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Momentary Lapse Of Reason


bparker1188

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Anyone know the significance of the cover of Pink Floyd's albulm Momentary Lapse of Reason? For those of you who don't know, it is several rows of cheap little beds ( reminds me of hospital beds back in the day like the ones on the show M*A*S*H) stretched across a beach and in one of the beds there is a man sitting. All the other ones are empty.

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They're all in a strange configuration too. I'm guessing because I haven't looked at the cover for a while, but I think they could be arranged in the same pattern as the logo on the cover - you know the gold curvy one?

I could be wrong too - it has happened before.

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I've got a couple of ideas on the subject.

Syd Barrett went a little crazy (shine on you crazy diamond) maybe a reference to a hospital bed? Also a "river bed" or "river OF beds" Waters departure. ?Yet Another Movie? refers to an empty bed. One slip is about a slip resulting in pregnancy -- sex in a bed, birth in a bed.

Who really knows.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hey Mike you were right on the mark! I just bought a book on Pink Floyd cover art. Storm Thorgerson wrote that the idea for the beds comes from two sources:

1) The lyric in "Yet another Move" which read "A vison of an empty bed" Storm changed the concept to become a 'vision of empty beds'.

2) The second was the 'river' idea. Basically the lonely rower picture in Momentary Lapse of Reason was a reworking of the lone swimmer in the sand dunes in Wish You Were Here.

Add the two together and you get a 'River of Beds'. There is nothing in the book that denotes importance of the dogs or the ultralight. But to me it is pretty obvious.... tracks on this this album are 'The Dogs of War', and 'Learning to Fly'.

Other tidbits:

1) The person in the Lonley Rower picture is Langley Iddens. He also appeared in the a fast moving bed for the concert film for "On the Run" from Darkside.

2) 700 beds were used.

3) Plans to shoot the scene in the LA area were scraped because they had the wrong type of beds. Storm wanted wrought iron hospital type beds for 'dreamers' or 'mad people'.

4) The location of the shoot was Saunton Sands in North Devon. This was the same location used by Alan Parker in 'The Wall' movie for military sequences.

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  • 3 weeks later...

One of my favorite albums by Pink Floyd, great work on Gilmours behalf, The album art went overall with the whole concept of the album. And the video for "Learning to Fly" was brilliant, it deserved a better status of recognizability then it achieved, but was still nominated for awards, etc.

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Mindcrime, you are killing me! :: I've honestly never seen the video, and I am a huge Floyd fan.

Does anyone have any suggestions for catching any Floyd videos? I am not a huge fan of MTV or VH1. One time I sat through VH1 classic in hopes of some Floyd videos. I never saw any, and had to sit through two videos by Swing Out Sister for my efforts! *shudders*

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I saw "Learning to Fly" on MTV when they had the Top 500 videos of all time countdown, it was #150-something.

It's mostly of a young guy in the desert plains near some mountains. He's harvesting & looking up into the sky, eventually he flys in the video.

Pink Floyd really doesn't have many music videos, except for The Wall. They made a few for The Division Bell but those were only shown on VH1 ten years ago.

:guitar:

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