WISH YOU WERE HERE

I was surprised that I haven't yet write a review about this magnificent piece of prog music. And since there is already over 700 other people who did, what could I add besides my own opinion and my personal vision of things? At the time it was realeased I remember the critics were not nice. The expectations where enormous, since Dark Side Of The Moon was both a landmark album and sold in phenomenal numbers, becoming one of the ten bestselling albums in rock history. How can you top that?

Answer: you can't. You just move on. And PF did just that. Wish You Were Here was an excellent work in a time everybody was expecting something even more groundbreaking than its precedor. Which was foolish, of course (some press calling it a 'poor' copy fo TDSOTM was not only insulting, but ludicrous). With hindsight we can see that this was a transitional CD, where Roger Waters cynical visons of the real world were beginning to take over the previous lyrics about echoes, time and general lunacy. The music was more solid even if the central piece was something that could easily have been a part of The Dark Side Of The Moon: Shine On You Crazy Diamond is definitly their link with their gloro\ious past as much as Welcome To The Machine and Have A Cigar were a hint of what was to come.

Seen today I still think this is a fantastic job for a band under such big pressures from the public and press,. Besides they changed labels what surely did not help to quiet things down. There are some fantastic guitar work from David Gilmour and some of the most proeminent keyboards ever done by Rick Wright (unfortunatly he would never again have so much room in a PF record). With a superb production job for the time and a very interesting and puzziling cover, this is a record every prog fan of the 70's should have.

Not really a masterpiece, but great anyway. 4 stars.