Pink Floyd loads everything into one holiday package

by Steve Morse

New boxed sets are flooding the market for the holidays.
They're coming from Talking Heads, Jefferson Airplane,
Hank Williams Jr., the Troggs, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash,
and many others. But none is a more massive project than
Pink Floyd's "Shine On", an eight-CD box that you'll
need a wheelbarrow for transporting home.

"If you're going to do a boxed set, you might as well do
it properly," Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour says
dry-wittedly in a phone interview from London. The set
contains seven previous Floyd albums, plus a separate
CD of singles and rare B-sides. It's expected to retail
at close to [US]$150.

"The record company thought the price would be too high
and wanted us to do a smaller box, but we really thought
this would be an extremely good package for fans," says
Gilmour. "I took it on myself to find all the original
masters. There was a lot of crawling through vaults to
get them. But everything's been remastered and I'm very
pleased with it. Of course, there are some tracks that
I still can't abide, but now I can't abide them in fuller
living stereo."

Unlike some boxed sets, though, this one is not stocked
with previously-unreleased tracks. "Everything we could
possibly use, has already been used," says Gilmour.

Another sidelight to the box is that it's all been
approved by former member Roger Waters, who had sued
several years ago to try to prevent Gilmour and fellow
Floyd members Richard Wright and Nick Mason from using
the name. "It's still pretty unpleasant," says Gilmour.
"But Roger is still a shareholder in Pink Floyd business."

Meanwhile, Gilmour has returned to his hobbies of "flying
airplanes and playing with cars a bit." As for the
prospect of new Floyd music, he says, "Plans are pretty
loose at the moment. Don't hold your breath. We're
starting to play around at the moment, but that's just
the moment. But when we do come back, you can be sure
it will be another extravaganza. That seems to be the
only way we know how to do it."