Deven at 40
Posted on February 28, 2011 Posted by John Scalzi 23 Comments
My friend Deven Desai turns 40 today. As he was the young’n in our little group of friends, that means we are all officially middle-aged bastards. I hope he’s proud of himself.
To celebrate his and our advancing decrepitude, I’ll play some Pink Floyd. Not “Time,” because that’s just a bit on the nose, isn’t it. Rather, enjoy “Fearless,” a lovely track from Meddle, the album before Dark Side of the Moon. I think the sentiment of the song better suits Deven and the rest of us than the Dark Side mopery in any event.
Happy birthday, Deven.
D-e-v-e-n-D-e-s-a-i spells HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
One of my favourite Floyd tunes. Back in the 80s when I discovered this song, I had no idea what the chant at the end was and very few ways to find out.
I love the future.
Echoing (heh) DJN. Great song off an underrated album. And happy birthday to Deven, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Penguicon a couple of years ago. Nice kid.
It’s been a few years now since you did it, but I still can’t listen to INXS’s “Devil Inside” without singing, “Every single one of us is Devan Desai.”
Darn you.
Oh people like to throw out meddle to prove their music nerd cred, but I think we all know the best Pink Floyd album is Animals, don’t we?
Obscured By Clouds is vastly unerrated. Animals is good but also dense and dark and not for the newbie Floyd fan.
Better than Free Four, I guess.
You get your chance to try in the twinkling of an eye: Eighty years, with luck, or even less.
Personally I don’t think Meddle is the best Pink Floyd album overall, but half of it, Echoes, is their best track ever, the epitome of Floyd. But I am guessing our host picked Meddle at least in part because it too turns 40 this year.
Another track that could be appropriate is Remember A Day by Rick Wright: “Remember a day before today/A day when you were young/Free to play alone with time/Evening never came”
See Dave Gilmour perform it live on Jools Holland… Rick Wright was booked to be on that show with Gilmour, promoting a new Live album he also played on, but had had to pull out due to illness and in fact died just over a week before the show, so instead Gilmour played this in tribute.
Floyd has been in the news in the UK in the last day or two, with some of Syd Barrett’s teenage love letters being part of a forthcoming exhibition of his life and art.
If I had to pick a favorite Floyd album…. Prolly DSotM. But I gotta say, all of the works before the Wall really shine (heh). In particular I really enjoy Atom Heart Mother and listen to it all the time on my commutes.
Primus did a cover of Animals that was very true to the original and still an excellent remake.
I will agree with our host that, while Dark Side is brilliant, it’s not what you want to listen to unless you’re already in a Floyd-Hole. (thanks to venture bros. for that term).
The first thing that I thought when I saw the picture was “hey, that’s John on the right of the picture. It must have been a while ago, because he had a LOT of hair back then!”
It took me a few moments to realize my mistake.
JReynolds @11
Holy Crap, good call.
I love me some Pink Floyd and this is one of my favorites.
Happy Birthday to your friend Deven.
Hate to be the one to tell you this, Scalzi, but middle age starts at 60 now. ;)
Well this song brings back memories of a rocky mountain high sunrise circa 1973.
And I just realized your friend shares a birthday with the fender telecaster
Happy birthday, Deven!
That song brings back some memories. Thanks for posting that John. I loved Pink Floyd in high school way back in the late 80’s. I have to agree with those above about Animals. That was my favorite album.
The chanting is “You’ll never Walk Alone”. I first figured it out when I would go to sleep listening to this album every night with the headphones on, way back when.
It’s what Liverpool fans sing at the beginning of every match. But I didn’t know that until about a year or two ago when I started paying attention to English Football (soccer, sorry).
Cool! I play “Fearless” on the acoustic at least once every couple of weeks. Excellent track.
Oh, and if we’re voting, best album goes to Wish You Were Here. It’s the best mix of their particular style AND strong songs — and it features the late great Rick Wright in his finest hour.
“You’ve gotta get an album out, we’re so happy we can hardly count”
Whoops! Left out “. . . you owe it to the people . . .”
Long time reader, first time poster.
Had to chime in as I am a fairly large Roger Waters fanboi. Also had to chime in that I experienced the single most disappointing event in my life last December 18th in the lovely city of Tacoma, WA. I had showed up at the Tacoma Dome with my 12 year old son (his first concert!) to witness what I believed to be one of the last opportunities to ever see the Wall, or, more specifically, The Wall, performed by Roger and his band.
The show was actually scheduled for December 11th.
The show was actually performed on December 11th.
Being 40ish sucks.
One word – Ummagumma
Always wanted to put “One of these days I’m gonna cut you into little pieces” on a birthday cake.
Meddle is one of my favourite Pink Floyd albums. Technically, Obscured By Clouds was released between Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon.