Here is a loud announcement

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

10/01/71 : Atom Heart Mother - Pink Floyd

And a second visit to the Floyd this year (and our eighth over all) - I was pleasantly surprised by our earlier visit, so let's hope for more of the same.

Hmmm - well, it is and it isn't. It features all the usual Pink Floyd nonsense (including their later distinctive guitar sound, but not very much of it) but it all feels very muted and subdued. It's not that it's musical wallpaper that drifted by unnoticed - I listened to it and just found myself thinking "when's it going to get going?". There's also way more brass instruments on here than you'd expect (or need) and really don't get me started on "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" - what a load of old nonsense. Possibly I'd come to appreciate the subtlety involved after multiple listens but, then again, maybe they just decided to make it sound that way and I just don't like it - either way, I suspect we'll never find out.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their thirteenth week of a fifteen week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week. The top five this week were Simon & Garfunkel, Motown Chartbuster Vol 4, Andy Williams, Led Zeppelin and George Harrison and the highest new entry was John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (#16).

Wikipedia tells us this is their fifth album and their first to reach #1. There's an awful lot of detail on the tracks, but nobody's interested in that - you'd much rather be told that the cow on the cover is called Lulubelle III. This was their first album cover from Hypgnosis - they asked for something plain so Storn Thurgerson drove out to the countryside near Potters Bar and photographed the first cow he saw. Another nice bit of trivia for you is that Stanley Kubrick wanted to use the title track in A Clockwork Orange, but when asked which bits and what for, he didn't know and so the band said no - but the album does appear in a record store in the film. Critically, the reviews weren't great at the time and even the band say they don't like it now, but obviously some people still insist it's an misunderstood classic and commercially it did well in Europe, getting to #8 in Germany, #5 in The Netherlands and #4 in France but it only got to #55 in the US.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a decent version for a fiver, but if you want a mint promotional copy then it's going to set you back £390 - rare Floyd copies really go for some serious cash. This is one I'm not even the slightest bit tempted by though - it was just too meh and weird at the same time. 

And with that, we only have one week left in the year!

17/01/71 - An interesting mess