January 23, 2017

In 1976 Pink Floyd had been flying high with their incredibly successful “The Dark Side Of The Moon” which was still on the album charts and would be for an additional 12 years. They had also had great success with their follow-up “Wish You Were Here” which met with commercial success even though the concept of the album centred around long lost bandmate Syd Barrett and their disdainful feelings toward the music business.

battersea-Pink-floyd

At this time the band decided to take a break from touring and instead, supplied with their somewhat increased earnings, turned their focus to building their own studio. They plowed in half a million pounds and took nearly a year to build it, but once finished, they entered the premises on Britannia Row in London’s Islington district to record their next album, ‘Animals’.

Due to their success and the rise of Roger Waters as the band’s creative conceptualist and lyricst, there were a lot of tensions within band due to creative disagreements, and after their huge success all of the band members had considered quitting at one point or another. Despite the tensions, Waters once again hopped in the drivers seat and this time steered the album’s concept in another direction: he turned his eye to society.

7f96f22964e5fa88258e4f4cc294a7bd

The album is more direct featuring confrontational lyrics loosely based on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. “Animal Farm” explores the corruption of power and human nature’s predisposition to destroy even the best ideals. The novel criticised stalinism and represented the people within the different levels of communist society as animals.

The pigs are the smartest animals and originate the idea of a rebellion against the farm’s oppressive owner. The pigs then run the farm and abuse their power. They use the dogs as secret police and to keep the other animals in line by killing those they considered traitors. The sheep are the mindless masses who follow the pigs’ every whim no matter how ridiculous they may seem.

Instead of critiquing stalin’s political system, Waters used the metaphor to apply to people in thrall with or subject to capitalism.

He in particular applied this concept to 1970’s Britain. The pigs are dictators scared of the unknown but want to decide whats best for all. The dogs are cutthroat corporate stooges who will use any means necessary to climb on top of the heap. The pigs use the dogs to keep the meek and subservient masses of sheep in line.

qtIhV

Waters felt compelled to write about society’s woes as he said at the time: “I think the world is a very, very sad fucking place. I find myself at the moment, backing away from it all. I think these are very mournful days. Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse and the seventies is a very baleful decade.”

There are three pigs, two of which represent real characters. The first is the corporate pig, the second is Margaret Thatcher, and the third is Mary Whitehouse, leader of the national viewers and listeners association who spoke of moral pollution in their censorship campaign. As Waters said “Why does she make such a fuss about everything if she isn’t motivated by fear? She’s frightened that we’re all being perverted. I was incensed by Mary Whitehouse, as I am by all book-burners and bible-bashers: people who foster that sexual guilt and shame, who try and deny people any opportunity to fulfill their sexual destiny.”

Of the sheep Waters had to say, “Sheep was my sense of what was to come down in England, and it did last summer with the riots in England, in Brixton and Toxeth, and it will happen again. It will always happen. There are too many of us in the world and we treat each other badly. We get obsessed with things, and there aren’t enough of things, products, to go ’round. If we’re persuaded it’s important to have them, that we’re nothing without them, and there aren’t enough of them to go ’round, the people without them are going to get angry. Content and discontent follow very closely the rise and fall on the graph of world recession and expansion.”

maxresdefault

As “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” did on “Wish You Were Here”, “Pigs On The Wing” sandwiches the rest of the album by opening and closing it in two parts. The song tempers the rage on the rest of the album as it is a love song for Waters new wife, Carolyne Christie. Guitarist David Gilmour felt it was a good fit as he explained, “There are moments when real ear-splitting, abrasive sound is right and moments when it just isn’t. You try to make each piece of music fulfill its potential.”

It serves as a reminder that amidst the never ending cycle of human social tragedy on a mass scale, as individuals we can find somebody we can share our lives with. Waters says the first verse means “Where would I be without you?” and the second verse says “In the face of all this other shit–you care, and that makes it possible to survive.”

With regards to the music, a couple of the songs had been developed when touring before “Wish You Were Here” was recorded, including “Raving And Drooling” which was reworked and reappeared as “Sheep” and “You’ve Got To Be Crazy” which became “Dogs”.

014 AnimalCover

Like “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, Pink Floyd use sound EFX to reinforce the lyrical content, this time complete with animal noises which are further played with by running them through vocoder and Leslie speakers.

The album cover was once again designed by Hipgnosis’ Storm Thorgeson and Aubrey Powell this time along with Roger Waters. It pictures a 30 foot inflatable pig tethered over Battersea Power Station in London. The shoot took three days to complete. On the first day they hired a marksman to shoot the pig if it broke free. They didn’t recall him on day two when the pig broke free and sailed through Heathrow airspace and eventually landed in a Kent field whose farmer was furious it had scared his cows.

