Wish You Were Here

List Price: $17.98 Discount Price: $8.30

Customer Reviews:

No-no! [Posted on 2008-10-15]
Hearing this abhorable no-no CD makes me think of someone sticking his cock in a food processor.

Not a wise thing to do, be well aware of that,ok?

Wendell von Trapp, this neck of the woods

VBR- Why? [Posted on 2008-10-24]
This MP3 representation of the 1994 Remix is very good and remains faithful to both the original vinyl and subsequent CD reissues.

My only complaint has nothing to do with the album, but rather with the VBR encoding used by Amazon. "Variable Bit Rate" MP3 encoding can be seen as a constantly changing "bit rate" hovering around 224kbps if you are using an MP3 player such as Winamp. The lower bit rates save disk space and make for faster downloads, while faster bit rates have greater definition and separation of channels. "Mixing up" the bit rate makes for a compromise of bandwidth/download times vs. musical fidelity and definition.

VBR allows the player to auto-select the best bit rate for any particular section of music; higher rates for those more intricate sections with lots of musical info, lower rates for quieter or less-intricate passages.

My personal preference when ripping a CD to MP3 is to select a non-changing bit rate high enough for the music I am ripping; say, 160kbps for early rock and roll and blues and monophonic recordings, and higher rates up to 320kbps for classical, newer rock and most other recent material, to take advantage of the improvements in recording technique over the years.

I do think sometimes that I can hear the bit rate changes, not per se but as changes in the "depth" of a particular piece. For instance, in "Welcome to the Machine", about 3 minutes in when the keyboard is doing it's "swoops", the "depth", definition and separation of the guitar and cymbals can be heard to be changing, albeit by a very slight amount.

I wish that Amazon would start using a fixed bit-rate for all MP3 offerings; 320kbps for classical and other pieces demanding the highest possible definition, and 160-256k for everything else. Or perhaps, a two- or three-tiered approach, with the higher bit rate pieces going for slightly more (to pay for the extra bandwidth), and a lower bit-rate for those that may be listened to on personal players or in mobile installs, where the higher definition would be lost anyway. Regards to "Floyd fans".

One of there best albums. [Posted on 2008-10-27]
Welcometo the machine is best listened to with very large and powerful subwoofers. Ohh baby... Title track is a very ... brings back memories... friends.. good times... its touching... The whole album is grand.

I Really Feel I Am Missing Out On Something. [Posted on 2008-11-04]
How do you follow up on the huge sucsess of The Dark Side Of The Moon? Naturally Pink Floyd wanted to do something different and i think it was a very human gesture to remember the band's original genius: Syd Barrett. I never realized the title was so poignant as I thought it was a fun take on the usual postcard scribblings we feel we need to send to friends and relatives when we are on vacation.

However I feel sometimes that along with Rick Wakeman and Jean-Michel Jarre, this album by Pink Floyd helped to start the punk rock movement. The album starts off with very long synthesiser chords, great as as background music for TV documentaries exploring the cosmos but an utter time-watser on an album. Sure it is ethereal, spacey and a throwback to their psychedic days but I still think of it as a wasted opportunity and it ultimately was music that antagonized British teens in the mid-late 70s

1. SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND (Parts 1-5) 13.34
2. WELCOME TO THE MACHINE 7.26
3. HAVE A CIGAR 5.07
4. WISH YOU WERE HERE 5.40
5. SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND (Parts 6-9) 12.21

It was very noble to write a song about Syd (SHINE ON...). However it is almost 26 minutes long and parts of it are excrutiatingly dull. It is divided into nine parts. Parts 1-5 open the album then there are three more tracks before parts 6-9 close the album. I am guessing how the parts are delineated through the song but I would have condensed the track into parts 2 (guitar), 4 (vocal), 5 (sax), 6 (Guitar solo) and 7 (final vocal) and would have jettisoned parts 1,3,8 and 9.

A silly note. The acronym SOYCD contains the three letters found in SYD. Am I reading too much into this. If not what do the O and the C relate to?

WELCOME TO THE MACHINE really rams home the point that they were happy twiddling a few knobs and adding a few sound effects to create a 7 minute opus, regardless of the lyrical merit. It comes across as pompous and overblown and way too esoteric.

This concluded Side 1 of the original LP and my feeling has always been the same that I had been conned for 21 minutes.

Side 2 was of a much better quality and had the two best tracks. HAVE A CIGAR was very effective even if it ended on a somewhat anticlimactic note. Great vocal by guest vocalist, Roy Harper and some of Roger Waters best lyrics, bitter but very tongue-in-cheek.

The title track is my favourite and probably many fans' favourite too. Deceptively simple and rather sad, I love the acoustic arrangement, very stripped down and it shows that they could leave aside all the technical wizadry aside to create a very basic, heartfelt song. It is much more emotional than the way overlong SOYCD.

Then we have the last four parts of SHINE ON.... The standout on the whole opus is Part 6, the searing guitar solo from Dave Gilmour that is the musical highlight of the whole album. Wailing, screeching yet full of melody, it is a pity that it does not last longer. Part 7 is the last vocal verse and then Parts 8 and 9 drag the whole album to a close. Part 8 is more upbeat but both have too much synthesiser for me.

It is an album that gets many glowing reviews but i feel I am being left out of some sort of insider joke. It is a pity as the second half of the album is terrific but the first half has always been a hard slog to sit through.

Not Pink Floyd's best, but definately worth a buy.. [Posted on 2008-11-07]
Their best is no doubt Dark Side of the Moon, but this album is a great follow-up.
Somehow Pink Floyd's Album covers go seemingly well with the music as if the song has created the picture.
And I mean by that the song Wish You Were Here and the album cover. gives a nice blend and a unique essence.
Though "the feeling" of this album is very different from Dark Side of the Moon partially caused by the varying of the album covers. This album is worth listening simply because it is a Pink Floyd album, which in my opinion are one of the best bands in the world (if not the best).
There music is simply precious and fulfilling, and will take you to another world. This album is no exception.

Click here for more details and discount information...