Pink Floyd
A Collection of Great Dance Songs

THE REVIEW

A vast green expanse in the countryside where my gaze would get lost. I remember seeing this, at just four years old (!), sitting in the back seat of the car while heading who knows where, listening to Pink Floyd. I was in love with this album (cassette tape, of course), I wanted to listen to it continuously and putting it in the stereo was the first thing I asked for when I got in the car.

I didn't know who they were, I didn't know anything, much less was I aware that this “A Collection of Great Dance Songs” was some sort of scarce and useless Best of from the “Meddle”-”The Wall” period (which then remained for me their best period: probably not by chance), but the music it contained... Gosh, the music it contained was something that struck my mind and imagination from the very first notes of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”: mysterious, imaginative, dark, bright, spacious, space-like, stimulating, exciting, fascinating, adult. Yes, adult, because the feeling I experienced as a child was also that of listening to something “for grown-ups”, something “forbidden for kids”, “restricted for minors” in some way. I also remember often looking at that strange and fascinating cover, with those two motionless guys tied to the ground with ropes, while dancing, in the middle of a field with a house in the distance, in an undefined atmosphere that could be both a sunrise and a sunset: it was an image that evoked something I couldn't define as a child, because I perceived it as both mysterious and reassuring, and in some way, this impression confirmed the idea I had formed about their music.

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” was the brightest dark night I had ever listened to (and seen; because their visionary and cinematic power had already sent my imagination on free journeys), “Wish You Were Here” was the sunny day stretched out on a meadow that disappeared as far as the eye could see, “Sheep” was simultaneously light and darkness. And then the inexplicable, contrasting sensations that the sounds and obsessiveness of “One Of These Days” conveyed to me, the majesty of “Another Brick In The Wall part 2”, and the noises that heavily characterized “Money”. Everything on that album to my ears sounded perfectly unusual and extraterrestrial, despite somehow feeling familiar, making me experience sensations I had never felt before and reaching my ears and imagination as a single instrumental stream of consciousness: for years, in fact, I remained convinced that Pink Floyd was a “strange” band (without even remotely imagining the impact they had had on the history of rock) and fundamentally instrumental, rarely allowing themselves some sung parts. This reached a child who was captivated by that music that to his ears sounded so different, particular, original, and at the same time extremely captivating.

The cassette was lost over the years in the house's nooks and for a long time I didn't listen to them anymore, apart from the Venice concert, which left me very disappointed: I knew nothing of Waters and Gilmour, let alone Barrett, but I didn't rediscover the atmospheres that had fascinated me so many years ago (except for the opening with the very first, splendid part of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”), the rest, to tell the truth, I didn't like it at all and didn't even finish watching it (ah, the voice of innocence... Not by chance, the pieces performed immediately after the opening were all part of “A Momentary Lapse Of Reason”, which I still consider their worst album).

Years passed and I made many other musical discoveries that deeply influenced me; then I decided, almost eighteen by then, to seek out the albums of that “strange and magnificent instrumental group” (starting from that strange album with the dark cover, with a pyramid crossed by a beam of light turning into a rainbow without even song titles or band name: all elements that contributed to its charm, in my eyes) that I had fallen in love with so many years before and I understood many things about their music and their history, falling in love with them for the second time: every time I listen to them, in a sense, my eyes return to scan those vast green expanses I had already traveled through, not only physically, as a child.