A couple weeks ago, LA-based surf punk band FIDLAR released a cover of Pink Floyd's 1975 song, "Have A Cigar."
"Have A Cigar" was Pink Floyd's meditation on the business side of being a band in the commercial age of music, the song being narrated from the perspective of an insincere record executive who's clearly just in it for the money (best demonstrated in lines like "The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think / By the way, which one's Pink?" and "And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? / We call it 'riding the gravy train'").
As well as adding their brand of screamed vocalizations, distorted guitars and in-your-face drums to the originally psych rock-flavored tune, FIDLAR has added their own lyrical revisions to "Have A Cigar" as well, giving the old 40-year-old jam a 2018 facelift that better depicts the struggles of a musician in the post-Napster era of the music industry.
Besides the original criticism of the commodification of music, FIDLAR's version addresses contemporary issues which afflict so many signed artists, like substance abuse ("Get a face tate and take some Xanax / We'll buy you a new liver / By the way, which one's "Fiddler'?") and song distribution ("Don't you know the name of the game / Is called the "Streaming Train?").
In conjunction with the distorted montage that accompanies the song, FIDLAR's cover does a great job of balancing homage to a classic while still showing off their own style and giving the song new relevance in a time where so many Pinks and Fiddlers still seem to be getting shafted in the name of riding the gravy train.