When “Animals” was released in January 1977 it didn’t receive overwhelmingly great reviews. It came out in the punk and disco heyday and Johnny Rotten had taken to wearing a Pink Floyd shirt on which he scrawled “I hate”.

503c5_johnny-rotten-pink-floyd

This probably didn’t create a conducive setting and may have subconsciously influenced critics opinions of the album. They may have also been reacting to their overwhelming success and the band’s preference to shun the press. They didn’t even have a PR agent.

Here is a bit of the Rolling Stone review: “for Pink Floyd, space has always been the ultimate escape. It still is, but now definitions have shifted. The romance of outer space has been replaced by the horror of spacing out… Animals is Floyd’s attempt to deal with the realization that spacing out isn’t the answer either. There’s no exit; you get high, you come down again. That’s what Pink Floyd has done, with a thud.”

Once again critics were proved wrong as Animals is many Floyd fans’ favourite. It is also interesting to note that Johnny Rotten’s position was slightly rocked when Floyd drummer Nick Mason later went on to produce The Damned’s 1977 album “Music For Pleasure”.

Read Colleen’s blog about Pink Floyd ‘Wish You Were Here’ here.

Read Colleen’s album of the month blog for Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’ here.

Check out our Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’ Musical Lead-Up Playlist here.

Read Colleen’s album of the month blog for Pink Floyd ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ here.

from Classic Album Sundays
via IFTTT
Take a look at what’s in Pop at mandersmedia on Discogs

In 1972, guitarist Dennis Coffey had a hit with the funk-soul instrumental Scorpio, which reached #6 on the Billboard pop chart. He had been there many times before as a member of Motown’s Funk Brothers house band. That’s Coffey’s wah-wah guitar on the Temptations’ Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion and Psychedelic Shack. Coffey also can be heard on Diana Ross & the Supremes’ Someday We’ll Be Together and Freda Payne’s Band of Gold as well as many other soul-funk hits.

In addition to his sterling career as a soul sideman, Coffey has had an explosive album career between 1969 and 2011, including one of the finest scores for a blaxploitation film—Black Belt Jones (1974). His funk-soul studio albums are delightfully inventive and complex, with provocative instrumental covers of It’s Your Thang, Get Back, Whole Lotta Love, Never Can Say Goodbye and Fame. His Garden of the Moon from Evolution (1971) is a fascinating rock-funk work; Finger Lickin’ Good (1976), released in the middle of the disco era, includes punchy dance tracks; while Back Home (1977) is a clever mix of dance, funk and soul.

Now, thanks to Resonance Records and co-producer Zev Feldman, Coffey’s discography starts in 1968 instead of ’69. The newly released Dennis Coffey: Hot Coffey in the D features seven previously unreleased tracks that were recorded in 1968. Surprisingly, they showcase Coffey’s rock-jazz side that I never knew he had.

In ’68, when Coffey and his band appeared at Morey Baker’s Showplace Lounge in Detroit (Coffey’s hometown), the trio featured Coffey (g), Lyman Woodard (organ) and Melvin Davis (d). Coffey managed to record the group’s live performance but wasn’t able to stir label interest in the material. So he kept the reels on the shelf until recently, when a friend of Zev’s hipped him to Coffey’s desire to release it.

On the album, we hear Coffey’s fuzz and wah-wah guitar on a range of rock-funk originals as well as covers of By the Time I Get to Phoenix, The Look of Love and Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage. There are quite a few surprises here. For one, the fidelity is studio quality, which is shocking given the live venue. Second, Coffey, who was a seasoned studio musician at the time, outshines many of his rock-guitar contemporaries. And third, other than Sly and the Family Stone, I’m hard-pressed to think of another rock-funk band at this point in time. While the organ and drums give the music a soulful feel, Coffey’s guitar is pure rock. Clearly, Coffey was way ahead of his time here. Glorious music from a gifted artist who has flown below the radar of most music fans. But now that you know about him, you’re in for a treat as you explore his discography. Just be sure to start at the beginning—Hot Coffey in the D.

JazzWax tracks: You’ll find Dennis Coffey: Hot Coffey in the D (Resonance) here.

JazzWax clips: Here’s Coffey’s take on Milton Middlebrook and Jo Armstead’s Casanova (Your Playing Days Are Over), which was first released by Ruby Andrews in 1967…

Casanova (Your Playing Days Are Over)

Here’s Dennis Coffey’s Scorpio…