My deepest apologies for my lack of blogging....between travel and the girlfriend, I've been woefully neglectful of my poor abandoned blog. I've missed the big news of the past two weeks (economic meltdown, the campaign hijinks, Bills starting 4-0, Paul Newman's death, season premiere of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, etc.), so I will spend the next few days trying to catch up.
One bit of housecleaning....I wanted to post a tribute to Rick Wright, who passed away in September, because I think this poor guy got one of the all-time shafts in the biz from one of the truly misanthropic characters in rock and roll - Roger Waters. Here's what you must understand about Rick Wright - he was a founding member of Pink Floyd. He and Syd Barrett were the driving forces behind Pink Floyd's early sound...he not only sang lead on many of Syd's compositions, he also wrote a lot of memorable tunes from their first two albums ("Remember A Day" is my favorite from this period). He sang lead on the epic "Echoes" and went on to write "Great Gig in the Sky" and "Us and Them" from Dark Side of the Moon.
Which makes what Roger Waters did to him during the making of The Wall (1979) all the more vile:
"...Battling both personal problems and an increasingly rocky relationship with Roger Waters, he was forced to resign from Pink Floyd during The Wall sessions by Waters, who threatened to pull the plug on the album's tapes if Wright did not leave the band. However, he was retained as a salaried session musician during the subsequent live concerts to promote that album in 1980 and 1981. Ironically, Wright became the only member of Pink Floyd to profit from those hugely spectacular shows, since the net financial loss had to be borne by the three remaining "full-time" members. He was the only member of the band not to attend the 1982 premiere of the film version of The Wall. In 1983, Pink Floyd released the only album on which Wright does not appear with The Final Cut..."
Rumor has long held that Waters had a financial incentive from the record company to finish the Wall early in 1979, which was stymied by Rick Wright's vacation. The man who excoriated the industry so skillfully four years before in "Have A Cigar" decided to fire his friend and bandmate for more than fifteen years so he could collect some more filthy lucre from the record company and then, to add insult, blamed it on Wright's "cocaine problem".
So, Rick Wright turns out to be the only Floyd member to make some scratch on The Wall tour and manages to avoid completely the trainwreck that was The Final Cut. Cheers to him.
Well, here is a clip of the aforementioned "Echoes" from Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii. Shine on, you crazy diamond...
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