Pink Floyd and a band it inspired, Radiohead, release boxed sets spanning remarkable bodies of work.
By Robert Hilburn, Special to The Times
January 29, 2008
Pink Floyd's history and entire body of work aren't as familiar to the average music fan as those of such other 1960s British groups as the Beatles, Rolling Stones or the Who. Even some of Floyd's casual fans may think of it chiefly in terms of two landmark albums from the 1970s: "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall."
The popularity of those collections has been chiefly responsible for giving the band such a strong legacy that a Floyd reunion at Live 8 in 2005 pretty much stole the show from Paul McCartney and U2. Between them, the two albums have spent more than 850 weeks on the U.S. sales chart and sold nearly 40 million copies in the U.S. alone.
The Floyd heritage is so strong that one ex-member's presence is enough to warrant a headline slot at this year's Coachella festival, where Roger Waters will re-create "Dark Side."
The real coup for Coachella would have been to present Waters and Radiohead back to back. Though there are major differences between the two bands, Pink Floyd is mentioned as a reference point for Radiohead so often that a Google search of the two bands turned up more than 600,000 links.


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