Pink Floyd-The Division Bell (1994)

 

Artist: Pink Floyd

Title: The Division Bell

Label: Columbia

Format: CD

Cat: CK 64200

Year of Release: 1994

Country and Year of Edition: US 1994

Sell Price: $3.86 VG+/VG+ 8/18/24

Discogs Last Sold: 7/18/24 VG+/VG $4.00

Low: $0.99 

Median: $3.50

Average: $3.42

High: $5.99

Current low price: $2.00

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 53

Have/Want: 1575/258

Where Sold: Williamsburg, VA

Time it took to sell: 6 months

Where and When Purchased: facebook cd lot

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: C-

Sad To See It Go: No

One of the patterns of Discogs sales is when the anniversary edition comes out of an album, somebody often buys an old cheap CD copy.  This was the first Pink Floyd album I blew off when it came out after hearing some of it somewhere.  I thought it was terrible in an almost irrational way.  The "tinkly" pianos, the retread melodies and the seemingly vapid lyrics that never seemed that way on Gilmour's solo albums.

30 years later, I've given this album a couple shots over time and I've still never liked it.  The returned Richard Wright piano tinkles on "Cluster One" and a tangential "Have A Cigar" starts off "What Do You Want From Me?" complete with the Dark Side sounding ladies.

The one song I genuinely liked was the third one "Poles Apart."  It was along the lines of something like "Murder" on About Face.  The theme of the album adamantly was NOT about the Roger wars, yet it seemed like that was all he could think about even if Gilmour pawned the lyric writing off to his wife, who still writes for him to this day.  "Take It Back" was an ok single, along the lines of "Blue Light," a lesser cut from About Face.

When A Momentary Lapse of Reason came out Roger generously deemed it "very facile, but a quite clever forgery....the songs are poor in general; the lyrics I can't quite believe."  This was a rich assessment given Rog gave the world Radio K.A.O.S. with "The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)" that year.  Shortly after Rog unleashed Amused To Death, he assessed The Division Bell to be "just rubbish...nonsense from beginning to end."  The people worldwide thought differently and bought 7 million by the end of the 90's, 3 million in the US alone.  

I was not one of those 7 million.