One of These Days, I'm Going to Cut Myself Into Little Pieces

I bought this t-shirt recently:

I think that purchase combined with a recent dive into stereotypical classic rock guitar guy videos caused the YouTube algorithm to recommend some more recent performances of the remaining members of Pink Floyd, who have permanently gone their separate ways after the death of keyboardist Richard Wright in 2008, leaving their current individual acts looking more like cover bands stocked with overly-qualified session musicians.

Judging by the clips and a glance at some recent setlists, David Gilmour seems to favor songs that position him squarely as frontman and guitar god of the group, focusing mainly on tracks with extended guitar solos from their era of ultimate commercial success (Dark Side and onwards). He's the only member who still plays Floyd cuts from the 80s and early 90s, his time as primary songwriter. The other two (and most fans) seem happy to forget this period.

Roger Waters has split his time publicly espousing hard line political stances¹ and touring his magnum opus, The Wall, as an arena-sized theater piece aimed at offending the gods of subtlety. I caught it in college and it fucking rocked. He's recently kicked off a run that combines parts of his Wall set along with selections from that aforementioned era of commercial success.

Nick Mason, in contrast to his bandmates, has resurrected the preceding version of Pink Floyd with his act Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets. His sets include Syd Barrett songs—most of which haven't been touched by the band members in decades—and tracks from the era following Barrett's mental breakdown but before the ultimate success of Dark Side. This period saw the remaining members stumbling out of the British psych-rock haze on uneasy footing, tinkering with and building their sound from album to album while retaining a commitment to the occasional freak out or ambient interlude, culminating in the concert film Live at Pompeii.

I was 14 or 15 when my older brother brought a copy of the Pompeii director's cut DVD home. I was vaguely aware of the Syd Barrett saga from stories surrounding the Wish You Were Here writing and recording sessions, but never had I fully delved into the records preceding Dark Side. Why should I? Most Pink Floyd fans I knew(read: parents) found nothing of value in those albums if they'd heard of them at all.

Maybe that's why I wasn't as into Live at Pompeii the first time I watched it. This was definitively not pop music and wasn't trying to be. The peaks were extreme and noisy, the troughs were ambient and sparse. This was not preaching an easily digestible gospel of existentialism, nor a boilerplate critique of the ills of modern life ("war is bad"/"don't be greedy"/etc.). The goal here seemed less to say something explicitly, and more to push the listener into a different psychic state. Such aims may be cheesy vestiges of a hippie movement that lost the thread, but, nevertheless, it's obvious to me now what an effect this film would have on my musical preferences going forward. While it seems a bit lame to be under 40 and identifying so closely with one of the epitomical classic rock bands, this is still one of the few artifacts from my teenage years to which I regularly return.

But I did not sit down to write this post simply out of appreciation for a concert film. No, sadly, I came here as a hater. Look at this shit:

This is from David Gilmour's 2016 solo concert film... Live at Pompeii. It looks like he forced his entire band to don shades just for this song. In the entirety of that show, he plays only one song that appeared in the original Pompeii, "One of These Days," which he starts by smirkingly playing cymbal rushes, as in Isn't it so cute I'm doing the cymbal bit? Remember how Roger used to do that?

Watching these clips really got to me, as I can't help but wonder what changes in a person like Gilmour. Plenty of things he does in the original Pompeii could be construed as goofy, sure, but he never comes across that way. When did this new guy get here? What happened to make all of this seem cute? When do the aging musicians of the world stop trying these things in earnest? When do they stop experimenting and succumb to this awkward self-deprecation? When do they become corny tributes to their own glory days? Will it quietly happen to us, too? Will we even realize it when it does?

I need a palate-cleanser. Here's what's possibly my favorite live recording of all time, "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" from Live at Pompeii: