Navigating through the terrain of solo records from members
of Pink Floyd should be a very rewarding experience, particularly given the
member’s talents, their incredible consistency within the band structure,
and-in some cases-incredibly lofty egos.
Well, everyone except drummer Nick Mason who, besides some
fairly weak contributions in Ummagumma
and some less than notable percussion work in the band, never really stands out
as someone capable releasing original music that is anywhere near as compelling
as his quiet contributions to the Floyd.
Yet, the powers that be within the band’s record company
appeased the individual members with was appears to be the addition of solo
contracts for each of them, Nick Mason included.
The funny thing about Nick Mason “solo” records, however, is
how much he truly relies on the talents and generosity of others. So, in a
sense, they’re not really his, even when he gets top billing on them.
In 1985, Mason teamed up with 10cc guitarist Rick Fenn to
release Profiles, a collection of
(mostly) instrumentals that are mired in dated production techniques, horrible
guitar tones, and rudimentary electronic percussion that sounds more programmed
than performed.
The instrumental tracks sound as interesting as the hold
music you hear while waiting on the phone for a customer service department,
but at least they’re not as the two embarrassing cuts where someone actually
handles vocal duties.
David Gilmour gets hoodwinked into lending his voice to the
tolerable “Eye For An Eye,” the albums only contender for single and only
reason why any self respecting Floyd fan would even care about Profiles. To be polite, it sounds like
it would find a great home on some forgotten soundtrack album.
Worse still is “Israel” sung by the keyboard player from
UFO. It’s a pretty awful attempt at placing Mason/Fenn in the category of
“rockers with political conviction” because that’s what superstars tended to do
in the mid-80’s. The thing is, “Israel” doesn’t really identify what political stance
Mason actually takes, but you know it has something to do with the conflict
between the Jews and Arabs. ”Goodbye
good thing/Africa’s a lonely place” goes the chorus, which ultimately begs the
question “Couldn’t have they just made this one an instrumental cut too?”
Profiles does
nothing to showcase the talents of Mason and more importantly, it does nothing
to demonstrate that the Floyd drummer was anything more in that band’s creative
process other than the guy most trusted to fix the other member’s tea.
1 comment:
They also all released their solo albums all on the same day and mixed vials of their blood into the red ink of The Wall comic book. They stole all of these ideas from us along with many lyrical ideas that were lifted from The Elder.
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