Smell the music!

Pink Floyd Animals album cover
Pink Floyd Animals album cover
My all time favourite band that I think continues to this day to be in a league of their own is non other than Pink Floyd. The ubiquitous and everlasting music they created was a breakthrough for the time and continues to be so even today. Nothing, absolutely nothing compares to their arrangements, whether that is the lead guitar riffs or the thunderous and rhythmic drums, the excellent vocals or the whole show they put on. I was never fortunate enough to attend one of their live gigs, but I am sure I would have given my right arm to have had the pleasure!

To me, one thing that is very special about their music which makes it very personal to me is that I even associated smells to their various songs! I don’t know if certain music or songs engender the same response in you too, but I can tell you with many of their songs I get transported back to the college dorm and to my room in my dad’s house through a visual and an olfactory journey too!

The famous Pink Floyd balloon pig
The famous Pink Floyd balloon pig
Weird, I know.

I must also confess that when I get the house to myself – which is very very rare – I blast out Money or Comfortably Numb or especially Shine on Your Crazy Diamond through the stereo or the computer, recline, close my eyes, and get transported back to distant memories, locales and odours.

Do you have the same experiences? Or am I the only weird one in these here parts?

Comments

  1. Vile

    Yes, They take you places.
    Smelling their songs, that’s only you though i think.
    My favorites are “hey you” and “Goodbye Blue Sky”

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  3. Meggie

    I tend to associate pieces of music with places. One example is the album Atom Heart Mother. It always makes me think of the countryside in central and coastal Northumberland, because it would always be playing on the car stereo while we explored the area in our car.

    I reckon it’s quite normal to make associations like that.

    The advertising agencies are obviously aware of the power of music to evoke pleasant hankerings.

  4. dude

    pink floyd is an amazing band.
    their music is genius.

    Roger Waters had a concert in Dubai a year ago Mahmood, did you know about that?

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  6. voyer

    Ooozzz yer Daddy Mo? My late mother, who was a Mario Lanza, Julie Andrews, Andy Williams fan, adored and devoured every bit of Floyd, especially The Wall, simply because she was living with me and I played it all the time, she got into it. I was just saying to the Queen the other day how much I hate name droppers, but I once did a lot of work for EMI in London and was then friendly with Hurricane Smith (Norman), who knew Tom Dick and Harry and the guy who gave out the after show party passes for bands like Floyd. I’ve still got the Wembley VIP passes in all their plastic glory hanging in my office. What even remotely intelligent, artistically savvy person would miss that?
    Nothing in the last and definitely nothing in the next century will touch them. Forget your pompous, delude agenda riddled luvvies U2 and so on. For new generations, just take the time, (it may takes months) forget your instant gratification(c)rap and hip drip, sit back a few times and listen to Floyd. Get into and feel the passion, you’ll NEVER look back.
    The Beatles brilliant, the Who ahead of their time, The Stones rock on, Led Zep, way out there, Uriah Heap, Free, Purple and so many more, then later came Supertramp. All the dog’s bollix musically and so are the likes of Alana Morissette to Elton John, M.J and Chris Deburg and on and on. There are just too many exceptionally brilliant bands and their spin offs and individual artists, but NOTHING will ever top Pink Floyd. Oh maybe Graham Oxley! Remember him?

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    mahmood

    I remember Uriah Heap and Jethro Tull, didn’t mind the former but really loved the latter… are we now showing our age! 😀

  8. dude

    im in high school right now, and i think everybody should listen to great bands like pink floyd,zeppelin,rush,etc. rather than akon and lil wayne and all of those crappy “artists”.

  9. Ali

    Now there’s a blast from the past, Graham Oxley – Bahrain’s own Elton John. What ever happened to him and his close friend John Phillips? Didn’t they do an album together in Singapore.

    Anyway Graham was a very artistic and talented man although often misunderstood – his solo performances in Doha in the 80’s were legendary although the double act later with John in Manama was what set the crowds on fire.

    Why didn’t Pink Floyd ever come to Bahrain?

  10. dude

    their drummer, nick mason, was in bahrain two years ago for the formula one race.

  11. Joker

    I’m a big fan of pink floyd too. The difference is I associate music with places.

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