Well, this is just amazing: Pink Floyd is getting back together for a one-night-only performance at Bob Geldof’s upcoming Live 8 concert. For the record, I don’t especially like Floyd — I mostly find their work pretentious and depressing — but the conflict between the band’s bass player Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour is legendary among rock-music afficianados, and for fans of the band, this news must seem like nothing short of a miracle. As I recall, Geldof pulled off a similarly unlikely reunion of Led Zeppelin for his ’85 LiveAid concerts. If he can perform impossible stunts like getting these notoriously acrimonious musicians back together, why hasn’t this man taken over the world by now? Maybe that’s the next item on his agenda…
Jun132005
As a Floyd fan, I am pretty surprised. If I had Betta fish, I’d call them David and Roger. I think they’re paying down their debt to Bob Geldof for repeatedly dragging him down a flight of stairs during the filming of The Wall (the Comfortably Numb sequence for those of you keeping score). Read Bob’s autobiography Is That It? for a funny account.
I’ll have to check that out. I had forgotten that Bob was in The Wall — don’t think I’ve seen that since high school. Incidentally, what the hell happened to him? He was never really handsome, but he was cute enough twenty years ago in that gawky Brit-pop way. I caught him on the news the other night talking about Live 8 and I hardly recognized him! It’s like Bob Dylan got fat and then came down with a permanent hangover…
They all do, eventually.
Seriously, though, I think of Bob Geldof as a mediocre musician who did a mediocre acting job in a mediocre movie and then burst forth with this amazing act of human kindness whose sole aim was to make the world a better place. My hat goes off to him as a true philanthropist who puts the rest to shame.
Indeed. I do like the Boomtown Rats’ signature tune, “I Don’t Like Mondays,” though.