WISH YOU WERE HERE

Well is de rigeur to speak something about my background with the Floyds before doing this review: The Piper at the Gate of Dawn wich i still consider the best floyd album played a key roll in my life, to say it in few words i just love it: Syd it was a friend, a magician and a child, a beatifull person, a very special allie wich you can relay on.

The latter floyds specialy from Atomic onwards just made me crunge my teeth.....how the group that made LIFE run trough an artwork where making these gloomy things? Theres a lot of issues here that have to do it with the Syd departure to the nether world and how it affected the band psyke and creativity. i always thought that they didnt seem to care very much about Syd in the citical moments....something that i know more than one time has crossed Waters mind. Basically they make a career over him, something waters was aware. But you know thats just one side of the story...i realizaed now ...and in what way!!

Dali confronted with the death of his friend Lorca say something like the spanish civil war was a telurical event, by wich i think he meant it was something so full of hidden meanings and facts, and double mirrors...something that in a way had to happen even if the meaning of it is so close to our intimate heart and so stuck in our subconscious, but we are unnable to grasp completly.

Well now i feel the same about Syd,s incident.....it reflect not just one single event, is the whole fate of the psychedelic generation that we are going to see reflected in Wish you where here. You know the ones that went to far, couldnt come back ending being squzophrenic outsiders, and those wich in the turmoil adapted and without loosing the memory separated form the line of their foolisn and mercurial youth, gettin to a depressive and lucid adultness. Thats it...this disc is the sound of lucid depression...but is even more...lucid depression was already expresed in DOTM...

As years passed the flux of creativity infused by the experiences with Syd beggin to fade, not only that the Floyds realized that well they make it, they wanted to get sucess a place in the machine, o and they get and in what way!! But then they realized of this frightining thing that happens to you when you reach yor goals and you see you are not satisfied, and you loose humanity in the way of achiving something not worthy of this de-soulment.

But you see they realized it!!! The Floyds were not just sales man...ou contraire...in this disc they are fighting with full passion against this fate....and how they do it?: Centered in this lucid depression and trying to reach the absence of Syd, of creativity in a raw sense, and of humanity in themselves and in the world around and thus transforming this emotional tension in a exposed, naked, concise artesany of double lectures.

Without losing their stand in a chilling conscious aproach to music and to life, literally they yearn for what they lost, so the disc turns to be a voyage from the frost of reality to the warm of the ellusive dream, making a disc as emotional as the best Hamill.

Zehul?! Yes literaly...ask Vander.. When the disc finally hits you, you just can ignore is a masterpiece, it leaves you speechless something as big as life has been enrapted you.

Lets begin with the album cover: It means two things on one side is the salesman, the record company "fat guy", giving its hand falsely to the artist wich is in flames......on the other side of this moon the meaning is: ! They are the record salesmen! They are the ones adapted to the machine, to the system and the man on fire is Syd, and then this visually criptic handshake turns from being a deal a contract to being a real need for the hand of their soulmate. Is like the human version of the capilla sixtina famous touching of fingers....and being human it makes the power of the feeling that comes from it much more heartbraking, spinechilling, and real....infinately more (pun intended)....Is just the must sublime cover of the history of rock...and it is by what is hidden inside it...well it was not a disc about absence?

Now lets go to the music.....the music of the Floyd had change from being outrageusly proffusive and intuitive to be conscious and minimalist...this is true also aplied to this disc...but not the whole true.....you can define minimalist in some or other way but...!Here theres just not any more notes than its needed but not any less ! Well is clearly not barroque music...you can call it adjusted-perfectialism.

