It was on this day in 1977 that Pink Floyd’s tenth studio album, Animals made it’s debut on airwaves and record shelves.  With only five tracks total, Animals is yet another Pink Floyd concept album though it provides a rather scathing critique of the social-political conditions of 1970s Britain, while also marking a dramatic change in musical style for the band.  My Dad once described it to me as “George Orwell’s Animal Farm on lithium” and I can’t help but agree.

Clocking in at over seventeen minutes, my favorite track on Animals is “Dogs” (or as it was originally known as “You Gotta Be Crazy”), which was actually written in 1974 by David Gilmour.  But like everything else in the later-years of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters got his control-freak hands on the track and modified the lyrics and the title to his liking.  Which is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back, since soon after the release of Animals keyboardist Richard Wright left Pink Floyd citing “artistic differences.”

Talk about high drama.