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: If youre new to Pink Floyd....
Hit: 5 Stars
If youre new to Pink Floyd, then by all means dive into this greatest hits album. These type of albums try to show a range of work over time. Since Pink Floyd has been around since the sixties, the range here spans decades of work. If you like what you hear, and want to begin collecting the records, start with Dark Side of the Moon (1973). This begins the meat of their best work. Then get Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979-80). If youre still enjoying the music, and i suspect you will be, there are some fringe records right before and after this work that are excellent. Meddle (1970-71) and The Final Cut (1982). Then you'll have the basics. I cannot stress the importance of one overlooked work from the 1990's, and it is not the Division Bell (1994). It is Roger Water's Amused To Death (1992). It is a solo album that wont be found under pink floyd. The album in this reviewer's opinion stands up to any of the floyd's best material. I know some will disagree, but believe me it's worth a listen. No review of Floyd can be complete without a mention of Syd Barret's work with the band, which in reality is one album Piper At The Gates of Dawn (1967), a few songs on the second album A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) and some singles. Syd's music was fantastic and his departure from the band from mental illness was sad. Beyond Piper and Saucerful, avoid the albums prior to Meddle in the beginning. This was an experimental phase in which the band was growing. Return to these later on. So pick up the greatest hits if youre new to Floyd, but i bet you'll soon be buying Dark Side of the Moon...
( and Roger Water's Amused to Death)
Free Music Review: A Bit Like a Readers Digest Condensed Version
Hit: 5 Stars
I have to give credit to the marketing guys at Capitol. They did a terrific job of promoting this two-disc career retrospective of the ultimate album-oriented band. When this came out, I immediately bought it. Why? Good question. After all, I already owned the box set Shine On. I already had all of their albums through 1994's The Division Bell. [I passed on their two post-Waters live albums, however--and nothing from either of them is included here.] I guess I'm just a sucker for any repackaging of any of my favorite artists from the Sixties and Seventies, and Pink Floyd is certainly one of the best. While there is nothing new here, it is a great overview of the band from 1967's Piper at the Gates of Dawn ("Bike") through 1994's The Division Bell--obviously David Gilmore had a big say in getting three of his tracks from that album on here. [Only Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall or more represented with four tracks each.] There are a couple of omissions that keep this collection from being truly complete. There is nothing from either of Pink Floyd's soundtracks, 1969's More and 1972's Obscured by Clouds--"Free Four" would have been a great addition from the latter. Two other albums not represented are 1969's Ummagumma and 1970's Atom Heart Mother, although the album art is deeply indebted to Ummagumma. Overall, this is over two-and-a-half hours of prime Floyd, and if you don't mind hearing these tracks out of the context of their original albums this makes for great listening. Sit back and let Barrett, Waters, Mason, Gilmore and Wright take you on an amazing journey. HIGHLY RECOMMENDEDFree Music Review: Negative Reviewers Insane -- Fantastic "Best Of" !!!
Hit: 5 Stars
A "Best of" compilation is, by definition, limited. For a band like Pink Floyd that produced a very large volume of very good work, any work of this nature will be missing great stuff. If you want everything, buy all of the albums and quit your complaining. For its intended purpose -- to provide listeners with a manageable package stuffed with Pink Floyd goodness from their entire career -- "Echoes" is fantastic. It is easily the best compilation of its type I have ever run across.First of all, the sound quality is UNREAL. The clarity and fullness of the sound, even on the older tracks, is nothing short of unprecedented. It is almost certainly a BIG improvement on whatever you heard before from Pink Floyd on old CDs, let alone radio or records. "Wish You Were Here" in particular sounds fantastic; the acoustic guitar lead-in to the song sounds almost impossibly clear.
Second, irrational whiners notwithstanding the track selection is very good. The only omission that I missed was "Mother." The sequencing was quite good in my book, and the edits to some longer bits were done in a way to be completely unobtrusive to all but he most fanatical purists.
Third, there is alot of it. You get about 150 minutes of music. A nice big chunk of Pink Floyd, and we can all thank our deity of choice that they didn't try to go cheap with only 1 CD.
Fourth, they didn't omit "One of These Days," the best hard rock instrumental ever. Drive down the highway on a rainy night and crack this tune up to 11 and you'll hear what I mean.
Free Music Review: An echo into the greatness of Pink Floyd
Hit: 5 Stars
Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd takes the listener into a surreal world created by Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Richard Wright and Syd Barrett. The song selection ranges from the psychedlic Barrett-years to the devine Division Bell era of Gilmour and Co. Though it is hard to pick a greatest hits collection from a group that gave us such opus albums as Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and the Wall. The group has picked a list from classics like Money, Time and Comfortably Numb to such unknown classics like Jugband Blues, Fletcher Memorial Home and Astronomy Domine. And the inclusion of the never-released song on CD of When the Tigers Broke Free. The collection plays as a two seamless sides of a music. This adding to the feel of the music, instead of being chronological. Of course with such songs as Shine On and Echoes some editing was necessary, but the editing is superb. It in no ways affect the feel and overall mood of the songs. The Strom Thorgerson artwork is again amazing, capturing the mood and spirit of Pink Floyd. Also happy hunting in finding all the connections on the covers to the music. The only flaw of this double CD is that I would have liked the packaging to be like the hard-bound Pulse or The Wall Live. I expected just a little more from that. Well go out and get this masterpiece. And hopefully this album willl inspire new fans to go out and get some more Pink Floyd albums that they never heard before. If you do I also recommend Obscured by Clouds which is and "obscure" gem of an album not represented here.Free Music Review: A must-have for the casual fan
Hit: 5 Stars
While I really like Pink Floyd, I've often thought of myself as a casual fan. I own the stuff from Muddle to the Wall but nothing else (save Atom Heart Mother). I've always been interested in seeing what the band did during their earlier period but I was hesitant to go buy 5 or so albums worth of material I might not like, particularly since I wasn't too find of AHM. Same goes for the later material I was told to avoid.This collection took care of that for me. I think it's a reasonable overview of their work. While it's obviously heavy on material from Dark Side and the Wall, other albums are well represented. I'm very pleased to see the abundance of Syd Barrett material here. I must admit, though, that I'm not sold on all the selections. I wish they had included The Turning Away from Momentary Lapse of Reason, but that's just me.
There's little here for the hard core fan except when The Tigers Broke Free. I imagine most of them have it on a bootleg or something already so there might really be nothing here for them at all.
One more thing. I was a bit skeptical when I heard the band was going to blend the songs together to make the songs "one big experience" or something. It's really not that bad. I was afraid that song intros were going to be cropped or redone and that's not really the case. It's not as intrusive as it might sound.
I would highly recommend this album for those wanting to get into Floyd or for those of us who are "casual fans."