ONE SLIP

'One Slip' - Pink Floyd (Single)

As with much of the other material on 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason', the 'One Slip' single emphasizes David Gilmour's fascination with blues and soul music., Although retaining some sounds in progressive and space rock, the sound goes down a much more predictable direction than the more complex earlier material. Be that as it may, the song here is still quite good, and while not as melodic as the other single 'On The Turning Away', it is more intelligent in its composition, with more choral vocals and a rhythm that sounds very indicative of world fusion. All of this makes for a decent song, but at the same time, the bouncy 80's nature of the track is lost on me when it comes to emotional impact. As with the rest of the album, 'One Slip' may be enjoyable enough for what it is, but it doesn't come close to comparing with the material of Pink Floyd when they were still a band with Roger Waters. Coming on the b-side here is a live performance of 'The Dogs Of War', which is a fairly sombre piece, and while it isn't exactly memorable, there's an intriguing atmosphere here, as well as some nice opportunities for Gilmour to work his soloing magic. Overall, not a great single, but it will certainly spark the interest of David Gilmour fans.

Another single from Pink Floyd's "Momentary Lapse of Reason" which is not half as bad as some Floydians would have you believe. Granted, this album is no masterpiece and comes sandwiched in between some amazing Floyd material. 'One Slip' is a more poppy song demonstrating the new direction of the band and I only like it due to Gilmour's accomplished vocals but it is definitely a radio friendly sound bound to alienate old Floydians, and I was drawn back to it more by the constant exposure on live DVDs.

'Terminal Frost/The Dogs of War (live)' is the only reason I bothered with the single and I guess its worth a listen, though in retrospect there are better live versions such as on the more recent DVDs. Overall the single boasts an impressive sleeve design with pink border and illustration of water spiralling down echoing the lyrics.

Collectors again will like, the rest of you can avoid without any dramas.

In the early to mid eighties, when their album "The Wall" was a hit, and everything in this band was then more related to Roger Waters's dark vision of things and to his ego, I really was not interested to listen to this band anymore. I don't like "The Wall" as an album, but the film of the same name was better, but not one that I could want to watch to several times again. When the album "The Final Cut" was released in 1983, and I knew that Rick Wright was not in the band anymore, I even cared less about the new albums that the band could release with Waters. For me, the best period of the band with Waters in the line-up was from 1968 to 1973 (from their albums "A Saucerful of Secrets" to "The Dark Side of the Moon"). Their "Wish You Were Here" album from 1975 is also good, but from there the band was really having a lot of internal problems which were reflected in the content and in the quality of their albums.

By late 1987, I first listened to their "Learning to Fly" single in a FM Radio Station in my city, and I liked it. The radio station announcer said that Waters was not in the band anymore, and that Wright was again in the band (but it was not very known then that it was with him only playing as a musician under salary! A thing that by 1994 changed with him again being a full time member of the band). So, I then became interested to listen to this band again. I bought their then new album ("A Momentary Lapse of Reason") in 1988, and while I liked it then, now I can say that it was not one of their best albums, but it was better and more interesting than any album they released between 1977 and 1983, in their last years with Waters. A time when he dominated the songwriting and almost everything in the band.

By 1986-1987, with Waters finally out of the band since late 1985, David Gilmour and Nick Mason were trying to play again as PINK FLOYD without Waters. They recorded their "A Momenary Lapse of Reason" album and it was released in September 1987, with them (and Wright too) facing a very diificult time for some months due to legal problems with Waters about the use of the name of the band. Finally, an agreement with Waters was reached, and they had a lot of success with the album. They maybe became more successful then than in their last years with Waters in the band.

For their "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" album, Gilmour and Mason had to employ several session musicians to record the album, and Gilmour, who was the main songwriter then, collaborated with other musicians in the songwriting of some songs. "One Slip" was a song written by Gilmour with ROXY MUSIC's guitarist Phil Manzanera (who doesn't appear playing in the album or in this song), and this song was released in the Side "A" of this single. It is a good song, more related in some ways to the Pop Rock sound of the mid to late eighties, updating the sound of the band for those times, but at the same time this song also has "the Pink Floyd sound" influences, more in Gilmour's terms. It also has some electronic drums playing, some programmed sequencers, both things being very typical of that time. The "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" title of the album was taken from the chorus of this song's lyrics. I like more the live version of this song which was recorded in 1988, playing it with a lot of energy. This live version of this song appears in their "Delicate Sound of Thunder" video from 1989. in this studio version, the song has a very good stick bass solo played by Tony Levin, while in the live version Guy Pratt also plays a very good bass guitar solo using some pedal sound effects to make it sound like Levin´s stick bass.

In the Side "B" of this single, there is the studio version of "Terminal Frost", also taken from their 1987 album. An instrumental musical piece with some heavy playing and with saxes played by Scott Page and by SUPERTRAMP's John Helliwell. There is also a live version from "The Dogs of War", recorded at The Omni, in Atlanta, in November 1987, during one of their early concerts of the tour, with the band having five female backing singers instead of three (as in the remaining tour dates). This song has very good lyrics and it is a heavy Blues influenced song with a sax solo by Page and lead guitar parts by Gilmour. The concerts at The Omni were filmed professionally and some parts of them were used for promotional purposes. One of the songs released on video for promotional use from these concerts was "The Dogs of War", with the band sounding good, but with their playing still not being very good as in later tour dates from the same tour. With the passing of time the new line-up of the band obviously gained more in confidence and experience together and played better in concert.