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Obscured by Clouds the seventh studio album by Pink Floyd, based on their soundtrack  for the French film La Vallée, by Barbet Schroeder. Some copies of the album refer to the film by its alternate English title, The Valley. The LP was released in the United Kingdom on 3 June 1972, on Harvest/EMI and then in the United States on 15 June 1972, on Harvest/Capitol. The album reached #6 on the UK album charts and #46 on the U.S. album charts (where it was certified Gold by the RIAA in March 1994). In 1986, the album was released on CD. A digitally remastered CD was released in March 1996 in the UK and August 1996 in the U.S. The cover of Obscured By Clouds is an out-of-focus film still of a man in a tree. In 1996 when Obscured By Clouds was repackaged Jon Crossland suggested using infra red landscapes as backgrounds.

Overview

At this point in their career, the band were not new to scoring movies. They had already scored the films The Committee, and More, in 1968, 1969, and respectively.

The band were already working on The Dark Side of the Moon during this period, but production was interrupted when the band traveled to France to score the movie. Nick Mason refers to the project:

    "After the success of More, we had agreed to do another sound track for Barbet Schroeder. His new film was called La Vallée and we traveled over to France to record the music in the last week of February... We did the recording with the same method we had employed for More, following a rough cut of the film, using stopwatches for specific cues and creating interlinking musical moods that would be cross-faded to suit the final version... The recording time was extremely tight. We only had two weeks to record the soundtrack with a short amount of time afterward to turn it into an album."

While recording the music, the band were free to use "standard rock song construction" to their advantage, and such was the case for "Obscured by Clouds". The title track featured an early use of electronic drums, or "electric bongos" as Mason calls them. Rick Wright foreshadows what is to come later with his use of synthesizers on this album. A droning note (played on an EMS VCS3 synthesizer) begins the album. This song was often used to open their live shows in 1973. The band also used themes to their advantage. The melody played in "Burning Bridges" is echoed later in "Mudmen". The song "Childhood's End" is said to have been inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name.

"Free Four" was the first Pink Floyd song to get significant airplay in the U.S., and the first to deal directly with the death of Eric Fletcher Waters, Roger Waters' father.

In a snippet of interview footage that appeared in the 1974 theatrical version (later released on VHS and Laserdisc) and subsequent "Director's Cut DVD" versions of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, Roger Waters stated that early pressings of the album contained excessive sibilants in the vocal tracks, a problem that was corrected in later pressings.

Obscured by Clouds was the first Pink Floyd album to feature the VCS 3 synthesizer.

Live performances

Pink Floyd opened some shows in 1973 with an extended jam based on the pairing of "Obscured by Clouds" and "When You're In", accompanied by smoke and a light show.

"Childhood's End" is the only other song from the soundtrack to find its way to the stage. It made several appearances in Europe starting on December 1, 1972 and at the start of the band's March 1973 tour of North America, usually with an extended instrumental passage.

"Wot's... Uh, the Deal?" saw revival as part of David Gilmour's set list during his 2006 solo tour. One of these performances features on Gilmour's 2007 DVD Remember That Night and also the vinyl version of his 2008 live album Live in Gdańsk.

Track listing

Side one

1. "Obscured by Clouds"  3:03
2. "When You're In"  2:30
3. "Burning Bridges"  3:29
4. "The Gold It's in the..."  3:07
5. "Wot's... Uh the Deal?"  5:08
6. "Mudmen"                          4:20

Side two

7. "Childhood's End"  4:31
8. "Free Four"  4:15
9. "Stay"  4:05
10. "Absolutely Curtains"  5:52



Singles

    * "Free Four"/"Stay" (1972, U.S. only release)
    * "Free Four"/"The Gold It's in the..." (1972, Italy only release)
    * "Burning Bridges"/"Childhood's End" (1972, some states on release)


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"Free Four" is a Pink Floyd song written and sung by Roger Waters, from the album Obscured by Clouds.

The song begins with a rock and roll count-in; but in this case Pink Floyd decided to play with words and record, "One, Two, FREE FOUR!" The song deals with themes that would become standard for Waters in albums following this, notably his father's death and the "evils" of the record industry. Although the song is mellow during the lyrical portions, the guitar solo launches into a heavier tone, with a progression that some have found reminiscent of the instrumental "One of These Days". "Free Four" was released as a single in 1972 and reached FM radio's top 50 list. It seems to be an entirely atypical choice for airplay, as it's one of Pink Floyd's most musically anomalous songs recalls late-'60s Kinks' powerpop sound with a melody like solo Paul McCartney decorated by fuzz guitar riffs and handclaps that recall T.Rex's classic singles. According AMG reviewer's opinion, the sound of "Free Four" also reminded Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime".

A later Pink Floyd song lyric, 1983's Not Now John, would reuse the "One, two, free four" phrase (but not as a count-in).

