Did Pink Floyd cause a stir in these parts

Rob Keeble

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GTA Ontario Canada
Dont have a clue why but today while working at the computer i listened to one of my all time favorite bands Pink Floyd.

Had me wondering if anyone ever really listened to the words in their songs and what happened over in North America at the time "The Wall" Album was released?

Where i came from it got banned by the gov. Caused riots and schools to be burnt down.

Specifically this song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXocljc268

The video creator has the wrong album cover but its one of the You Tube videos with lyrics :) To see the lyrics scroll down below the video you may have to click more.
 
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As far as I know, the songs from that album didn't cause any unrest here in the States. When the album came out, our band was playing six nights a week in the bars. Comfortably Numb, Young Lust, and Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 were on our nightly set list. [Threadjack alert]We always played recorded music through our PA system during breaks. We would end one of the nightly breaks with a recording of The Happiest Days of our Lives (from the same album), then when the helicopter sounds built to their peak we'd jump in live to start the set with Another Brick in the Wall Part 2. It was always a good crowd pleaser. We also once opened our set at an outdoor concert (where we were the headliners) with that same segue. It had been dead calm all afternoon for the three or four bands before us, but when the helicopters started up, the winds kicked in so fiercely that we had extra people on stage just holding the drum set down.Here's some photographic evidence...this shot was between songs:Speedway Rockfest II in the Wind - Drums.jpgMe and my guitar Spot, with the windswept look:Speedway Rockfest II in the Wind.jpgEven the guys doing the monitor mix were getting blown around. As an aside, that PA stack is half of what we had that day...our normal club PA was about half the size of the one we used for this concert...in other words, about what you can see in this picture. We were running pretty top-notch stuff for the early '80s. Nowadays they can get better sound from smaller packages.Speedway Rockfest II in the Wind - PA.jpgOddly enough, we closed the show with Riding the Storm Out by REO Speedwagon, and just as we ended the song, the winds died down. :rolleyes:
 
They were certainly popular in Canada. I remember some spray-can artist painted PINK FLOYD -THE WALL on the side of the supermarket down the street way back when they were at their height.

Vaughn, great story!
 
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Rob, I've listened to that song many, many times and when I saw this thread I had no idea what "bad" lyrics you were referring to. I gave the song another listen and still don't see them as bad. I mean....its just a song. Words made up in someones mind to express themselves. My parents forbid my brothers and I from listening to the Beatles when I was younger. Those lyrics are very tame by todays standards. It's just music. I enjoy listening to the "music" but don't take the lyrics literally.
 
Wow Vaughn i am delighted at the threadjack. Now i know a real rock star. :):D:thumb:.

Tom I love the music and the words. But .....you need to teleport yourself to something like the bad days of the black civil liberties days of the USA. We were a little worse than that back in SA and only about 30 years late to the party.


Gotta remember i grew up with none of your freedoms. You dont have freedom of expression and speech in a dictatorship. :) BTW if you think i was/am a rebel think of what a black kid in apartheid South Africa was like. I was simply anti gov because of them trying to dictate what i could and could not do or should or should not say etc.

Well thing that caused a whole lot of grief was our idiots in gov. The country had at the time and still does today two official languages. Bit like Canada except in SA case it was English and Afrikaans. Trouble is Afrikaans aint like French. No one else in the world knows how to speak it or uses it. Its as good as one of the indigenous black languages perhaps even worse.

But around the time of this song forgive me i cannot recall exact dates but in and around 1976/77 the minister of education at the time had what he thought was a brainwave to get the blacks to speak more Afrikaans and mandated that their lessons would be taught in their schools in Afrikaans. I know pure genius ..NOT.
Not bad enough that they had an entirely different education system for them which was lesser education on top of that they want to make people learn both languages to get an education. Dont even look for logic it aint there.

Well this led to the Soweto Riots. Helicopters in the air and all the images of almost Syria today. Words to describe the mess fail me.

Anyhow the song came hit our airways a few years later and each year in June there was always a commemorative period for those that lost their lives in the uprising in Soweto.
It was a huge mess because the "liberation movement" used the kids politically to cause mayhem and had them burn all the schools to the ground. This set the whole education of generation back and they became known as the lost generation. Today they are a serious part of the crime come back to haunt the masters who had them loose out for their political gain. Nothing was done for them that totally lost out on even a substandard education or their lives.

Well the words to the song if you listen to them in this context fuel the anti gov attitude and each year back then in June caused more turmoil.

So the govs solution to anything like this was to ban it from the airways. That did not quiet work by then because they had created independent states by then (yeah fully independent countries out of what you guys would know as a "reservation" except in the SA context they were known as homelands. Well private radio stations in "Independent States were not subject to censor board rules. It used to infuriate the gov ministers that had always had their way.

We even had a period where we chanted the song at school given the bias in the school sylabus when it came to subjects like History which end up involving politics etc. Teachers were directed as to what was allowed and not allowed to be discussed in the class room. Suffice to say my history teacher was a rebel. :) Thank goodness for me. I thank her every day. She took huge personal risk to give us a more broader balanced outlook. Not at all popular back in those days. :)

Who would have thought a song like this could have had such an impact.
 
Rob, thank you for that bit of insight. Growing up here in the USA I suppose I'm guilty of taking my freedom for granted. Having never traveled around the globe and seen how other governments can be. The world is a big place.
 
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