Grantchester Meadows

Grantchester Meadows

(Author: Roger Toilets)

Within the framework of the challenge that, for the album " Ummagumma" , the four members of Pink Floyd " launched out; each one made its trick in its corner, and one makes a disque" of it; , Roger Waters delivers his opus: one trotts pastoral acoustics. But it cheating a little: as its song does not reach the ten minutes to which it has right like the others, it adds a sound joining to him surprising.

Captain Waters is happy

In this year 1969, Roger Waters seems happy and serene. After the departure of Syd Barrett, it took the control of the group, without putsch, but rather by defect, any of the three other members feeling the heart of a leader. And that succeeded to him rather well: Pink Floyd sees from now on its notoriety growing of day in day, like its artistic credibility. Its second album " In Saucerful Off Secrets" provide the new foundations of the progressive rock'n'roll, and Schroeder Barbet spaniel placed to the quartet the order of the BO of its first film " More" whose album leaves in spring this year. At the same time, Pink Floyd illustrates, for the TV, the first steps of the Man on the Moon. In short, all bathes, whereas the group is still unaware of that it will receive, for this album to come, the Grand Prix of the Academy Charles Cros.

The future is announced rather pink for Floyd of the same color. It is a little this climate of serenity which transmits to us Waters through his " Grantchester Meadows". These meadows of Grantchester, bathed by the river Camwood, very close to Cambridge (literally " Bridge-on-Cam"), are for him like an haven of peace, of resourcing. It is devoted to it to the contemplation of the renewed spectacle of Nature: remote barkings of fox, bluish metal flash of the kingfisher which plunges in the river of greenery, idleness in the middle of the gold buttons…

Then, nirvana new-age and cocooning version ecologist? In this sky without cloud, Waters could not be prevented however, as of the first towards, to inform the " frozen wind of the nuit" that it does not have anything to make here. Like if, precisely, it feared to see heavy clouds coming to destroy this serenity which it feels, and us with him, fragile. As, it is like a child holding a sparrow wounded in its hands like a treasure, as Waters will bring back in its " room citadine" all these " sounds of the veille" to remember it, all in " lézardant with the one afternoon old sun without fin". " Grantchester Meadows" , it is an impressionist table, " kind; The Lunch of Canotiers" of Renoir, which breathes a certain softness of living. One can also see there the pop version of the " Sunday at the edge of the eau" of Gabin… the logical filiation of this part will be in " Atom Heart Mother" , under the feather and the six cords of David Gilmour: it is " Conceited person Old Sun".

a gathering of curious small beasts…

Only a musical accompaniment minimalist can equip the worms bucolic with Toilets. Two acoustic guitars, with which, at the time of the concerts, organ of Wright for the instrumental improvisations between the verses will associate. Those are sung by Waters itself, which entrusts the refrain to Gilmour. Nick Mason, it, will lock a cup in slides…

But which kind of grass thus smoked Waters in its green meadows? To supplement its allocated time, it makes follow its strolls pastoral by an incredible sound joining of bands in accelerated, passed to back and triturated in thousand manners. That carries a title to extension whose last words are rather enigmatic: " Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In has Cellar And Grooving With has Pict" who can result in " Several species of small animals with fur gathered in a cave and… engraving with a graver or radotant with Pict". Picts are people of Scotland revolted at the time of Marie Stuart. Perhaps are they distances cousins of our Pictons of Poitou? The title, during which we assist, in stereophony, with the continuation of a fly, then, after two or three vain attempts, its crushing by a vigorous queer, ends in a imprecation of Toilets, with the accents of Hitler to Nuremberg, into pseudo-Scottish as perfectly incomprehensible as laughing. Toilets will reiterate this kind of imprécations in certain public versions of " Careful With That Centers Eugene".

meadows on the scene

In public, as of May 1969, " Grantchester Meadows" will be initially built-in after " The Man" it will constitute, under the title " Daybreak" (" To raise jour"), the introduction, until the beginning of 1970. Then the title disappears from the scenic repertory of Floyd during a few months, and reappears in April for two months. He is then played independently, or, sometimes, preceding " Astronomy Dominé" without transition. " Grantchester Meadows" disappears then definitively from the repertory of scene of Pink Floyd.

Grantchester records

In the official discography of Pink Floyd, " Grantchester Meadows" be reproduced only on " Ummagumma" (part in studio), left in November 1969. " Several Species Off Small Furry Animals… " is also in compilation " Works" appeared in 1983.

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