the other stuff he had recorded beforehand), so maybe i should give it a proper listen. But before we do that, i'd like to get off track again.

The one good thing about our messed up international copyright laws is that you can't copyright an idea. Otherwise, describing England's social classes as different animals would have been prohibitively expensive. Where's my inflatable pig, Stormy storm?

Issues of "dinosaur rock" aside, the inflatable pig exploded more than twice. It wasn't supposed to explode, but inflammable gasses are flammable. What really set Waters off was the suspicion that they were getting ripped off at the door. He hired a helicopter and did a crowd calculation at Soldier Field. Turns out 20,000+ over "sold out" capacity meant over $600,000 flew right over their heads and landed in someone else's pocket without exploding shrapnel into the crowd. Gilmour said "welp, now we've done everything, guess i should look for something meaningful to do." Oh, we're not done yet Davey boy. Not by a long shot.

Oh yeah, we're listening to an album of theirs or something.

No, i'm sorry. David Gilmour is a lot if things, but a good Brian May style guitarchestra player isn't one of them. This is not his best anything. Whatever song he thought he was soloing over might be good, but this is like bizarro Doobie Brothers meets the Eagles. It's a stepping stone, sure, but there's way better Gilmour before this and in the future.

Look, look! I was wrong. "Sleazy" is credited with photography. Industrial meets prog at last!

I can't disagree, "Pigs" is just a rehash of Have A Cigar. It is.

Ok. The story makes sense, i guess. Predators, despots, and the general public are sheep, who eventually rise up and put a stop to all of it. It's totally relevant (then and right now), but the album isn't good. It's not bad bad, but it's throwaway soundtrack type stuff. They aren't getting along with each other personally, and the music suffers. Gilmour wasn't there to make the end result not suck, but instead of realizing that he needed his actual friends, Roger decided to build a wall....

The Wall