Have A Cigar – Pink Floyd Main Squeeze cover

Roger Waters was obviously having a bit of a ‘mare after the record-beating success of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, dealing with expectation of a follow up (the Tusk effect) and the music industry. ‘Have A Cigar’ is a biting criticism of the music industry, most definitely biting the hand that feed – but I feel some of the message gets a bit lost in the 70’s production and theatrics.

Everybody else is just green
Have you seen the chart?
It’s a hell of a start
It could be made into a monster
If we all pull together as a team

Pink Floyd – Have A Cigar

Here The Main Squeeze bring back the soul and punch – the vocalist really believes these words, really sells it, and reminds me in a good way of Cee-Lo. And that guitarist! Quite often people go very wrong with Floyd covers – but this has scorching soul and the jam chops to pull it off. (via Covermesongs who did an article on covers of the Wish You Were Here album)

Indeed looks like they did the whole of the Dark Side of the Moon album in lockdown – the full performance is available on demand, but here’s Time/Great Gig In The Sky as a taster:. Time has one of my favourite lyrics of all time. Given I play a lot of Pink Floyd on the podcast I am actually not a massive Floyd stan, but when Waters is in reflective mood, I am always there front and centre.

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

Pink Floyd – Time