I dunno. It’s really late and I cannot sleep. Work has been an absolute bitch this week, the Red Sox have clinched first place in the American League East, Tiger Woods is playing like crap, and I’ve got a ton of back yard work to do this weekend. To shut off my brain I’m going back in place and time to an early Pink Floyd song my late brother Mark and I absolutely loved. Atom Heart Mother (at the link you have to scroll back to the beginning for some reason) isn’t one of the Floyd’s most well-known songs, but for fans it’s pretty much universally loved. It’s everything you’d want a Floyd song to be: a whole album side long and not a little eclectic (OK, weird). It’s a song I’ve always associated with November in New England when the weather is cloudy and chilly, and the woods are fragrant with the smell of fallen leaves. If you’re so inclined, when you click on the link don’t be afraid to play it loud!

Atom Heart Mother is precious to me for another reason – I have a tape somewhere of my brother Mark practicing his drums to the way Floyd drummer Nick Mason played on both this song (especially starting around 09:00) as well as the final movement of “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” from the same album (starting at 8:30). The album itself came out right around the time we first discovered Pink Floyd, in 1970, and Mark considered Nick Mason’s technique on Atom Heart Mother an inspiration for his work he would do in our band Top Priority. It’s hard to listen to this song and not hear Mark playing drums in our Tewksbury house cellar/recording studio to this song turned up loud so he could play along.

While most Floyd fans consider this a great piece of work – Dave Gilmour’s slide guitar work is truly incredible – it’s a sentiment that was never held by the band, which considered it basically a piece of crap. But the orchestration and the choir used throughout is really unique and and wo