Pulse, 101 Uses For The Pink Floyd Album (Real)

Album Packaging At Its Worst

Author: Alex McLintock
Date: 1995/06/18
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After some twenty-eight years in the rock and roll business you might expect that supergroup Pink Floyd would be beyond needing gimmicks to sell their albums. But no.

Their latest release at time of writing is a cunningly packaged and expensive collection of live performances of classic Floyd songs. You would have thought that since Pink Floyd are quite capable of selling out Earl's Court [1] they could sell enough copies of an album to keep their royalties rolling in.

Unfortunately for us we have to suffer some smart-alec publicity manager [2] who came up with the idea for Pulse. For those of you who haven't seen it - the box for the CD Pulse contains a red LED which flashes at a constant rate. The packaging notes explain that the battery will run out after six months. The packaging even suggests that you find other uses for the box. It suggests that you can use it to slow your own pulse or you can put it in your car as a substitute for a car alarm.

In the recycling tradition that grew with the eighties, here are other uses for the packaging to Pulse.

1. You can put it on your amplifier and pretend that it is a graphic equalizer.
10. You can strap it to your push bike as a warning light when riding at night.
11. You can hang it above a baby's crib as a fascinating mobile.
100. You can wait for the battery to fail so that you know when six months have passed since you bought Pulse.
101. You can use it to give people epileptic fits.

And you can use it to count in binary.

[1]	I said "selling out Earl's Court", and not "selling bits of the Earl's Court stands until the audience sat on it and it collapsed."
[2]	I hope it was some suit's idea and not one of the band.
[3]	I must admit that I haven't heard Pulse nor gone to any Pink Floyd concert, but I have most of their albums.