Wednesday, November 23 2011
Pink Floyd: Animals
It's 1977. You're young and pissed off. If you wanted noise and petulance, you had the Sex Pistols. But if you really wanted to rattle some cages, you had Animals.
Friday, November 11 2011
Why Not Pink Floyd?
Pink Floyd is perhaps the first truly underground band that cultivated a sound that was too remarkable to remain obscure. They willed themselves to be huge, and their influence is undiminished today.
Friday, September 9 2011
Counterbalance: Year One
In this special one-year anniversary edition of Counterbalance, Eric Klinger and Jason Mendelsohn discuss their first year combing through the pop music canon (as determined by Acclaimed Music's calculations of every best-of list available), share a few favorites, and justify a couple items on their expense account.
Tuesday, August 2 2011
10 Albums That Supposedly Suck (But Don’t)
Some of these are hopefully no-brainers, others may be head-scratchers. All of them are albums that deserve a fresh appraisal.
Tuesday, July 5 2011
Oi, You Alright?: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Journey from India to America
As an Indian PhD student at an American university, Sriram Dayanand was given a front row seat to the pre-Internet maelstrom that was the glory of rock 'n' roll. Now covering cricket for ESPN and Sports Illustrated, he details what it was like to journey from musical scarcity in India, to the rock pantheon of the United States.
Monday, June 20 2011
Waxing Nostalgic: The Mantras of the Music Geek
Four music geeks reunite to reminisce over their college days in the late '80s. Bold mantras about what's wrong with today's music ensue.
Monday, May 23 2011
The 25 Best Progressive Rock Songs of All Time
Put as simply -- and starkly -- as possible, many beautiful babies were thrown out with the bath water by hidebound critics who were content to sniffingly dismiss the more ambitious (pretentious!) works that certain bands were putting out as a matter of course in the early-to-mid-‘70s.
Wednesday, March 16 2011
‘Whatever Happened to Pink Floyd?’ Is a Good Documentary, but Whatever Happened to the DVD?
This is a solid documentary that does a good job of exhaustively covering its main topic. It's a shame, though, that the DVD doesn't include more bonus features, especially the promised but non-existent extended interviews.
Friday, February 18 2011
Counterbalance No. 21: Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’
Now for the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. It’s No. 21 on The Big List. Counterbalance explores the depths of the human condition on a trip that's out of this world.
Thursday, November 11 2010
Syd Barrett: An Introduction to Syd Barrett
That Syd Barrett saw his shot at superstardom dissipate into the darkening circles of his bruised brain is more than a little tragic. That we have a soundtrack to some of that dissolution, as both an artistic and human document, is more than a little miraculous.
