Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums: Phil Rose: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Roger Waters and Pink Floyd

The Concept Albums

Roger Waters and Pink Floyd

The Concept Albums

Description

Beyond its elucidation and critique of traditional ‘notation-centric’ musicology, this book's primary emphasis is on the negotiation and construction of meaning within the extended musical multimedia works of the classic British group Pink Floyd. Encompassing the concept albums that the group released from 1973 to 1983, during Roger Waters’ final period with the band, chapters are devoted to Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut (1983), along with Waters’ third solo album Amused to Death (1993). This book's analysis of album covers, lyrics, music and film makes use of techniques of literary and film criticism, while employing the combined lenses of musical hermeneutics and discourse analysis, so as to illustrate how sonic and musical information contribute to listeners’ interpretations of the discerning messages of these monumental musical artifacts. Ultimately, it demonstrates how their words, sounds, and images work together in order to communicate one fundamental concern, which—to paraphrase the music journalist Karl Dallas—is to affirm human values against everything in life that should conspire against them.

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Dark Side of the Moon
Chapter 2: Wish You Were Here
Chapter 3: Animals
Chapter 4: The Wall
Chapter 5: The Final Cut
Chapter 6: Amused to Death
Appendix: Interview with Roger Waters
Works Cited and Consulted
Album Information
Index
About the Author

Product details

Published	14 Jan 2015
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	278
ISBN	9781611477603
Imprint	Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Illustrations	18 b/w illustrations;
Dimensions	237 x 159 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Rogers Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums represents a welcome and focused effort to examine something the author finds largely missing in popular commercial culture.... [F]rom the start the reader encounters an in-depth and assured investigation of the musical dimensions of this remarkable group.

Canadian Journal of Communication
Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums will be required reading for any serious Pink Floyd fan.

Explorations In Media Ecology
Phil Rose reveals the meticulous attention that Pink Floyd—largely Roger Waters and David Gilmour—lavished on crafting the new art form in such albums as Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. The reader will be surprised to discover the intellectual depth which rock and roll can achieve while remaining good, solid music.

Dr. Eric McLuhan, Internationally-known and award-winning lecturer on communication and media, co-author Laws of Media (with Marshall McLuhan).
Phil Rose has undertaken a rigorously thorough, yet eminently readable, exegesis of the lyrics, music and, where appropriate, accompanying imagery from Pink Floyd’s and Water’s live performances... . As is the case with the best scholarly explorations of complex material, Rose’s analysis continually spins off into revealing discussions of other works of art and larger societal issues that Waters alludes to or directly references in his and Floyd’s work. The resulting book is extremely enlightening and will reward even the most ardent Pink Floyd/Rogers Water fan with its insights, permanently altering and enriching all subsequent listening to this extraordinary body of work.

Rob Bowman, Associate Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at York University, Grammy award-winning musicologist who founded popular music studies in Canada, and author of the celebrated book Soulsville U.S.A – The Story of Stax Records.
With great precision and insight, Phil Rose provides us with an analysis that ranges from a detailed examination of popular music and lyrics as they relate to psychology and biography, aesthetic issues, and the realities of the recording industry, to broader issues concerning culture and counterculture, capitalism and commercialism, and the social impact of media and technology. You don't have to be a Pink Floyd fan to appreciate what is accomplished in this study.

Lance Strate, Fordham University
In this articulate and nuanced investigation, Phil Rose reveals how the concept albums of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd, in both their musical structure and lyrics, provide a space of prolonged thought and a mode of mediation by which people can come to see their own culture through outsider eyes. Rose deftly discloses how these albums enable an affirmation of hope for the human spirit in the face of obstacles, adversity, and despair. This interesting and interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to serious fans of Roger Waters and/or Pink Floyd, and also to musicologists, cultural critics, popular music theorists, and humanities scholars more generally.

Corey Anton, professor of Communication Studies, Grand Valley State University