[Eric_Shea]

So this is what you come up with when you smoke too much pot in college:

Pink Floyd's "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" (ca. 1968_1969): A Study of Genre, Texture, Medium, and Structure
John Cotner (University of Wisconsin at Madison)

In Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (1997) the musicologist Edward Macan distinguishes three waves of English progressive rock. In particular, the third wave is characterized by a group of three "subgenres." Macan names The Nice and Pink Floyd as two English progressive rock bands that experimented extensively with these subgenres. Yet he does not account for a subgenre particular to Pink Floyd's output-what I call "tone-fantasies"-which is further distinguished at the level of the idiolect as (1) instrumental, (2) quasi-instrumental, or (3) lyric-instrumental. For the purpose of this study I will put forth an interpretation of "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" (B-side from the 1968 single), which I consider to be their most noteworthy quasi-instrumental tone-fantasy. Additionally, I will compare the studio version with the commercially standardized live recording from the double LP Ummagumma (1969).

First, I will analyze structural and non-structural, pitched and non-pitched aspects of both live and studio recordings, applying quantitative and qualitative models based on the methods of Wallace Berry (1976), the rhythmic-durational ideas of Eytan Agmon (1997), and others. Second, I will suggest several transcriptive methods for plotting aspects of the recording mix in relation to corresponding musical parameters. Third, based on the analyses, I will propose a theory of texture specific to the work; one which addresses the interaction between aspects of sound recording, musical structure and material variation, concert and studio performance contexts, timbre and sound, and extramusical associations.

Broadly, I argue that the 1968 studio single of "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" represents the successful convergence of particular improvisational idioms and conceptual strategies the group had begun to develop in their first two albums. More to the point, the studio track manifests a vital structural-textural rhythm, perception of which suggests a multidimensional sonic-experiential macrocosm: on one plane, a kind of heterophonic textural "infrastructure," while on the other, a kind of stereophonic space of affective depth. Within this distinction, aspects of the musical language and recording medium continually transform the sonic environment and engage the listener in the process of its experiential unfolding.