My Favorite Floyd Work, In Near Perfect Quality - First off, Echoes is one of my favorite songs of all time. It s a slowly starting and medium paced song (drawn out to the 23 minute mark) that is just amazing. It starts out with quietly sounding sonar piano sounds and guitar, going through the introduction, then the guitar tears through the song and just takes off, but in perfect coordination with the rest of the instruments. It s almost as if the guitar starts playing something different from what the other instruments are playing, but listen to the song a few more times and you ll see that it fits so well. You will definitely feel a need to listen to Echoes many times, it s something that just doesn t get old. The lyrics are kind of sparse given the song s length (like most Floyd songs, this is an instrumental with lyrics, not a pop-song with a refrain), but there is one line that just sticks to my mind Strangers passing in the street/ By chance two separate glances meet/ And I am you and what I see is me. It always makes me wonder what were they thinking when they wrote that. There is a point before the ending that slows down to really creepy sea-bird sounds. Sounds like an insane albatross in heat. If the band left this 4 minute section out, the song wouldn t be any worse off and I sometimes fast-forward through it if I ve got someone else (a non-Floyd enthusiast) in my car listening (they usually are a little scared by this part of the song). However, after a while, it sort of grew on me to the point where I have come to appreciate this part as an essential part of Echoes. The ending is fantastic, with the guitar slowly gearing up to sear through your head one triumphant time with the sonar piano backing at just the right places. At the end of the track, there s an overlayed wind sound and the instruments slow to a halt. Always leaves me wanting more. The songs One of These Days, Fearless and Pillow of Winds are all great songs too. Cool chord work in Fearless. Almost blues, more country-like guitar picking in Pillow of Winds. One of These Days really rocks at the end. Seamus and San Tropez are bearable, that s all. The good news it that the bad moments total less than six minutes of the album. Seamus (2:12 minutes) is an uninspired number that merely showcases Rick Wright s talking dog that punctuates every other own-beat with a shrill bark. San Tropez (3:40 min) is kind of like an effortless country romp that sounds as though it was conceived as a transition between the beautiful acoustic strumming of Fearless and the yipping dog sounds of Seamus. I can t, for all I listen to Meddle, come to like either San Tropez or Seamus.A word on MFSL gold discs: The issue of Meddle that you find stocked in stores under the Capitol label comes from a machine that reads from tapes that are copied from copies of the copy of the master tape. Actually, I have no idea about the specifics, but the end result is the same: the characteristic hiss from an old, decomposed tape that overlays every minute of the CD. It s on all the standard aluminum CDs out there and it s more pronounced the older the album is. What Mobil Fidelity Sound Labs did was to make a copy from the original master tape. They proceeded to remaster this and make it even better until they put it on a gold CD and called it an ultradisc. New, they run in the hundreds (yes I said triple digits) of dollars. Some believe that they are worth this. I will not say that I would pay $200 for a CD. However, I would pay the $30-60 they go for used. Keep in mind that they sold for $200 new, so the original owner isn t likely to have spilled soda on this CD or dropped it on gravel or something. When I first got mine (used), I was blown away. The tape-hiss is GONE. Turn it up all the way and all you hear are the instruments, no accompanying Ssssssss AT ALL!!! The highs are more defined and much crisper for this reason. The experience is like listening to music in a car with the sunroof open for all your life and suddenly the sunroof is closed. The lows, while not lower, are less mushy (not that they were very mushy at all to begin with, but there is a slight improvement nonetheless). This CD is worth the $30-60 you pay for it used, especially if you hate the tape-hiss as much as I do.