Pink Floyd - Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd
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Free Music Notes for Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd
Free Music Review: 155 minutes of classic Floyd -- extraordinarily good value
Hit: 5 Stars
Floyd have issued earlier compilation albums, but not on a double CD. A single LP was never going to do adequate justice to the band, even though they attempted it with the COLLECTION OF GREAT DANCE SONGS. But no collection could sincerely claim to be the best of the Floyd without including, say, all 23 minutes of 'Echoes', and that blows half an LP right away.This album contains almost all of 'Echoes', together with almost all of almost every other Floyd that one would expect to hear on a 'Best of' collection. I say almost all, because the tracks have been judiciously segued into each other, in most cases just before the fade-out on the original. To some, it may seem sacrilege to interleave DARK SIDE tracks such as 'The Great Gig in the Sky', 'Money', 'Time' and 'Us and Them' with other Floyd classics, but believe me, it works. The only classic which I'm disappointed not to see here is the opening track from OBSCURED BY CLOUDS.
There can be few Floyds fans who don't have the classic sequence of four albums from the 70s -- MEDDLE, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, WISH YOU WERE HERE and ANIMALS. But there may be many who, like me, have never bought a Pink Floyd album on which Syd Barrett played. The early stuff -- for instance, 'See Emily Play', 'Arnold Layne' and the glorious 'Bike' -- has been ingeniously blended into the meld, despite the production standards of the period appearing primaeval compared to Alan Parsons' engineering work on DARK SIDE.
It's a wonderful, wonderful collection. I re-purchased my Floyd albums on CD too early -- i.e. before they were re-mastered. The tracks chosen here are from the re-mastered CDs, and it's frankly a relief that I cannot tell the difference in sound quality between these remastered versions and my acoustic memory of my CDs. That's a small fortune saved!
The CD inlay booklet is up to the usual Floyd standard, with a cover reminiscent of UMMAGUMMA. We get the lyrics to every song -- I don't believe that all the original LPs disclosed these -- and we get the info on who-played-what. Floyd have even taken away that second notch on the transparent CD case which makes the inlay booklet so difficult to remove. This is the early Xmas present you need to give yourself.
Free Music Review: Well represented yet incomplete
Hit: 5 Stars
On studying the tracklisting of this CD just before buying it, I was struck with the notion of how well represented was 30-plus years of Floyd on this double-cd compilation. In my opinion the only other compilations that come close in terms of great music and extremely fair representation of the band's outputs are Zeppelin's 'Remasters' and Marillion's 'Best of both worlds'. But back to Pink Floyd and this compilation. After listening to it continuously since buying it I'd have to say that this album should please both new and old fans alike. For the new fans who just want to have some of the best Floyd moments in their collection but can't afford all Floyd's albums then this compilation is a fantastic choice. However, for older fans like me this compilation is a great sampler of Floyd's music. Some might argue that older Floyd fans will already have all this material and I fully agree with them. If I can talk for myself though, unless one counts 'Dark Side...' 'The Wall' 'The Final Cut' and occasionally 'Pulse' most of the other Floyd albums in my collection have been gathering dust. This compilation immediately whetted my appetite to dust them off because quite frankly it is incomplete. I agree with those other reviewers who complained about how 'Atom Heard Mother' was ignored. But there are so many other Floyd gems left out. Some of my personal favourites such as 'Fearless', 'Have a cigar', 'Run like Hell', 'Mother' and 'On the turning away' have been left out and why is the underrated but still-great 'The final cut' so under-represented? It's great to have 'When the tigers broke free' on this compilation but why couldn't there have been a couple more rarities such as the full version of 'Pigs on the wing' as it appeared on guitarist Snowy White's excellent 'Goldtop' compilation? But all in all, all these complaints are just minimal and this compilation should serve as a timely reminder of why this band are loved by so many around the world. Excellent album all around then...shame about the omissions but anyway this cd made me rediscover all the old albums. Gotta hear 'Atom Heart mother' once again to see why it was omitted...Free Music Review: great stuff
Hit: 5 Stars
