No Echoes by R J Dent

Villa Anamaria is an ornate Art Nouveau-style villa in Pefkos, on the Greek island of Rhodes. It is at the end of a beach road overlooking Askeftos Bay. The villa used to belong to Pink Floyd guitarist, David Gilmour, who sold it to an Italian couple several years ago.

 

Villa Anamaria 1990

 

On Pefkos maps, Villa Anamaria is still referred to as the ‘Pink Floyd Villa’.

It has been on the market for nearly five years, and is currently valued at 1.1 million Euros. So far, no one has offered to buy it, and Villa Anamaria is gradually beginning to look like an unloved, derelict building.

 

No Echoes

 

Once, Villa Anamaria, an ornate house

above a rocky, remote Rhodian bay,

was neat, discrete, resplendent in hot sun,

with turquoise wrought-iron gates and walled garden,

olive tree-lined stone drive and marbled paths

that led to subtly-arranged glades of shade,

past Grecian urns, manicured lawns, statues.

 

Now, just a millionaire’s discarded toy,

empty, abandoned, unwanted, disowned,

no echoes of the distant past resound

or sound in rooms now empty but for dust.

Silence, shutters askew, sun-faded walls,

cracked paving, overgrown groves, creeping weeds,

an empty swimming pool, lawns gone to seed.

 

 

Villa Anamaria 2016

 

No Echoes

by R J Dent

 

Copyright © R J Dent (2016)

 

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Pompeii

The city of Pompeii was an ancient Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei.

Pompeii along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area, were mostly destroyed and buried under 4 to 6 metres (13 to 20 ft) of ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The eruption was cataclysmic for the town. Evidence for the destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger, who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder, an admiral of the Roman fleet, who tried to rescue citizens. The site was lost for about 1500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599.

The objects that lay beneath the city have been well preserved for thousands of years because of the lack of air and moisture. These artifacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana.

Pompeii has been a tourist destination for over 250 years. Today it has UNESCO World Heritage Site status and is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy, with approximately 2.5 million visitors every year.

In 1971, the rock band Pink Floyd recorded the live concert film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, performing six songs in the ancient Roman amphitheatre in the city. The audience consisted only of the film’s production crew and some local children.

Pompeii

(c) R J Dent 2013

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The Pink Floyd Story Considered as a NASA Space Flight Report by R J Dent

Precisely eight days and three minutes after their lunar launch on May 16, Pink Floyd (hereafter referred to as PF) crewmen Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Rick Wright and Syd Barrett landed PF at the recording studio in the Mohave Desert on the Eastern Seaboard, 399 miles east of American Samoa.

PF ventured closer to the moon than any craft has ever done, and the PF crew received the traditional hero’s welcome from those who waited in the pre-dawn hours aboard the SS Arnold Layne for its re-entry. Read more…

 

R J Dent says: ‘I always wanted to write a Pink Floyd story, and I was inspired to write The Pink Floyd Story Considered as a NASA Space Flight Report after reading J.G. Ballard’s The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race and Princess Margaret’s Facelift, both from Ballard’s classic, The Atrocity Exhibition.’

David Gilmour

Although On An island is a great David Gilmour solo album, his best solo album is his first album, simply entitled David Gilmour.

David Gilmour was released in May 1978 in the UK and on June 17, 1978 in the US. The album reached #17 in the UK and #29 on the Billboard US album charts and was certified Gold in the US by the RIAA. The album was produced by Gilmour himself, and consists mostly of bluesy, guitar oriented rock songs.

David Gilmour was recorded at Super Bear Studios in France between December 1977 and early January 1978 with engineer John Etchells. It was mixed at the same studio in March 1978 by Nick Griffiths. The cover was designed by Hipgnosis and David Gilmour.

The tracks are:

Mihalis – 6.00

There’s No Way Out of Here (Ken Baker) – 5:24

Cry from the Street (David Gilmour/Eric Stuart) – 5:18

So Far Away – 6:12

Short and Sweet (David Gilmour/Roy Harper) – 5:33

Raise My Rent – 5:49)

No Way – 6:14)

It’s Deafinitely – 4:29)

I Can’t Breathe Anymore – 3:40)

All songs by David Gilmour except as noted.

A five song promotional film was made to promote the album. The band comprised Gilmour himself on guitars and vocals plus the two musicians on the album (bass player Rick Wills and drummer Willie Wilson) plus David Gilmour’s brother Mark on rhythm guitar and Ian McLagen on keyboards. The band performed “Mihalis”, “There’s No Way Out of Here”, “So Far Away”, “No Way” and “I Can’t Breathe Anymore”. There were additional female backing singers on “There’s No Way Out of Here” and “So Far Away”. The performances of the tracks in the promotional film differed to the album versions.

