Pink Floyd isn't just for stoners

About once a year, I hear some stoner talk about how he "just got high last night and listened to Dark Side." While everyone and their grandma knows Dark Side of the Moon is an important and very cool rock album, it bothers me how often Pink Floyd's other LPs are overlooked aside from The Wall. Believe it or not, you don't have to get high to like Pink Floyd, and believe it or not there are a handful of Floyd albums that are arguably superior to Dark Side in many ways.\nPrompted by the recent release of a sort of greatest hits double album, I felt the need to enlighten music lovers who might not fully understand Pink Floyd because of all the hype surrounding Dark Side, The Wall and the handful of singles that actually receive airplay. There are also a lot of pseudo-Floyd fans out that really give a wrong impression of one of the most misunderstood and creative bands of their time.\nInterestingly enough, Syd Barrett, the band's greatest source of creative inspiration (at least for the first decade), would soon leave the band. Barrett brought jangly, heavy and psychedelic colorations to the music. More importantly, Barrett's very real psychological struggles and descent to madness permeate the band's concept albums. For these reasons alone, Piper at the Gates of Dawn is worthy of a listen.\nFloyd's most interesting early album released after Barrett's departure is probably Meddle. It consists of six very different-sounding tracks that point to a number of influences and more importantly to the direction Floyd would soon take. Though released in 1971, "One of these Days" sounds more like their atmospheric 1980s work while the "Fearless" seems to point in more of the direction that Led Zeppelin would soon travel. The album displays the bands versatility and forward looking approach.\nMy personal favorite is the relatively well-known Wish You Were Here. Again, the Floyd musicians draw on their friend's pain. What makes this better than Dark Side is that none of the emotions are contrived. Everything heard here are the undeniable, sincere feelings the band members had toward their friend's inevitable collapse. It is bitterly painful and carries a sense of necessity with what's being communicated. It also includes a better use of sound effects than Dark Side and has more thought out arrangements and instrumentation.\nLater in their careers, the battle for control of the band between David Gilmour and Roger Waters pushed them forward. From the mid-1980s and on, Gilmour really took over and turned back to more conventional record making. Certain ideas and moods still were pervasive on each track, but albums such as Momentary Lapse of Reasoning and Division Bell sound more like cohesive collections of singles or smaller groupings of songs and instrumentals rather than concept albums. Nonetheless, they are consistently strong albums with their often cold, detached moods and less spacious instrumentals.\nJust as Dark Side improved on the musicians' understanding of how to use the studio, Wish You Were Here led to continuous improvement on the flow of their concept albums. As later albums like The Final Cut would illustrate, Floyd had also learned how to make individual tracks that could stand on their own without the having to sit through some of the lesser transition tracks every time you hit play. This can even make listening to great albums like The Wall a bit exhausting, but listening to "Young Lust" followed by "Hey You" or jumping to "Goodbye Blue Sky" just doesn't make sense.\nSearching through Pink Floyd's entire discography will undoubtedly help anyone of the verge of becoming a fan realize the inspiration and motivation behind the genius of this band. Like any great symphony, these albums require thorough listening and an understanding of perspective to be truly appreciated. This is why the idea of a greatest hits album for this band is about as silly as one for Beethoven. Contrary to popular belief, the alpha and omega of Floyd's output were not Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. Both before and after these albums the band continued to stretch the boundaries and concepts involved in progressive and minimalist rock music, album production and tight arranging.