In 1994, Pink Floyd released what appears to be their last studio album. I didn’t run out and buy it right away. I had been focused on New Age music for a few years. I wouldn’t say exclusively but pretty close. What prompted me to buy The Division Bell was a trip to Vermont. I had been back there in 1993 and I wanted to bring my lovely bride Mary out there to show her some of the beautiful sites in that wooded paradise.
We had planned to go out near the end of May. May offers a fresh green canopy of new leaves, cool nights and the streams and rivers are still full with the runoff of melting mountain snow. Of course I made arrangements to visit Adam who was living in Boston at that time. As it turned out, he surprised me with a ticket to see Pink Floyd live in Foxboro. It shocks me to think that was nearly 20 years ago.
So I bought The Division Bell as preparation for the show. I listened to it a couple of times to get familiar but I wasn’t really moved by it at the time. It was good but didn’t rise to the level of some of my other Floyd favorites. Then I went to the show.
This was the old Foxboro arena where The Patriots played football before they built Gillette Stadium. We drove down to Boston and spent the day downtown seeing the sites and having a Guinness at Cheers. Adam and I went to the show. It was a cool spring evening with a little drizzle now and again but nothing to complain about. The show was phenomenal. They opened with Astronomy Domini and I followed the lasers beaming out into the night sky as far as I could see. I can’t underscore enough how truly awesome it was to be there.
When we got back home to Indiana, I would burn those little balsam fir plugs that I bought in a Vermont Country Store. I’d watch the smoke curl and billow out of the chimney of the little log cabin. While I savored the aroma, I’d listen to The Division Bell and dream of being back in Vermont. After that show and the second one from Chicago, The Division Bell became one of my favorite Pink Floyd albums. Really, Meddle and The Division Bell are my favorites. Is that because the Dark Side, The Wall, and Wish You Were Here are the ones most often played by the world?
Cluster One
What Do You Want From Me
Poles Apart – One of my favorites here. In Boston, the echoes carried on for an eternity.
Marooned
A Great Day For Freedom
Take it Back
Keep Talking
High Hopes – At the show, when the guys on stilts were on the projection screen Adam turned to me and said, “If I were on acid, that would bother me.”