WISH YOU WERE HERE

Aside from Richard Wright's awesome work (when he's allowed to), a great saxophone solo at the end of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Part One)" (when the song finally gets going), the awesome pedal steel work in the first half of "(Part Two)", the usual interesting, somewhat-clever Pink Floyd incidental, background, and song-spacing noises, and some occasional nice acoustic guitar strums, this album never gets its act together until it's on it's way out. The best song, "Welcome to the Machine" is dissed while, for some god-only-knows reason, the very plain and unexceptional musics of "Have a Cigar" ("By the way, which one's Pink?") and "Wish You Were Here" are universally lauded as rock classics! Where is the progressive gold in this tired Eagles-meets-Lynyrd Skynyrd stuff? While I played this album to death for a couple of months when it first came out, I haven't listened to it since (until right now)-I haven't wanted to. IM(not so humble)O, this album ranks behind Animals, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Meddle. I believe that, were it not for the maudlin mega-hype for poor Mr. Barrett, this album would never get the kind of reverence it does. Barrett a pitiable genius? Perhaps, but then, if this is the case the Todd (Rundgren) really is God! Robert Wyatt is the Son of, and Steve Wilson and Robert Fripp are taking turns as the Holy Spirit! High three, rounded to four.