Dragged Down By The Stone

As an avid Pink Floyd fan, I enjoy listening to their music, at least from Meddle through A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Their earlier stuff is a little too psychedelic and the Division Bell sound like they tried too hard to sound like Pink Floyd. Their music is still played prolificly on the airwaves and I have even heard San Tropez played on the muzac in a grocery store. One of their albums I have never heard played on the radio is Animals. I have heard snippets of songs in commercials but never a complete song.

Animals is their concept album about the divisions of who is in charge and who is not. It is a very vindictive towards those in power and fatalistic towards those who are not. The world is divided into Pigs, Dogs and Sheep. There is also the Pigs on a Wing who seem to be the untouchable string pullers. Each group gets their song and each song jams in its own right.

The dogs have it the worse. They appear to be the corporate executives that back stab and crawl over the corpses of those they off. They end up destroying all chances of friendship and close relationships by using everyone to get what they want. They end up "all alone and dying of cancer." In the end they harvest what they sow and are all dragged down by the stone. Each misdeed is just another weight added to their collar and in the end they are pulled into the murky depths by the sheer mass of their need for control.

It is hard to imagine a world that is so black and white when it comes to labeling people. Everyone knows a dog. Everyone has had to deal with someone who uses and discards them when they have gotten what they want. That is a lesson learned. Most of us remember that like a hand on the burner and instinctively avoid such people in the future. Others are drawn to the potential power of a dog and are constantly cycled through the abuse grinder. Some us never learn. I guess that is the meaning of sheep.


Icool

Cobb