What more can be said about Pink Floyd? They began back in the sixties and became one of the world’s biggest bands, filling stadiums and selling millions and millions of records worldwide. You can definitely hear their influences in NAVASA music, one of the most obvious being the end jam of And This Too Shall Pass, included on our When Angels Dream album. We feel Pink Floyd set the table in a way that lets us explore the farthest ends of our imaginations. It all might be commercial suicide in this modern era of free digital downloads and million dollar marketing campaigns, but we will at least go to our graves knowing we tried to make the most intriguing art we could muster up, album sales be damned.
As you can read in the wiki information below, Floyd’s chart-topping success was not without turmoil, criticism and loss, but the one thing that kept them afloat more than anything else were their fans. The band’s unwavering vision and reluctance to give in to commercial trends connected to their audience in a purely cerebral way, keeping them coming back for more, year after year, even when the product was less than spectacular.
The real question, though, is this: Would a band like Pink Floyd be signed by a major label in 2019? We believe not. With sugar coated auto-tuned pop, dirty lyric hip-hop and wall of thunder nu-metal eating up modern radio airwaves, an A&R Executive would find it impossible to convince the higher-ups back at the office that a psychedelic and experimental band, known for long jams, spacey textures, freaky noises and far-out lyrics would poise themselves to sell 250 million albums over the next 30 years.
It’s a moot point now, because EMI Records did see some sort of potential. and it was a different time when minds were more open to experimentation, but could you imagine taking your boss down to a club and showing him or her this band (check video below)? It’s all very innovative, but it’s absolutely the farthest thing from commercial music. Then after the show, you pull him aside and say, “These guys are gonna be one of the biggest musical forces on the planet.” Yeah, right! Anyway, thank God someone did, or we would have missed out on some brilliant music.