Pink Floyd isn't Funny
They're nearly laugh... but they're really a cry.
Let's face it: Pink Floyd simply is not funny. The funniest thing they ever did was when Nick Mason proclaimed that he wanted his pie without the crust.
And that was 30 years ago.
There is nothing funny about them. They are all serious people. They do serious work. They make serious music about serious topics and put them on serious, arty albums. Their concerts, while thoroughly entertaining, are also thoroughly lacking in lightheartedness and humor.
Look at their repertoire over the years: cross-dressers, axe murderers, schizophrenic white supremacist rock stars, shell-shocked veterans, dead war heroes, and the occasional nuclear holocaust. Not exactly your basic recipe for humor and whimsy.
What can we say about Roger? He isn't funny. There's nothing funny about him. In fact, he's the mathematical opposite of funny. He's been notoriously dour for years, often called the Gloomiest Man in Rock--and that's by his close friends and relatives. He makes Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and the Cure's Robert Smith look like the Care Bears by comparison. Sure, he's mellowed a bit in recent years; his disposition has gone from painfully loathsome to merely unpleasant.
 Tommy Tune stars as Pink in the laugh-a-minute Broadway comedy Tear Down That Crazy Wall! |
He wants to turn The Wall into a Broadway musical comedy. Seriously. I can see it now--Tommy Tune stars as the tortured, self-loathing rock star who scorns his wife, abuses his girlfriend, and destroys his hotel room in a psychotic rage. Then later, hopped up on drugs, he leads a bunch of skinheads in a zany little ethnic cleansing rally-and-riot combo. Yowza! Move over, Cats! Look out, Lion King!
The fact that Roger would even remotely think of this as a good idea just goes to show how atrophied his sense of humor has become.
And it isn't as though the rest of the Floyds turned into the Merry Pranksters when Roger bailed out. When David Gilmour talks, I'm convinced he's about to go to sleep. Rick Wright looks like he should be on the side of Mount Rushmore with that chiseled old face. Nick Mason requires round-the-clock medical supervision just to establish that he hasn't slipped off into a coma without anyone knowing it--and he's supposed to be the funny one.
There's nothing funny about Pink Floyd. They are old, fat, and going bald. And there is nothing funny about that, is there? It may work for Dom Deluise, but La Carrera Panamericana ain't exactly Cannonball Run.
Maybe someone can explain to me how Dave Gilmour glues his feet to the stage when he plays guitar. Is it me, or does it look like Dave Gilmour is the one who gave birth to eight children? Or, is it that he looks that way because he ate eight children?
I shouldn't complain. I'm old and fat, too. In fact, I'm not funny either. I volunteered for this stupid column. I should have known better, because Pink Floyd isn't funny.
And neither am I.