PINK FLOYD: UMMAGUMMA (1969)
1) Astronomy Domine; 2) Careful With That Axe, Eugene; 3) Set The Controls For
The Heart Of The Sun; 4) A Saucerful Of Secrets; 5) Sysyphus (Pts. 1–4); 6) Grantchester Meadows; 7) Several Species Of Small
Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict; 8) The
Narrow Way (Pts. 1–3); 9) The Grand Vizier's Garden
Party (Pts. 1–3).
General verdict: Sane people
trying to sound crazy — not the best idea, but workable at times.
Ummagumma is not bad; rather, it seems misguided in a
somewhat comical manner. It is arguably the culmination of Pink Floyd's
uncomfortable «interregnum» period, when they were still under the invisible
pressure from Syd's ghost — marketing themselves as unpredictable weirdos,
loosely following the trends of avantgarde music, when in reality Gilmour
wanted to play the blues, Wright wanted to revel in melancholy atmospherics,
and Waters wanted to punch somebody in the face. Yet even under these warped
conditions, Pink Floyd were determined to push on a unique agenda: they did not
want to sound like anybody else, ensuring that even after all these years, even
their most pointless albums still attract curiosity.
The decision to make a double LP, combining a
chunk of their live show with a new studio experience, must have seemed novel
at the time (though by no means unprecedented), but today looks particularly
regrettable — as a live band, they were already excelling over much, if not
most, competition, and if they so wanted a double album, a much safer bet would
have simply been to release a double live one, perhaps including a few of their
bold semi-improvisations along the way rather than providing us with alternate
versions of previously released studio tracks. Even so, the version of ʽCareful
With That Axe, Eugeneʼ captured here is the band's only classic that has earned
this status exclusively through the live version — which totally destroys the
studio B-side by making it longer, subtler, and more tense, and by amplifying
Roger's demonic screams to a truly banshee-like state. Some might complain that
after taking a short time to wind itself up, the jam takes too much time to
wind down, but four minutes is precisely what it takes my nerves to calm down after Roger's screaming, particularly if
headphones are involved. Like everything Pink Floyd did after Syd, the song is
meticulously calculated for maximum psychological effect, but my only gripe
with it is that although it is one of the greatest tributes to horror movies
ever made, I cannot imagine any good
horror movie in which all of its eight minutes could be used as part of the
soundtrack. (Antonioni's Zabriskie Point,
in which it was used under the title ʽCome In Number 51, Your Time Is Upʼ, was
neither a horror movie nor, I'm afraid, a good one — slow-mo explosions are no
visual match for this experience).
The other three live numbers, representing
Floyd's space-rocker side, are all impressive, but there is less contrast
between them and their studio prototypes. ʽAstronomy Domineʼ loses part of its
crazy charm without all the studio overdubs, and Wright's quiet keyboard
interludes do not make a lot of sense, but it is still awesome to see them
bring back the Terrifying-Space vibe with the limited set of means that was available
to them on stage. ʽSet The Controls For The Heart Of The Sunʼ is slightly
expanded from its original vamp-like status to include more chaos and thunder
on the solo plus yet another
psychedelic Wright solo spot; and, surprisingly, ʽA Saucerful Of Secretsʼ, the
one number that might have earned a real significant live transformation due to
the relative freedom of all its different sections, is performed as close to
the original as possible — which is a respectable effort in its own right, but
ultimately superfluous.
Regardless, at least all four of these lengthy
tracks are legitimate, meaningful, and emotionally impressive compositions —
which is more than can be said about the studio part of the LP. For reasons beyond
my immediate comprehension (but possibly, as it frequently is in such cases,
related to financial issues), the studio LP was equally divided between all
four members in compositional terms: last time a thing like that happened, it
was with The Who's A Quick One, and
it did not end well at all.
Predictably, there is some fugly crap here.
Nick Mason's piece, ʽGrand Vizier's Garden Partyʼ, begins and ends with a nice brief
flute part from Nick's wife Lindy (chauvinistically uncredited), but its main
section is an attempt to justify the concept of the Futuristic Drum Solo: I
give credit to Nick for not wanting to fail at imitating Ginger Baker and John
Bonham and doing something different instead, but a drum solo loaded with
electronic effects, mutated through tape splicing, and consisting of short bits
played at different tempos rather than long uninterrupted blasts is still a drum solo, and that is enough of
an offense to get the Grand Vizier to decapitate you on the spot. Besides, how
predictable it is for the drummer to «write» a drum solo?..
