Friday, February 26, 2010

Money (Collection of Great Dance Songs)

Money  6:42
Studio recording 1981 
* Released on the compilation album A Collection of Great Dance Songs 23 November 1981

Instrumentation
Saxophone by Dick Parry

Production
Written by Roger Waters
Newly recorded at New Roydonia Studios, 1981
Produced by David Gilmour
Co-produced and mixed by James Guthrie
Mixed at Producers Workshop, L.A., 1981

Lyrics:
(See The Dark Side of the Moon. The lyrics are identical, except verse one, line one:)
Money, you get away
(And verse three, line seven:)
Away (3x), way, away (5x), hey, way (3x)

A compilation album entitled A Collection of Great Dance Songs was put together in 1981 to take advantage of the ongoing success of The Wall. At this point in time, Pink Floyd's record label in the US was CBS/Columbia, but at the time Dark Side of the Moon came out, it was Capitol. The band wanted Money on the new compilation album, so in order to avoid costly royalty fees, the band simply re-recorded the entire song. They attempted to make it sound exactly like the album version, and were quite successful. The same effects tapes were used, and Dick Parry returns on saxophone. It is quite probable that Roger, at this time busy with the film of The Wall, did not participate in this recording. Details are sketchy, but any number of session musicians may have been used, though the backing vocalists were omitted from this version.

Other notable offerings on the Collection LP included a remix of Shine On You Crazy Diamond; a much shorter version clocking in at 10.39, consisting of Parts I-IV and VII of the original version, which then mixed in to the original version of Wish You Were Here. Also included on the album was Another Brick in the Wall part 2, featuring the single intro and the album outro. Collection as a whole was produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters, and co-produced and engineered by James Guthrie. The cover was done by the firm that was Hipgnosis, now under the name of TCP (for Storm Thorgerson, Peter Christopherson, and Aubrey Powell). It was a flash forward to the cover styles of the Gilmour era, which all in Dave's camp thought was superb.

Dave later joked about how it came about: "Storm was grovelling at my door and I felt that I just had to take his tatty picture. Anyway it was so awful I thought I'd get it cheap." [Miles]

Storm: "It was a fun cover, the couple 'dancing but not dancing.' I liked it a lot." [Schaffner 237]

In fact, the album as a whole may be seen as a hint of things to come after Roger had left.

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