“Mihalis” had an extended guitar solo at the end.

“There’s No Way Out of Here” was slightly shorter as one of the verses was deleted but the guitar solo at the end was different from that on the album and had a clean ending instead of fading out like on album version.

The track “So Far Away” had an extended guitar solo at the end on this performance and ended in a faster tempo than the album version.

The performance of the song “No Way” had Gilmour playing regular lead guitar solos at the end of the track on his Fender Esquire (with distortion) instead of the lap steel guitar solos (with distortion) that had appeared on the album version and had a clean ending instead of fading out like on the album (the remastered CD version of the album had Gilmour’s lap steel solo extended this time to feature a duel between himself playing high notes on his lap steel and lower notes on his trademark Stratocaster during the fadeout on the remaster). The middle part of the album version, for where the first of two lap steel guitar solos were on the album version, was deleted.

“I Can’t Breathe Anymore” had Gilmour playing a regular guitar solo at the end of this song’s performance whilst on the album version (and on the remastered CD in an extended coda), a distorted lap steel guitar countered the guitar solo at the end. The ending of the promo performance of “I Can’t Breathe Anymore” was longer than on the album.

And that’s David Gilmour for you. Arguably, it’s David Gilmour’s best solo album.

David Gilmour © R J Dent (2010)

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David Gilmour – Live in Gdansk

One of the best albums I’ve listened to recently is David Gilmour’s Live in Gdánsk.

 

 

 

On it, David performs songs from On An Island, as well as many of the Pink Floyd songs we all know and love. Here’s a track list:

Speak To Me

Breathe

Time

Breathe (Reprise)

Castellorizon

On An Island

The Blue

Red Sky

This Heaven

Then I Close My Eyes

Smile

Take A Breath

A Pocketful Of Stones

Where We Start

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Astronomy Domine

Fat Old Sun

High Hopes

Echoes

Wish You Were Here

A Great Day For Freedom

Comfortably Numb

I’ve included a link to David Gilmour’s official Youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/officialdavidgilmour?blend=1&ob=4

David Gilmour

 

David Gilmour doesn’t need my help selling his music, but I enjoyed this collection of songs so much and was so impressed by their quality – for very often live albums tend to have a poor sound – that I wanted to encourage everyone interested in Gilmour’s music to listen to it.

Give Live in Gdánsk a listen – it’s a great album – you won’t regret it.

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Pink Floyd – Eclipse: The Perfect Pink Floyd Album

   

It starts with David Gilmour saying: “Christ! Where would rock and roll be without feedback?” which is a sound-bite from the Brain Damage section of Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii.

 

This segues into Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up, which is from the Zabriskie Point soundtrack. It is followed by the title track of A Saucerful of Secrets.

 

Following these is Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun from A Saucerful of Secrets, after which, as a tribute to Rick Wright, is Remember a Day from Relics. After these are Julia Dream from Relics, Cirrus Minor from More and then One of These Days from Meddle.

 

Grantchester Meadows from Ummagumma follows these and paves the way for Stay from Obscured by Clouds, which serves as a prelude to Atom Heart Mother (Parts 1-6) from Atom Heart Mother.

 

After that it’s time for Echoes, which is taken from Pink Floyd in Pompeii, rather than the BBC version, or the version on Meddle, or the much shorter version on Echoes – all of which are good, but not as good as the Pompeii version.

 

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part One) and Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part Two) are followed (yes, followed, not separated) by Wish You Were Here, all from Wish You Were Here.

 

There’s nothing from Dark Side of the Moon, as that particular album is best listened to in its entirety on its own.

 

The Back Catalogue by Storm Thorgerson

 

Wish You Were Here is followed by Dogs from Animals. This is followed by Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1), Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), and Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3) from The Wall.

 

The final track is, of course, the glorious Comfortably Numb, also from The Wall.

 

And that’s it, Eclipse, the perfect, definitive, classic Pink Floyd album. It’s what I have on my computer, what I’m listening to right now as I write this. If you want a copy of Eclipse, you’ll have to make your own.

 

Note: Apologies to completists for not including any of Syd Barrett’s songs, but that would have changed the mood of Eclipse completely. I like Syd Barrett’s music very much, but there’s so much good stuff it would have to be an entire album, perhaps one called Mad-Recap.

 

 

 

Eclipse

© R J Dent (2015)

 

www.rjdent.com