Moderately better is Rick Wright's ʽSysyphusʼ
suite, whose main theme, with its painfully mooing synth, fatalistic
Mellotron, and doom-laden timpani, is actually quite evocative of the poor king
rolling his stone up the mountain. Unfortunately, soon afterwards it turns into
a poor man's Chopin, then into an even poorer man's Alban Berg, then into an
utterly poor man's John Cage, then segues into nature sounds and proto-New Age,
and finally returns to the main theme after a set of disconnected musical hallucinations,
presumably caused by Sysyphus ingesting too many mushrooms during one of his
in-between-stone-pushing breaks. In a way, the whole thing is intriguing — Rick
really does his best to be weird in a dozen different ways — but I think you
can tell this was truly not his style.
Waters, the sly one, gets to have one of the
most «normal» songs on the album, the lazy-summer-day ode ʽGrantchester
Meadowsʼ, where he is found at his most Paul Simon-esque, with merely an
acoustic guitar, birds, flies, and beautifully produced double-tracked vocals.
An excellent song for relaxing and losing yourself in nature, it is unusually
tender (but not sentimental) for Roger, and so lulling that its seven minutes
fly by almost undetected. Once the irritating fly has finally been whacked,
though, it segues by contrast into one of the album's most radical inventions —
and, okay, it is easy as heck to condemn ʽSeveral Species Of Small Furry
Animals...ʼ as gratuitously egotistic crap, but now that we are in the 21st
century, it is also fun to note that the track may be seen as the blueprint to a large chunk of the
early experimental stuff by The Animal Collective. Actually, the craziness
generated by Roger's dicking around with tape speeds, loops, and overdubs, is almost
infectious for a couple of minutes — where the track really becomes
insufferable is when the fake Scottish accent comes in. Not only is it
ethnographically and linguistically incorrect to mix up Scots with Picts (about
whom, frankly enough, we have no idea what they sounded like), but the effect
is just not very funny, and turns what might have been an almost mind-blowing
sonic experiment at the time into Benny Hill for no reason.
No wonder, either, that the most openly «musical»
chunk of them all belongs to Dave: the first part of ʽThe Narrow Wayʼ is a
pleasant acoustic folk instrumental (in much the same vein as Jimmy Page's work
from the same period), the second is gruff stoner rock led by a heavy, almost
Sabbath-esque guitar riff, and the third is a nice proto-ʽEchoesʼ piece of
bluesy art-rock, clearly undercooked but also clearly the most «Floydish» piece
of them all. This was Gilmour's first significant solo credit with the band
(discounting ʽA Spanish Pieceʼ from More),
and while he still had a long way to go at the moment, you can already totally
see his trademark signature, and totally (but probably secretly) respect his
decision to participate in as little of this bullshit game as possible.
The real bad news about these four distinct chunks
is that it could have worked — if the
band members were ready to each show their true faces. But I think that Gilmour
is the only one here who actually dares to be completely honest with the
listener; the rest are too dominated with the parts they are supposed to be
playing in order to hold on to their Artistic License. There is so much
collective talent in the band that even this forced and uncomfortable nature of
the album does not prevent it from being part-time intriguing, part-time
hilarious, and part-time charming; nevertheless, as a work of avantgarde art it
does not stand proper competition with the likes of, say, The Soft Machine, who,
conversely, only succeeded as long as they were weird. The Hipgnosis album
cover is really cool, though — first and last time that the post-Barrett band
would be featured on the front sleeve... and so many times!
Hi George please ditch the yellow text. My eyesight is only moderately terrible yet I can't read it at all against a white background
ReplyDeleteI agree with Andrew. The yellow text has got to go
ReplyDeleteMake it mustard yellow!
ReplyDeleteGreat review as always. But what possessed you to post record reviews in such a garishly loud color? The nerve of some people.
ReplyDeleteMight at least be somewhat ethnographically correct to confound Picts with Scots, as typically cultural/linguistic expantion and supercedence happen without complete anniolation of the preceding culture and people. Of course lots of Scots got Norce ancestry as well. And I'm thinking there just might have been some trans-species exchange going down here to boot, at least culturally.
ReplyDelete