The release of the latest Pink Floyd album - Pulse 2 - The live set from the 1994 (last genuine bear market year prior to mania) tour from Division Bell. If that were not enough Roger Waters is on tour with his version of Dark Side of the Moon. All in all 2006 is the busiest "Floyd" year since they split - History suggests 2006 will also be a bad year for stocks - Pink Floyd - "The quintesential bear market band" – R. Prechter Jr.
--Jonathan
You're absolutely right, Pink Floyd's apears to be striking the same cultural chord it hit in 1973 when Dark Side of the Moon, the band's "breakthrough album" hit No. 1 in the U.S. and stayed in the Billboard Top 200 for almost 800 weeks, the world record. January 1973 marked the end of a bear market rally and the start of the worst stock market decline since the Great Depression. Here’s the whole quote about the significance of Pink Floyd's succuss as it appeared in Chapter 1 of Pioneering Studies in Socionomics:
“The bear market dating from 1966 that accelerated in 1969 supported bands whose accent was on the negative. The Rolling Stones thrived on themes of war, sex and the devil. Heavy metal bands, which had originally been satisfied to present merely a noisy, foreboding sound, adopted a calculated theatrical approach to their recordings and performances and sported names such as Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Queen, AC/DC, The Scorpions and Kiss, suggesting darkness, sexual ambiguity and general nastiness. In a related development, early psychedelic “garage bands” gave way to groups that specialized in long, hypnotic compositions with negative-mood themes. The most accomplished and successful of these was Pink Floyd, which formed shortly after the onset of the wave IV bear market and which eventually became the strongest selling group in “downer theme” history, singing songs about self-destruction, axe murderers, money grubbing, war and alienation, all to a comfortably numbing or gratingly distorted soundtrack. Their classic album Dark Side of the Moon floated continually into the Top 20 album sales charts during the years from 1973 to 1982 (the final bear market year in real terms), when the group’s popularity began to wane.”
Will R. adds, “And if THAT were not enough ...Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour just-released album, On An Island, sounds like it could be Part 2 of A Momentary Lapse of Reason (released Sept. '87).” The release came in right after a stock market peak that was followed by the Crash of October 1987.
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