"Shine on you....." opens with a sad guitar and synths inmersed in absence building the mood more and more till we get to the famous four notes, as simply as eliptic, the pressence (Syd) is hinted in this absence then it continues to expanding the feeling slowly as all the group joins not breaking loose, just building it with perfection letting the emotion take form, the guitar sounds broken and full of emotional content the synth is angelic and coldish, blending with maestry like heart and mind united. The lyrics enter...really beatifull...the laughter is at the same time the laughter of Syd and of Waters remembering him....the verses are mind based with clearly ultra-conscious aproach while the chorus is pure emotion, a breaking....yes we understand what happened to you but !Shine, shine again! The sax enters for delight till the song ends and we get to the elevator? helicopter? to the machine land. "Welcome to the Machine" is the most realistic, emotional, coldish, chilling, uncanny, frustrating, righteously sad song you could concive. The double mirrors enters again....Is what the acolites of the machine say to Syd...they know what you dream, they were just children playing with toys, you wanted to be a rock star....you fail but now will give you the right medicine (for so to say).....but is also what the acolites say to the Floyds!!! They just sucedeed but they are welcome into the machine and they have to play their part as "Rockstars"...so the main theme is exposed, is about friends goin into totally different directions, gettin to be loosers or winners, but essentialy saring the same destiny broken and lost...by the "allknowing" machine. "Get a cigar" !Cool song!! The first verse is the most street wise cinical begiinning...just "funky", bluesy to the bones. The lyrics are so satirical but emotionaly dense...Ridding the Gravy Train for me sugest the railroad of necesity wich the Floyds were into, entraped by contracts, and by simply the way the system works, just encircled in a disgusting hipocresie they can not avoid, heading inexorable by their fate to a fake place in the altar of musical industrie............ Then you hear a Zapp.....we live the disc on the low, we tune into a a old radio...and old feeling...and the most beatifull song (after Man-Erg, maybe not really sure) in the history enters. This is were all the content emotion breaks loose.......( not formaly, not any howl or confussed passages ala Hammill). The origin of what you can call my revelation is that i realized of the double lecture of the song........ It always confused me that it was a letter to Syd, because naively i thought the verses "So you think you can tell..." well you know, were adressed to him....well thats true but again not the whole of the true....because its obvious that he couldnt tell...if it was adressed just to him they would say "So you think you could tell" but this larger than life song is that because is universal and personal at the same time...basically the verses are a reflexion on themselves!! Is like they are saying , well with thought we could tell , that we were the sanes, the ones with comun sense, but we find now entraped in all the exchange of change by comfort, we exchanged a walk on part in war for a lead role in a cage, just like you!!!-except your cage is your room and ours is the worlds golden cage, were not really sure even if we turn to be hippocrites ourselves!!! (thats the reason wich is the source of our sadness and biterness) and the brokening....The chorus: Were not sure, we can not tell the same as you, we need you !!We need your pressence!! You are the other part of us ¿what happened to us? We really need you!! ( and this is just heartbrokening as im crying in this moment) now the universal side comes because it adresses to evryone "So you think you can tell?" you see in present, ask yourself rightnow...think twice anyway you are in....do not loose the intimate silver thread with your friends in the otherside of the fence. So its possible to say this song is not beatifull? And its so because, as the representative of the whole album...is like an iceberg....the top of it, the surface is really beatifull, but what is hidden blast the whole thing to a human heaven full of despair and...love, yes man, love ( dont be embarrased thats something you fell too)---quoting Triana with a bit of freedom "Desires and misteries that are twisting in the deep of your heart ( and mind)" Is beatifull as a pure pop ballad..even if its not that in fact..so thats why so many sing it and play it without grasping the full content.....and how universal can be a work if the thicked as brick and the wise mans cannot reach both to it...is not also about that this album? (Mister Tull your overintelectual satire putting yourself over your audience doesnt have this true magic...you are not reallizing how thick as a brick your heart is...and this can make us feel and think without the sting of pretentious over importance..you wise man in your scotish castle, in your ivory tower wich so it seems never did any animal deal livimg in your limbo of coffe witty small talk. By the way your album is great, it is, but.....)Sincerity , a humble spirit, artistic mastery?...Yes... lets call it PERFECTION. The last suite is the proggiest part of the album, in a classical sense, it ends the disc greatly.

So if you miss a friend wich the destiny has taken affar, dont loose the silver thread...dont go to psychotherapy, first get this disc and HEAL YOURSELF, dont denay the mistery...cause is a calling, is a broken !halleluja!

In the humble spirit shown in the album i will not be satisfied without saying to evryone i trolled on the Floyds subject....I WAS WRONG.....i supose i can not avoid being a pasionate guy, my sincere apologies, i guess you can call me by now a re-newed Floyd fan.

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