I'm a 17 year old kid. Most of my life Ive listened to the same things that everyone my age listened to. Modern rock, some rap, you know what I mean. However just recently when going through the radio I happened to hear the song "Wish you were Here". I didnt know who sang it but I knew that I liked it. I hadd heard it a good three times (without ever gettin sick of it) on the radio before I found out that it was actually Pink Floyd who sang it. The song "Time" was the second of Pink Floyd's songs I heard on the radio and I began to think to myself, wow these guys are really good. So I purchased this album. I wanted a greatest hits compelation because I wanted to know their whole deal and not just one part of their recording career. After five minutes I knew that I knew that I had just bought something by one of the greatest bands I had ever heard in my life. This album is amazing. Despite what any of these other critics are saying. If you want a good way to know what these guys are all about buy this album. Amazingly the songs run together seamlessly, like a huge double album, so you can have a song from their album "Meddle" right next to something from "The Wall". All of the songs on this set are incredible but their are only a few that really truly stuck with me for days after I listened to this. "Hey You" being the first one that appeared on it. The entire selection from "The Dark Side of The Moon" album is brilliant although I do wish they had included "Brain Damage" in the place of maybe "Jugband Blues". The song that I like the most however is "Shine On You Crazy Diamnod". On the album "Wish you were Here" this song is seperated into two party, 1-4 and 5-7. On this album it is one huge song titled 1-7. And it works very well. Then of course there is "Wish you were Here" which at my heart is the one which started me off. And it truly is a great song, probobly the best piece of songwriting put out by Pink Floyd. This album is amazing. One of the best greatest hits sets I have ever had the privilage of purchasing.Free Music Review: One of the best
Hit: 5 Stars
Pink Floyd being my favorite band I was a little skeptical of yet another Pink Floyd compilation. I used to own every Pink Floyd album but unfortunately a few months ago all my CDs were stolen and I've been short of money. So the first CD I bought was of course Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd's masterpiece. After whetting my appetite I was longing for more, unfortunately Floyd CDs cost about $21.00 apiece and that was about all the money I had. Most of the times I hate compilations since I feel it cheapens the music and integrity of the band but I was desperate. I went to the record store and picked up the CD. When I saw the cover art I was impressed I felt it captured the feeling of Pink Floyd former cover art and paid proper homage to it. Then I turned the CD around and read the Track listening. I was not disappointed. Anything you could ever want for a quick Floyd fix was there. I was surprised when I saw that some of the longer songs "Echoes," "Dogs," "Shine on you Crazy Diamond," and "Sheep." I was very happy to see "When the Tigers Broke Free" which has never before been on an album. I was also happy to see the Syd Barret compositions weren't forgotten. Now although I am singing the praises of this compilation I think it should be clear to everyone that although this is a great assessment of Pink Floyd's career there is nothing that compares to the exhilaration of putting the needle on the first groove of Dark Side of the Moon and waiting while the heartbeat takes over your head and you wait in anticipation for the music to kick in God like the commercial I believe says "pure sonic intoxication" likewise there's nothing like listening to "The Wall" and at the beginning hearing "where we came in?" and the last lines of the album "isn't this..." and putting it altogether. Anyway what I'm getting at is that this is a great introduction to The Pink Floyd Sound but should not be thought of as the definitive Pink Floyd. One other thing I found intrusting is that although the songs are not in chronological order they do flow really nicely into one another. well thank you for your time.Free Music Review: A New Floyd Experience, Even for Die-Hards
Hit: 5 Stars
We all know that it is nearly impossible to compile Pink Floyd's work into any sort of "greatest hits" collection. This is because of the conceptual leanings of their lyrics, the long and meandering tracks, and their method of creating full and integrated albums, instead of just individual songs. Of course you should buy the original albums (especially *Meddle* through *The Wall*) to truly explore the intricacies and strengths of Floyd's work. With these challenges in mind however, *Echoes* is actually a pretty enjoyable and believable compilation. This is because of the very creative ways in which the collection was put together. Since songs usually blended into each other on the original albums, they do the same here, leading to unknown connections between seemingly unrelated songs that may just boggle your mind. First, the band was not afraid to cut some time off of "Echoes" (chopping off seven minutes), or "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" (only including seven of the nine parts). True fans will return to the originals for the full story, but they'll also see that these edits strengthen this compilation. And then there's the unusual segues between tracks. A good example is the post-Waters "Learning to Fly" (1987) blending into the pre-Gilmour "Arnold Layne" (1967). You'd be surprised by the connections between these songs that seem to have absolutely nothing in common. Having songs from all different periods of the band's history sitting next to each other in strange ways really brings their history together, revealing common threads that you wouldn't notice by listen to the original albums one at a time. And finally, at least 75% of the reviewers here on Amazon are whining about the song selection in one way or another. Well get over it. I have some minor disputes with the selections myself, but what can you do about it? You can't please all the people all the time. Instead, enjoy this collection as a career-spanning retrospective, and a collection of great Floyd songs.