While most people tend to revere Pink Floyd for its more ambient (Dark Side of the Moon), more iconic (Wish You Were Here) or more overtly conceptual albums (Dark Side, The Wall), 1977's Animals holds a special place in my heart. It's the first Pink Floyd album, nay, maybe the first album period, that I ever really listened to from start to finish. I was at sleepaway camp in upstate New York the summer before sixth grade when our counselor finally got fed up with Adam Sandler, Green Day and The Offspring LPs (as though we were listening on vinyl...God, I'm pretentious.)
I think everyone was pretty instantly hooked. Floyd was the new "It" band that summer. In some way, I really feel like Pink Floyd is that rare classic rock band that would sound as fresh today as I imagine it did on January 23rd, 1977 (which, for this post's useless trivia nugget of the day, is the precise day Roots debuted on ABC.)
It's my understanding that this is the first Pink Floyd album where Roger Waters really became the colossal egomaniac of wide repute. He wrote all of the songs himself, only sharing a writing credit on "Dogs" with underrated guitar virtuoso David Gilmour. The recording process for Animals is widely attributed as the start of Pink Floyd's breakup...
Nevertheless, it's awesome for several reasons.
- It's apparently a giant allegory of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Dogs are the men (Ask a feminist,) Sheep are the masses (seems pretty standard) and Pigs, well, I'm not really sure, but I guess Snowball Stalin and Napoleon Trotsky might help you with that interpretation.
- It has some of the most incredibly biting, vicious, searing guitar lines of any album of which I'm aware. Credit Gilmour on that one.
- When Waters says "Ha Ha, charade you are," I never really understood why he doesn't say "sha-raid;" is it a British pronunciation?
- The animal sounds always weird me out...
1 comment:
I'll take Meddle over any Pink Floyd album any day. I could listen Fearless everyday for the rest of my life.
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