Real book band in a box 2011 plus#
Real book band in a box 2011 series#

The Barrett connection is made explicit when the primary architect of Pink Floyd’s debut, 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, is referenced: “you piper, you prisoner.” Dick Parry supplies a wistful, elegiac saxophone, which trails off in an ominous rumble against the rippling lead guitar of Gilmour. The song, with music by Richard Wright, David Gilmour and Roger Waters and lyrics by Water, is tinged with regret, yes, but also with an admiring, encouraging quality: “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun/Shine on you crazy diamond…Now there’s a look in your eyes like black holes in the sky/Shine on, you crazy diamond…Come on, you stranger, you legend, you martyr/And shine.” That contrast, and the blunt, powerful language, remain as visceral today as in 1975.

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” the most overt tribute to Barrett, encapsulates Pink Floyd’s musical ethos over its roughly twenty-six minutes (Parts I-V form the album’s first track, while Parts VI-IX compose its closing statement): the languid soundscapes, the searing guitars, the anthemic choruses. but it was a long time before the 'Wish You Were Here' recording sessions when Syd's state could be seen as being symbolic of the general state of the group: very fragmented.” Yet, consciously or otherwise, Barrett’s spirit and story are palpable as Wish You Were Here addresses the theme of absence from various angles. The lyrics were written, and the lyrics are the bit of the song about Syd, the rest of it could be about anything, I don't why I started writing those lyrics about Syd. Of the album’s nine-part epic “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond,” Waters once said, “It was very strange. The sole credited lyricist of the album’s songs, Roger Waters, has been ambivalent about Barrett’s influence on the album. Though now sadly departed, Barrett was very much alive in 1975 and his return to the studio during the album’s making has become the unfortunate stuff of legend. Hovering over the entirety of Wish You Were Here is the specter of founding Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett, whose personal demons forced him to depart the band in 1968. It’s, perhaps by design, a less distant, more emotional album than that landmark song cycle. Like DSOTM, Wish You Were Here has a strong thematic spine that might account for its longevity after all of these years. But ultimately all of these components take a back seat to the music, or the Wish You Were Here album. There are small but crucial improvements on the design of the DSOTM box set (more on those later). Everything’s been designed by the band’s longtime associate Storm Thorgerson and his StormStudios, so it looks expectedly good.

Real book band in a box 2011 plus#

And there are those damn glass marbles and accompanying pouch! More interesting are the three booklets (one the main attraction, plus one of photographs and one of credits), two envelopes filled with “collectors’ cards” and memorabilia replicas, and an art print. (You'll find our Dark Side review here!) The set of nine Pink Floyd coasters is back – is anyone actually going to unwrap these and set a beer down on one? There’s another scarf for the fashion-inclined.

Real book band in a box 2011 series#

Like Dark Side of the Moon, the album which preceded Wish You Were Here both in Pink Floyd’s catalogue and this series of remasters, the weighty Immersion box set is certainly not a triumph of restraint, but perhaps is one of excess. So it’s appropriate that Wish You Were Here is unwrapped in more detail than ever before across the riches in this box set, but still as opaque and mysterious as ever. Magritte’s works pointed out that no matter how closely we may come to depicting an object accurately, we never do capture the item itself. Above the album’s title is the simple banner “ Ceci n’est pas une boite.” For those not versed in French, the translation is “This is not a box.” It’s a play on the works of painter Rene Magritte, who dabbled in impressionism and frequently blurred the lines between reality and illusion. The 3-CD/1-DVD/1-BD Immersion edition (EMI 50999 029435 2, 2011) is not only “naked,” but offers a different, equally striking cover photograph (with the faceless salesman of the original back cover), and even more surprisingly, proffers a sense of humor on first glance. The original LP pressing of the album, of course, was wrapped and adorned with a “four elements” sticker, obscuring the photograph that gives the album its cover. There’s no dark shrinkwrap on the new Immersion Box Set of Pink Floyd’s 1975 Wish You Were Here, the album that followed the landmark Dark Side of the Moon.

Maybe it should have been called Wish You Were Here: Unwrapped.