?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?

Are you developing a new binary language that consists out of question marks and exclamation marks instead of 0's and 1's?

I think you know what the answer is to you question. ;)

The songs before The Wall are too long and/or dreary, too prog, or (early stuff) too weird.

Too dreary before The Wall? :confused:

Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

I mean musically. "Welcome to the Machine" is an example. I realize that Waters wrote mostly dreary lyrics for the band (and in fact so did Gilmour after Waters left), but at least The Wall sounded energetic.

Even musically I don't see what you're talking about. I love The Wall and The Final Cut but they are some seriously downer albums, both lyrically and musically, compared to most of what came before. I can only really think of two or three songs on The Wall that are particularly energetic, and only one on The Final Cut, and all of them are pretty angry. I certainly can't picture a song as upbeat as this ever appearing on either of those albums:

Pink Floyd with Barrett doesn't count as "dreary." The Final Cut is dreary, yes. It's my least favorite of the later albums (and probably near the bottom for anyone not named Roger Waters). I haven't listened to all of The Wall, but the better-known songs seem energetic enough to me.

Okay, well "Paintbox" isn't long, proggy, or weird either so it still stands as a counter-example to your description of pre-Wall Pink Floyd.

Anyway, how about this post-Barrett, pre-Wall, short, non-proggy, non-weird track:



You should listen to it then. At the very least it would give you some kind of a leg to stand on in this sort of conversation. :)