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Per aspera ad astra.

“Through adversity to the stars.” — Latin

Not only could that describe in a nutshell the final championship match between the Dragons and the Oni for the ultimate bragging rights in Season XIV, it also perfectly describes the background acrimony behind the release of Pink Floyd’s 13th studio album on this date in 1987.

Roger Waters had left the band following “The Final Cut” which is considered to be a de facto Waters solo album amid a titanic falling out with David Gilmour who vowed to carry on as Pink Floyd with Nick Mason.

There was pressure from the record label to release a new Pink Floyd album from a band that was increasingly looking like it had caught a fatal case of the break-ups.

In 1986, Bob Ezrin (who had co-produced “The Wall”) came across the pond to Gilmour’s barge “Astoria” to start producing what would become “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” which even though it bears the Pink Floyd name and heralded the return of Richard Wright who Waters had fired years before is a very different album than the concept albums that Pink Floyd was known for producing.

That’s because it was fundamentally different and could be considered a Gilmour solo effort that just happened to have the Pink Floyd name attached to it along with “The Division Bell” seven years later in 1994 and “The Endless River” in 2014 which was the band’s final studio album.

Game 1 Warm-Ups

Post-Game

Congratulations to the Dragons for being the last team standing to take home the league cup and a season that was not an easy road to the final match but one in which there was much growth such that the Dragons that took the ice tonight were noticeably much more of an individual troop than the team that started the season three months ago! 🙂