Album That Changed My Life #7 Pink Floyd - Meddle

Yup,

I'm a pretty cynical person so it takes time for me to get into music that everyone else is raving about as well as "classic" tunes/bands that I'm supposed to listen too and like. Really, it's not the best mindset to have because I'll miss boats and what not. In 2009 I was forced to listen to Dark Side Of The Moon thoroughly as one of the bands I was in was covering the entire album synced up to The Wizard Of Oz. Definitely an amazing album, of course, that has been dubbed one of the greats of all time. After the gig, I was curious about what Floyd had to offer (besides the radio tunes pounded into my head.) Then I found Meddle.


Being a bassist myself, "One Of These Days" had me hooked right off the cuff. I never knew white guys from Britain could groove so hard. "A Pillow Of Winds" reminded me of when my parents used to play me Simon & Garfunkel, with its spacey, melancholy mood and crisp, acoustic guitars. The song that really changed things for me was "Fearless." I never knew before this song that it was possible to play in a major key and still be so heavy. I've never been to keen on authority so the lyrics resonated pretty hard, while pushing me down the path of the freer life that I had/have been striving for. "Fearless" is now something I say when I'm faced with some kind of serious life challenge, as if I'm drawing power from that very song. The other two songs on the first side of the album show off their roots in jazz ("San Tropez") and blues ("Seamus") in a raw fashion. Gilmour sliding around on the acoustic with a dog howling in the background paints an image of me in my younger days growing up in rural Ohio. The fact that every song on the first side of this record is so different, yet they all blend together, still blows my mind every time I listen to it. Side two is the epic journey, "Echoes." This song, lyrics AND music, conjures up thoughts and images of the world on a grand scale. Nothing really in particular...just everything.

Meddle takes me back through memories of my childhood and gives me nuggets for the future. I love that and album written forty years ago can still be so relevant and mean so so much to a fella. Everyday I strive to be more "fearless" than I was the day before. "Fearlessly, the idiot faced the crowd.."

-bill (THBBOTH, The Ravenna Arsenal)
Cleveburg


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Keep those albums coming folks!
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Ste