While in college from 2003-2008, I was lucky to have amazing friends with amazing tastes in music. In high school I seriously only listened to what everyone else listened too...you know...the common stuff; Top 40, country, pop, rap. But in college, I was able to meet so many different people with all different kinds of preferences to music.
Honestly though, because of these people I found the beauty in music. Sure, I still like to hear a upbeat Britney Spears song once in a while, and yes, it brings back fun memories of being a teenager, but there is nothing like the feeling you get when you listen a song that can only be described as a true piece of art. I learned that it wasn't about the popularity of the song, or how it somehow made me want to put lip gloss on and dance around in my underwear. I learned that there were meanings to why that lyric is written that way, or why there is a specific guitar solo during that point in the song.
There was something deeper to certain songs. They were written out of pure emotion and actually sung by the people who wrote them. You can hear feeling in their voices and the passion behind their instruments. They didn't write these songs in hopes that their music videos would make the top ten on TRL... music videos didn't even exist back in the day. They wrote what they felt, what they experienced, and what they hoped for.
Ok...wow...now to get to the point of this post....which I went a bit of topic with by ranting haha. Anyways....
At the beginning of November, Pink Floyd re released all of their songs as an "Experience Edition". I heard about this, but hadn't heard any of the new versions only thinking that they were going to just be the same songs but remastered (honestly, I like the older sounding versions of songs). Two nights ago while driving into work, flipping through the radio stations, I caught the beginning of the "Wish You Were Here", my favorite Pink Floyd song. As I listened, I thought about my friend Travis who passed away at the end on September 30th and how much he loved Pink Floyd too. The song seemed very suiting to how I felt about him.....wishing he was still here. When it got to about the middle of the song, a violin started playing with the song. This was a version I had never heard before.
As a child, Travis was one of those young musical prodigies but, when he hit his teenage years stop playing because it, "wasn't cool". He played with the Worcester Symphony Orchestra when he was only 9 years old. He played the violin. Just days before hearing the song that night, I had spoken to his sister about how he had told me about how much he loved to play when he was little. She then informed me that she was surprised I knew that, seeing as he didn't tell many people about it. Travis was a rather private person when it came to his childhood.
After Googling this version of the song, I found out that Pink Floyd had originally recorded this version with legendary violin player Stephane Grappeli but, it never made it to the original cut of the song. The band members thought it had even been recorded over while finishing the album and officially lost. Little did they know, the recording was sitting in an archive for 30 years until it's discovery and re release at the beginning of November. Only days after Travis's passing.
I truly believe that in some parallel universe, I got to hear Trav play.
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