NUMBER ONE: “Household Objects”


In October 1973,  Pink Floyd returned to the studio after wrapping up their tour in support of “Dark Side of the Moon”.  The band was fried; the creative juices were not flowing.


Producer Alan Parsons was at a loss and the band didn’t know how to top their recent success….so for four solid weeks in the studio the band worked non-stop to take the music in a new direction.  They tried to make an album called “Household Objects” with no musical instruments at all.

Knives, wine glasses, stretched rubber bands, aerosol cans…. the laundry list of “household objects” used by Roger, David, Nick and Rick is extensive.


Gilmour is quoted in an interview around that period of time as saying he wanted to do something “weird and very far out.”  After hundreds of hours in the studio, the lunacy of the endeavour started to set in.


Pink Floyd ended up with just a few minutes of usable tape.  This wine glass noise was incorporated into “Shine on Your Crazy Diamond.”


Gilmour later told writer Jim DeRogatis, “After spending weeks trying to make cardboard boxes sound like a bass drum and a snare drum, you think…”Why don’t the fuck we just use a bass drum and snare drum.”


Here is a link to Dangerous Minds with more information about this project.

NUMBER TWO: “Spare Bricks”


There was much speculation as the Pink Floyd began recording a massive amount of material for “The Wall”.  At one point it was a three-record set.  The alternative songs started to take shape as its own album cleverly and originally called “Spare Bricks”.


The band’s tolerance for each other waned and they never completed the project.  It morphed into the Floyd’s last album with Roger Waters “The Final Cut” and some songs ended up on Roger’s first solo project.


The most notable song from the “Spare Bricks” project was “When the Tigers Broke Free”…


Here is the link to that song on YouTube (in case you can’t access the video below because you are on a mobile device.

F.Y.W.