Richard Wright

Photo credit - http://flickr.com/photos/livepicts/

I got back from an early lunch at work today. Checked my phone - Sean texted me. Richard Wright had gone to the great gig in the sky.

Pink Floyd are a top ten band of mine. Dark Side just owns me. Its a special album. It wasn’t just Richards playing that made the album so cool - it was the whole band, David, Richard, Nick and Roger.

Richards passing saddened me. I didn’t know the guy. But i know a lot of his work and his work makes me happy. I then found out what took him and that just made it sadder.

I have two great memories of listening to Richards work on Dark Side. The first one is listening to the album in February 2005 while driving along Marine Parade in Cottesloe, Western Australia. I was there for a work trip and I had the shits with my general manager. So I went and bought me a copy of the 30th anniversary edition of the album. Fuck em - I was on the other side of the country. So I turned the phone off, put the CD in the deck of the hire care and away I went. It was one of the best driving experiences of my life.

The second good memory was the afternoon of June 25 2005. Our engagement party was that night and that afternoon Yvee and I were chilin at home just doing the usual weekend stuff. I put the album on and I think it was the first time she had heard it all the way through. And she liked it. It was rare that she would really really like something I played. But this was different. If I recall correctly, I played the album all the way through twice.

On the drive home tonight I went the long way. Just enough time to listen to the bootleg of Pink Floyd playing Dark Side Of The Moon the whole way through in London back in 1973/4 (the disc is outside in the car and its too cold to go get it to get the correct date). They were doing the whole album played live run through 30 years before it was cool to do it.

So tonight I went to the supermarket to get me some food. Emily, Cat and Glynn have gone away for three weeks. So I needed to stock up - ice cream, chocolate, cheese, biscuits, ice magic, etc. The necessities. And as I was perusing the aisles I came across the toy section. And BAM - there it was . The perfect musical gift for Emily. A Fisher Price kids piano / xylophone. The Toddlin Tunes Puppy. Its really cool.

On the way home I thought to myself that there might be a connection between the new toy piano for Emily and Richard's passing. But there isnt really a connection. Its totally random.

But..... Richard's recorded work with Pink Floyd makes me happy. And Emily makes me happy. And I know ill get many hours of happy in the future listening to more and more Pink Floyd. And ill get many many many hours of happy listening to Emily bang away on this toy piano.

And im looking forward to both.