Rose deftly discloses how these albums enable an affirmation of hope for the human spirit in the face of obstacles, adversity, and despair. Rose's reflection on Pink Floyd's concept albums is timely, reminding us that what is sold to us as the good life is often crazy or misguided Pink Floyd, with Waters at the helm, uses every available tool, from stagecraft to synthesizers to critique a neurotic culture, and Rose's analysis walks us through the craft of their musical masterpieces.-David Franke, professor and director of the professional writing program at SUNY Cortland 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. This is a very ambitious project, of interest to anyone who has listened to Pink Floyd and struggled to explain how exactly they pulled off these art-rock masterpieces. You don't have to be a Pink Floyd fan to appreciate what is accomplished in this study.-Lance Strate, Fordham University Drawing from the concept albums, interviews, and music critics, Rose shows how Pink Floyd is able reject the alienation of contemporary culture and celebrate the generative power of the individual-a powerful critique that is communicated by a complex interplay of sound-shapes, lyrics, and tone that Rose makes approachable and downright fascinating. It is, however, the first to examine and analyze the full measure of the body of work that is Roger Water's contribution to his art, and which explains how such an idiosyncratic artist, with such a coherent, powerful and evolving vision and set of stories to tell, attained such massive, global success.-Thom Gencarelli Gencarelli, ssociate professor and the founding Chair of Manhattan College's Communication program 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. This book is not the first full-length scholarly work about Pink Floyd. Phil Rose, with some measure of a fan's interest and sensibility, but more so with the carefully-conceived and deeply-researched approach of a scholar, has done exactly that. The same of course can be said of Roger Waters' music after he left the band in 1985. rom the start the reader encounters an in-depth and assured investigation of the musical dimensions of this remarkable group.- "Canadian Journal of Communication" The music of Pink Floyd, in the iterations that were both groups-the early Syd Barrett-led group, and the later group with Roger Waters as principal songwriter-has always been worthy of serious consideration: artistic, popular and academic. Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums will be required reading for any serious Pink Floyd fan.- "Explorations In Media Ecology" 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. 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. 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. 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). 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.
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