In my music listening career, I have gone through many phases. Listening phases can come in many different forms. A true phase is short and recovered from quickly, like that two week period in 1993 where I would play side one of Strange Frontier by Roger Taylor, then side one of The King And I, (I would totally dance with Yul Brynner) followed by side two of Strange Frontier and side two of The King And I.
How did that happen? I bought them both on the same day, I know that. And if memory serves, I rushed home to listen to Strange Frontier, giddy as you please, because not only was it my first solo album by a member of Queen, it was Roger! Well, Strange Frontier is an awful, awful album. I played side one and didn't think I could bear to sit through side two immediately. So I played the other purchase of the day, The King And I. I was then able to finish listening to Strange Frontier. But I couldn't play it without my Yul Buffer. That was a phase.
Sometimes enough phases overlap that a period is created. For instance, that Soul Asylum, Queensrÿche, Poison overlap I had in the early 1990s could be called the I-hadn't-yet-discovered-Queen period. Or those months I mostly bought Liberace, Tom Jones, John Davidson, and Ray Conniff. The easy listening period. Then there are the phases that never go away. The Queen phase? That's coming up on twelve years. Cheap Trick? Almost ten years. Those phases are here to stay, and have become eras. (Although for some reason, the Cheap Trick phase is dormant during the winter months. But the snow starts melting in April, and I am driving around with the windows down blaring Live At Budokan.)
But of all the phases I have ever had, my Pink Floyd phase was the shortest of them all. Shorter than the folk phase Joejung and I had? Yes. My Pink Floyd phase was even shorter than the time Joejung and I dabbled in vocabulary building cassettes. I never wanted a Pink Floyd phase. I have as much use for a Pink Floyd phase as I have for a crock pot. Which is to say, none. I don't slow cook, and you won't see me on the dark side of the moon.
But on the Sunday before Labor Day a couple of years ago, my Pink Floyd Phase began. I was watching some VH1, and found myself riveted to a special called Behind The Wall. There must not have been anything else on, because I sat through it. And I loved it! Staging! Feuding! 1970s David Gilmour in tight jeans! I had to buy me some Pink Floyd!
The very next day, I had to work at the record store. It was a day notorious for having no customers, being Labor Day and all, so I was able to catch up on some record buys. I had ignored one stack of vinyls for well over two weeks, and guess what was in there! A Nice Pair! The two-for-one reissue of the first two Pink Floyd albums! Yes! In less than twenty-four hours, I had started a Pink Floyd phase and scored both The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and A Saucerful Of Secrets. Yes!
Had I looked at those records even one day earlier, I would not have cared. But by sheer luck, I was running home from work clutching a Pink Floyd two-for-one special reissue! Forget Labor Day cookouts with loved ones, I'm going home to sit in the dark and listen to Pink Floyd. But not just Pink Floyd. The Pink Floyd. One day into my phase, I already had rules. I only liked Pink Floyd in the days when they were commonly referred to as The Pink Floyd. I like saying The Pink Floyd.
So I got my record(s) home, and enjoyed the handsome David Gilmour photos. (Yeah. I know he isn't on The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. I know he isn't so important on A Saucerful Of Secrets. But the repackaging featured many delightful pictures of handsome A Saucerful Of Secrets-era David Gilmour. Woo!) And then I put The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn on the turntable and fell in love. At some point during side two, I ended up lying flat on my back on my living room floor, giggling. I loved it. I think The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is the blueprint for anything psychedelic that ever happened. Every psychedelic music cliché is there. I am telling you, anyone who has ever spoofed that era paid a lot of attention to that record. It is hilarious.
Did I like it? Absolutely. I genuinely think it is a good album. Possibly a great album. But it's an album that made me wish that I had first heard it when it was new, before I had time to accumulate preconceived notions about music of the late 1960s. I wish I had been able to hear it when it was fresh and progressive, and not after I spent years working in record stores and dealing with teenaged morons who love Pink Floyd. You can tell that they are really big fans because they own both Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall.
Oh, and when the morons dig deeper, where do they go? To The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn? No. (Well, except for the subset of teenaged morons who love Syd Barrett. They had The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Therefore, they weren't as horrible as The Wall kids.) When The Wall kids dig deeper, they get themselves Animals or Atom Heart Mother, or my vinyl nemesis, Meddle.
The twelve years of my life, ages fourteen to twenty-six, that I spent dealing with Pink Floyd fans soured me on Pink Floyd. Until, of course, at age twenty-six, I met The Pink Floyd. Oh, how I loved The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. A Saucerful Of Secrets, not as much. But for a few weeks, I understood the Syd Barrett people. I might have briefly turned into one of the Syd Barrett people. The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is so good. And then I forgot about The Pink Floyd for a couple of months.
But one spring day, I was out shopping and found a copy of Meddle. Since I was into non-obvious Pink Floyd, (I can't believe I found a way to make a Pink Floyd phase even more pretentious. Non-obvious Pink Floyd? Ha!), I had to buy Meddle. I hate that record. It killed both any desire to ever buy another Pink Floyd album ever, and it killed my love of The Pink Floyd. That record is a sack of garbage. If I want to listen to useless ambient crap, I will listen to No Pussyfooting by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno.
Not long after Meddle soured me on The Pink Floyd, I got into a fight about Meddle. I knew someone who claimed it as his favorite Pink Floyd record. I stood up for The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, said it was The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn or nothing, said don't be giving me no Meddle, all I need is The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, but it was still too late for me. I no longer had the fire in the belly for The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. I mostly just wanted to fight about Meddle for the sake of fighting.
And then a few months later, I was weeding out the record collection, and I got rid of Meddle and the The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn/A Saucerful Of Secrets two-for-one, and the copy of Dark Side Of The Moon that I had owned for almost ten years, only because it was an Original Master Recording that I found at a thrift store for ninety-nine cents when the album was a fifteen to thirty dollar value.
There was just no point in keeping any of them. When I have a phase, especially when a band has such a huge body of work, I like to throw myself into it, buying and trying different albums until I collect them all, but Meddle kept that from happening. Talk about throwing a wrench into the machinery. Maybe if I had gotten a nice copy of Ummagumma or Wish You Were Here instead of Meddle, my phase would have picked up enough momentum to get me through the trying times of being a Meddle owner. Okay, probably not, because as far as Pink Floyd goes, if it's not The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, it's awfully boring.