Only Coming Through in Waves

They eccentrically took their name from two unsung blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, before gradually establishing themselves as one of the most prodigious and innovative acts in rock history.

Guitarist David Gilmour, bassist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason, originally led by the enigmatic Syd Barrett, formed in England in 1965 as Pink Floyd. Their improvisational musicianship and exploratory style quickly brought them to the vanguard of London’s swinging psychedelic pop music scene.

The band’s future suddenly became uncertain when Barrett, their chief creative force, entered an irrevocable state of depression and mental exhaustion. After his dismissal, Waters subsequently began handling the majority of Floyd’s lyrics as they ventured further into wildly expanded solos, with guitar hero Gilmour, in particular, honing an inimitable trademark style. The four band members, in fact, came to share a nearly ‘telepathic’ vortex and tirelessly crafted their sonic experiments with an increasingly artistic and disciplined approach.

After recording a brief series of mildly received film soundtracks, Floyd carved out an undeniable niche with a string of LP triumphs that eschewed hit single status in favor of sprawling and ambitious musical statements. More than any other band, they popularized the album format as a homogenous work with equally iconic and ambitious cover art design, a distinctly 1970s phenomenon that later fell into decline with the advent of newer audio formats like the compact disc.

The high-water mark of this period was the moody and cosmic The Dark Side of the Moon, which has eventually seen a mind-bending 957 weeks on the Billboard 200 Charts. The album’s universally introspective lyrics and concepts coupled with its cutting-edge recording techniques broke new ground for Floyd and rock, in general. The resultant success even garnered a lucrative pop career for the album’s engineer.

Anxiously anticipated follow-ups to Dark Side’s massive success included Wish You Were Here which evoked the band’s history up to that point as well as Syd Barrett’s decline and the music business as seen from the band’s viewpoint.

By 1977, they had released Animals, which borrowed themes from George Orwell’s Animal Farm to address class issues in modern society. It was followed by the magnum opus, The Wall, a chart-topping rock opera that chronicled the stress and pressures of stardom spiraling out of control for a troubled rock musician. The ambitious 1979 double LP included the hit, “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” and spawned an adapted film. All of these albums saw Waters asserting considerable creative control, especially in regard to the band’s overall artistic oeuvre.

Today Pink Floyd are unequivocally regarded as founding fathers of progressive rock or ‘prog.’ Although the three surviving members foresee no further reunions, they haven’t completely ruled out those possibilities either. It’s a testament, in a sense, to the rightful assertion that the ‘rock wizards’ have realized their impressive goals and accomplished their musical mission. That’s a legacy you just don’t meddle with.

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Christopher Robinson

Power To the People

Lighting is an essential and integral component of photography and cinematography. Its fundamentals and concepts can similarly be applied to painting, drawing and other art and media.

In my own video work, I frequently employed photofloods which are basically high-temperature photography bulbs, to offset the reddish effect of practical lighting sources. Video images require ample light to control shadows and my low-definition camera needed the extra enhancement. Rarely did I shoot anything with practical lighting as those sources are essentially everyday lower wattage light sources like household incandescent bulbs that photograph red or ‘warm.’

Light and warmth, often codependent, are incidentally two necessities that recently became scarce to residents of Texas and other areas devastated by the current winter storm and power grid shutdown. Texas has been particularly affected as a direct result of its power grid which is largely independent of other networks in North America and serves the majority of the state.

Let’s hope those regions get more light and warmth in addition to the clean water they’ll be needing, as they recover and get on track to properly employ all forms of energy for their utilization in emergencies as well as everyday life.

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Christopher Robinson

Jung at Heart

During a dream, a deep meditation or even an unexpected moment’s thought, your mind centers on someone you haven’t spoke to or seen or even thought about for a long duration, then— within a short period of time, that person suddenly calls or texts you! The laws of chance permit this to happen from time to time, but it’s merely a fantastic and poignant coincidence, right? Some would disagree.

Carl Jung called such occurrences synchronicity. The revered Swiss psychologist considered coincidences to be “meaningful”, counterintuitive to their generally accepted interpretations.

Perhaps there is more to learn from studying the mind’s role in perceiving familiar occurrences for positivity than from refuting or proving the chances of their possibilities.

The ability to recognize positive similarities in life, Jung theorized, could motivate one to heal or succeed with heightened sensitivity. An “ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see.”

How will you know when you’ve stumbled upon synchronicity? That’s hard to say, as it’s all seemingly dependent on your individual awareness. Is it a “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved?”

It certainly gives one something to ‘sync’ about.

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Christopher Robinson

Cash Preferred

“...Two million dollars... Last year, Johnny Cash made twice that much, singin’ about hard times.” -Bob Hope

His sound and image were inexplicable yet deceptively simple and accessible. An inimitable brand of country music fused with blues, rock, gospel and folk invoked the raw character of working rural Americans shaped by the land, broken dreams and death itself. Perhaps it’s precisely what is missing from popular music today. Ironically, Cash’s voice and music resonate with contemporary young music fans much as they did during the latter part of the 20th Century.

Born J.R. Cash on February 26, 1932 in Kingsland, Arkansas, “John” Cash began using the name “Johnny” only after beginning a music career in Memphis, Tennessee as a recording artist for Sam Phillips’ Sun label in 1954. Just when Elvis Presley was beginning his music career there, Cash began working with a backing group called the Tennessee Two, playing gospel and later transitioning to the trendy new ‘rockabilly’ sound, a blend of “hillbilly” rock and roll that incorporated rhythm and blues. 

Cash’s Sun hits included the classics “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line.” They featured a distinctive rhythm and beat accented by Cash’s unmistakable deep baritone. His lyrical themes were universal in nature and ranged from heartbreak and loneliness to crime, tragedy, punishment, salvation and the American spirit. If that weren’t enough, the man could also write and sing some pretty funny stuff to boot.

After leaving Phillips for Columbia Records, Cash toured extensively and honed a trademark image that saw him dressed in all-black attire. Some of his greatest-selling recordings were albums produced from free concerts given for felons within the walls of various prisons. Cash saw these inmates, like the American Indians, as examples of the forgotten and underrepresented. 

During this period Cash also began touring with June Carter of the famed Carter Family country act. The two would eventually be married in 1968.

With and without June, he scored more chart successes but concurrently developed severe issues with drugs and alcohol.

By 1969, Cash was hosting The Johnny Cash Show on ABC, videotaped at Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium. The popular music program was an influential one, showcasing not only himself but also introducing many new recording artists of the era to Cash’s audience.

Despite a troubled personal life that saw frequent addiction, abuse and run-ins with the law, Cash continually found renewal and redemption in the Almighty. He regularly performed at Billy Graham’s ‘Crusades’ and wrote a Christian novel and a screenplay which he produced on the life of Jesus in addition to his two autobiographies written in 1975 and 1997.

Though several illnesses eventually slowed down Cash’s life and career, his stardom would have a final resurgence with a back-to-basics album series known as the American Recordings which featured stark cover versions of eclectic songs by some unlikely contemporary artists.

Sadly, Johnny Cash passed away on September 12, 2003, four months after June’s passing. His musical legacy is difficult to explicate yet easily noticeable in the multitudes of musicians he played with and influenced.

Cash’s songs and the values he strove to embody would seem practically essential in our current world ripe with confusion, crisis, doubt and disillusion. Indeed, there is something unequivocally missing from the time in which we live because — up front, there ought to be a man in black.

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Christopher Robinson