The Genius of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma

When you get into a discussion with Pink Floyd fans about the band's best album(s), inevitably Dark Side of the Moon and/or The Wall are going to get the bulk of the votes.  Sure, Wish You Were Here is going to get some honorable mention respect it deserves and rightfully so, but from there  you're going to have fringe voters, sticking up for albums dear to their hearts, albums they consider their pets.  But I'm guessing the album that is actually the best of their career won't be getting much love.  That album is the half live, half studio effort Ummagumma.  That's  correct, Ummagumma!

It's near perfection.  The only thing that would make the album better would have been the inclusion of a live version of "Interstellar Overdrive."  The song was recorded with the intent of inclusion upon the album, so perhaps some day we'll get a release with a bonus track version, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  The brand new 2016 reissues didn't feature the track.  But I digress.

What is it that makes Ummagumma a perfect album you ask, or, at least, you should be asking if you're not.   One, there's the symmetry.  Each band member was required to submit half an LP side worth of material for the studio portion of the album.  David Gilmour famously remarked his contribution to the album, "The Narrow Way (Parts 1-3)," were little more than fits of "desperation," just him "waffling about, tracking bits and pieces together" while in the recording studio.

I think my 11-year-old daughter would agree with that assessment, having remarked something to the effect "it's just a bunch of parts strung together that don't belong."  Even she could hear the mismatched textures and structures.

But, I can hear you saying, "doesn't that detract from that album?   Doesn't that make Ummagumma less of an album?"  Well, no, because, even though David Gilmour was uncertain of himself while constructing his part for the record, and because of that an 11 year old can tell the piece of music is disjointed, it is precisely disjointed, it communicates a theme of Pink Floyd's, forever present in their music - alienation.

Gilmour told BBC radio he just "bullshitted through the piece."  At that point in Pink Floyd's career they were using the music, not the lyrics, to communicate alienation, so this disjointed four part movement from the guitarist is perfect, you see.

According to Theodor Adorno, social theorist and musicoloist, popular music inspires "relaxation which does not involve the effort of concentration at all."  This is a BAD thing, you understand, and Ummagumma inspires precisely the opposite of this.

While a relaxed mood may be produced by listening to Ummagumma, particularly if any mood enhancing pharmaceuticals have been ingested prior to the enjoyment of the album, it is not because Ummagumma does not involve the listener's concentration, contrary to that actually.  The album DEMANDS the listener's attention.  Otherwise, you're in for shocks or surprises, sometimes unpleasant.

Having never been exposed to the vicissitude of "Careful With that Axe Eugene" during the first 42 years of my life, I literally pissed myself the first time I heard Roger Waters scream 3:09 into the song.

The band reaches an ominous crescendo just as Waters whispers "Careful with that axe Eugene," seconds before he lets loose the barbaric yawlp that is the primordial scream that curdles blood and still to this day catches first-time listeners off-guard.  This is not a tune that invites its listeners to comfort, not at all.  Does it alienate listeners, perhaps?  It certainly challenges them and that is what makes Ummagumma such a great work.  Start to finish, it is a challenge to listeners, not comfort food, but music for the soul to grow with, chew upon, roll around in the brain pan for a while.

"Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun," originally appearing on the sophomore Floyd album A Saucerful of Secrets but a definitive live version later appears upon Ummagumma, offers another challenge, about two thirds of the way through the tune the bottom drops out with a simulated rocket blast-off when Gilmour's guitar reeks havoc over Nick Mason's tribal drumming  around the 4:45 mark.  Hearkening to mind images of  2001: a Space Odyssey Roger Water's bass line and the keyboards of Rick Wright beep in with tonal sounds before the song begins to reconstruct itself and steer us toward conclusion.  This is the point of maximum alienation, writes Edward Macan in his chapter of Pink Floyd and Philosophy - titled Psychedelics of Alienation.

Of course, we are also presented with a live version of the "A Saucerful of Secrets" title track on Ummagumma, perhaps the most challenging of the instrumentals early Pink Floyd offered listeners.  Macan refers to it, as well as "Interstellar Overdrive," as "radical" and "utterly original musical statement(s)."

He points out that once Pink Floyd moved past its psychedelic period, post-Meddle, never again would we see the band offer its fans such complex musical structures as those found on Ummagumma, and the later side two of Meddle, "Echoes."

Waters, the group's main writer, moved toward lyrical expressions of alienation and departed from allowing the song structures to communicate this important message.  Perhaps this is why Waters himself grew increasingly frustrated with his band's fan base,  Macan writes, "Waters' ever-growing contempt for Pink Floyd's enormous post-Meddle fan base is well known.  As the 1970s wore on, he became increasingly frustrated with what he perceived as the audience's indifference to the sophisticated analysis of alienation and the critiques of contemporary society he undertook on Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals."

Simply put, Waters fucked up.  If he wanted the fans to continue to "get it," meaning comprehend what he was trying to communicate lyrically, maybe he needed to concentrate more stylistically on keeping the complicated structures Floyd had utilized in its early days.  Instead, the group hired produced Bob Ezrin, composed songs with more and more commercial appeal structure wise, focused on how to write singles, and sold more and more records.

Had they not made those moves and stayed true to their psychedelic roots, maybe Waters would have been more fulfilled philosophically, albeit at the likely expense of the vast amounts of wealth and fame that came with success,  The fan base may not have swelled to the enormity that Pink Floyd enjoys today, or during its heyday, but the fans in the know would truly be in the know.