Well folks, we're nearing the end. Not long now until the final entry on February 19th, 2025. The last major theme to close us out revolves around the Passing of Time. If the first few months of this project were tough, they're actually a cakewalk compared to what we're about to go through. We're getting old and life perspectives are changing as they should - AKA we're closer to dying than when we were born. Some of these songs represent the heaviest weights that we've carried since knowing them. Some are as recent as 2023 and 2024, but I know in my heart of hearts that even if they came out in 1989 they would have made this list - they are that profound to me.
So if you're an artist that made this project from here on out you should feel humble and proud...you achieved what you set out to do...make music that people feel and love...thank you.
Shannon’s Perspective:
Time
Flowing like a river
Time
Beckoning me
This song is so beautiful and it beckons me just like the time it speaks of. I know Larry sometimes likes to joke I had zero musical taste before him but then something like this song comes along. Something that maybe didn't speak to the majority of our generation but it did to Larry and I. These are the types of songs we bond over. Shared yet separate experiences that make us feel connected in a time that we did not even know each other yet.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
This feels like life at every changing stage. Where did the time go? Why am I so far behind? Hopefully as we get into the later stages of life we feel less behind and we quit comparing ourselves to anyone other than ourselves. But even if we mange to master that particular skill it does not and will not stop time from moving forward. So all we can do is stop every once and awhile and look around and take it in. To quote Ferris Bueller....
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Larry’s Pick: Time (The Alan Parsons Project); Time (Pink Floyd)
Full transparency: I had more songs I wanted to cover than I had days left to cover them. So today is a two-fer. What better two songs to cover in one shot than songs that are simply named Time? But they could not be more different talking about the same thing; a dichotomy in my opinion.
Time by The Alan Parson Project is the "Good"; Time by Pink Floyd is the "Evil".
I was 10 or 11 when Time (TAPP) came out and this was a song I heard in real time. It was so profound and moving to me as most TAPP or Alan Parsons songs are. If you listen and absorb the lyrics, you can go way deeper in thought than you do with Time (PF). At that age it made a huge impression and made me think about how time is the most precious thing in your life.
And then came Pink Floyd's Time.
It came out in 1974 - so when I was four years old. I wouldn't discover Pink Floyd in general until my high school years. What a rebellious, DILLIGAF, teenage angst time to discover this song - or any Pink Floyd song for that matter. This is the exact opposite of TAPP's Time.
You're not looking inward and meditating - you're looking inward and raging.
Have I wasted my life? What do I have to show for it? How much longer is this going to take - let's just get it over with. Those sorts of things.
So essentially I was a teenager walking through a very dangerous mine mind-field with the whole Pink Floyd phase of my life. Luckily this one song helped offset almost every other PF song I discovered in those few short years. Because at that time, my focused references were The Wall (got way too obsessed as a teenager would), Animals, Wish You Were Here and The Dark Side of the Moon.
Oh The Dark Side of the Moon.
Currently the 4th best selling album of all time. But here's a little additional tidbit you may not be aware of and why it's so appropriate to have these songs as a two-fer today:
The lyrics deal with the passage of time. Waters got the idea when he realized he was no longer preparing for anything in life, but was right in the middle of it. He has described this realization taking place at ages 28 and 29 in various interviews. It is noted for its long introductory passage of clocks chiming and alarms ringing. The sounds were recorded in an antique store made as a quadrophonic test by engineer Alan Parsons, not specifically for the album.
"He [Alan Parsons] had just recently before we did that album gone out with a whole set of equipment and had recorded all these clocks in a clock shop. And we were doing the song Time, and he said "Listen, I just did all these things, I did all these clocks," and so we wheeled out his tape and listened to it and said "Great! Stick it on!" And that, actually, is Alan Parsons' idea."
— David Gilmour
Time
The Alan Parsons Project
Time
Flowing like a river
Time
Beckoning me
Who knows when we shall meet again?
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the sea
Goodbye, my love
Maybe for forever
Goodbye, my love
The tide waits for me
Who knows when we shall meet again?
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea
To the sea
'Til it's gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore
Goodbye, my friend (goodbye, my love, now I must leave)
Maybe for forever
Goodbye, my friend (who knows when we shall meet again?)
The stars wait for me
Who knows where we shall meet again?
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea
To the sea
'Til it's gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore
Forevermore (forever)
Forevermore (forever)
Forevermore
Time
Pink Floyd
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
30th Anniversary
Our Story - Shannon's Perspective
Our Story - Larry's Perspective
Ghost of a Chance (Rush) and why?
Ghost of a Chance 