...
But today is Guy Pratt Day.
I have always been behind the curve with Pink Floyd. I listened and loved them right on time, but I never knew to whom I was listening. Just did not occur to me to find out. [Might've been pot at fault.]
I had no idea it was David Gilmour making eyes at me when I'd gone to a party in Sausalito with a guy who was friends with my friends. I had not liked him much, but did not want to humiliate him by getting tractor beamed by that hunk across the room, and so quickly exited.
So, beside some vague notion of there being trouble in Paradise with that band, never even fitting the name with the music until 1990, and THEN never even fitting the people in the band with the name until 2005, having to work my way backward to fill in all my egregious blanks. If not for one old PBS showing of the original Pink Floyd, that I'd seen a thousand years earlier, I'd've had NO idea of what was standard.
My Mac had its own DVD player at the time, so I bought Echoes and Pulse, and watched them in that order. Everything was moving along smoothly until I started watching Pulse. Even though, Waters gave me the creeps, and I had all kinds of reasons for those creeps, I was very startled to see this kid who'd taken his place.
Well, I was startled by the huge light show business. I was startled by the backup singers and two drummers. And I was startled by Guy Pratt. In a grouchy sort of way. Though, not long into it, something came over me.
I was suddenly outright giddy about this Pratt kid up on that stage, and even though I don't visit that with anything like regularity, Guy Pratt makes me unreasonably happy. His ordinary bassist stuff is groovy, just fine, darn respectable, but that's not what blows my skirt up about him. His Pink-Floyd-Tude is both a complete departure and an intense magnification of the original.
Still, he was brand new to the band to me in 2005 and so finding him now to be 60-something was a problem to process. Still, now I've seen him playing in rehearsals on video... not just performances... listened to the sounds he makes on his bass and watch him doing his half-stomp-half prowl thing and then break into beating Mason at drumming... with his FEET... while doing all those bass miracles... the works... including, of course, singing/yelling his part in Run Like Hell.
I have an intense liking for the bloke.
pipe up any time....