B-side Stay (US single)
The Gold It's in the... (Italian single)
Released June 3, 1972 (UK)
June 15, 1972 (US)
July 10, 1972 (US single)
1972 (Italian single)
Format 7"
Recorded February–March 1972
Château d'Hérouville, Pontoise, France
Genre Progressive rock, power pop
Length 4:16
3:30 (US single)
Label Harvest
Writer(s) Roger Waters
Producer Pink Floyd

(wikipedia)

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"Stay" is a song from Pink Floyd's 1972 album Obscured by Clouds.  It is known for being one of the album's particularly slow-moving, lyrical songs. The song was also issued as the B-side of "Free Four".

Lyrics

The lyrics, written by Roger Waters and music written and sung by Richard Wright, vacillate between frustration and indifference felt towards a casual sex partner (perhaps a groupie).  In this regard it is not unlike Wright's own "Summer '68".

Music

Musically, the main theme and verse of the song stays on a pedal point of G in the bass, while the chords above it change in a typical I-IV-V progression (G, C, and D Major). The D Major over the G bass results in the appearance of a G Major ninth chord, evoking a "melancholy" or "bittersweet" feeling. The chorus modulates to the parallel minor, with a chord change of G minor to C Major, a common progression in Wright's compositions. (See "Pow R. Toc H.", the "Funky Dung" section of the "Atom Heart Mother Suite", or "The Great Gig in the Sky".) Because this chord change evokes a ii-V-I progression left unfinished (it would have to resolve to F Major), the effect is appropriately dissatisfying, as the chorus delves into a profusion of barely-related chords, a convoluted but eventually successful attempt to resolve back to G Major.

Instrumentation

The instrumentation is mostly Wright's piano and Waters's bass guitar, with a solo and other ornamental touches from guitarist David Gilmour making heavy use of a clean Wah-wah pedal.

(wikipedia)

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Irwin Allen Ginsberg (play /ˈɡɪnzbərɡ/; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet who vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression. In the 1950s, Ginsberg was a leading figure of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg's epic poem "Howl", in which he celebrates his fellow "angel-headed hipsters" and excoriates what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States, is one of the classic poems of the Beat Generation.  The poem, dedicated to writer Carl Solomon, has the opening:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix...

In October 1955, Ginsberg and five other unknown poets gave a free reading at an experimental art gallery in San Francisco. Ginsberg's "Howl" electrified the audience. According to fellow poet Michael McClure, it was clear "that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America and its supporting armies and navies and academies and institutions and ownership systems and power support bases."  In 1957, "Howl" attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial in which a San Francisco prosecutor argued it contained "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language." The poem seemed especially outrageous in 1950s America because it depicted both heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made homosexual acts a crime in every U.S. state. "Howl" reflected Ginsberg's own homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner.  Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, adding, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

In "Howl" and in his other poetry, Ginsberg drew inspiration from the epic, free verse style of the 19th century American poet Walt Whitman. Both wrote passionately about the promise (and betrayal) of American democracy, the central importance of erotic experience, and the spiritual quest for the truth of everyday existence.  J. D. McClatchy, editor of the Yale Review called Ginsberg "the best-known American poet of his generation, as much a social force as a literary phenomenon." McClatchy added that Ginsberg, like Whitman, "was a bard in the old manner – outsized, darkly prophetic, part exuberance, part prayer, part rant. His work is finally a history of our era's psyche, with all its contradictory urges."

Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines extensively. One of his most influential teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist, the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa, founder of the Naropa Institute, now Naropa University at Boulder, Colorado.  At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started a poetry school there in 1974 which they called the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics".  In spite of his attraction to Eastern religions, the journalist Jane Kramer argues that Ginsberg, like Whitman, adhered to an "American brand of mysticism" that was, in her words, "rooted in humanism and in a romantic and visionary ideal of harmony among men." Ginsberg's political activism was consistent with his religious beliefs. He took part in decades of non-violent political protest against everything from the Vietnam War to the War on Drugs.  The literary critic, Helen Vendler, described Ginsberg as "tirelessly persistent in protesting censorship, imperial politics, and persecution of the powerless."  His achievements as a writer as well as his notoriety as an activist gained him honors from established institutions. Ginsberg's book of poems, The Fall of America, won the National Book Award for poetry in 1974. Other honors included the National Arts Club gold medal and his induction into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, both in 1979.  Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992.

Demystification of drugs

Ginsberg also talked often about drug use. Throughout the 1960s he took an active role in the demystification of LSD, and, with Timothy Leary, worked to promote its common use. He was also for many decades an advocate of marijuana legalization, and, at the same time, warned his audiences against the hazards of tobacco in his Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Don't Smoke): "Don't Smoke Don't Smoke Nicotine Nicotine No / No don't smoke the official Dope Smoke Dope Dope ."


(wikipedia)

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Learyfan said:
Have a great day.  It's raining here today.  The sun has been literally obscured by clouds all day. 

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seconded