clovesbud

I'm just sitting here listening to Low's cover of Pink Floyd's "Fearless" and I wondered if many kids in their late teens and early twenties had any exposure to Pink Floyd. What is their legacy and how does it fit in with all the cool stuff happening today?

I never had a great relationship with Classic Rock. I discovered Sonic Youth and Bauhaus in high school and was listening to Kate Bush and David Bowie even before them. But, one constant in my life has always been Pink Floyd. I've been listening to them since before I can even remember. That's how I got to Kate and Bowie actually. Syd Barrett inspired Bowie to stop recording hoky folk songs and basically gave him his career. Dave Gilmour discovered Kate and got her a record deal.

I have thousands of records and cds and singles and through most of them I can see a direct, or indirect, path back to Floyd. Anybody like Sigur Ros? Total Pink Floyd aesthetic. Bjork, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, all those Mille Plateaux experimenters, all those guys owe a debt. Belle and Sebastian, Bright Eyes, Damien Jurado all have pieces of Syd in there. I could play you parts of Floyd's "Ummagumma" and tell you it was Nurse With Wound and you would never know. It goes on and on.

So, I'm just listening to "Echoes" and hoping the kids out there don't forget Pink Floyd. Not the hip hop kids. The dark kids. The ones I love.