Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma album cover with the band arranged around a doorway and a repeating framed image.

Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma: Million-Dollar Guitars & Kerouac’s Scroll

October 4, 2026

Awhile back Lou bought Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma at The Vogue. It is shit. Well, the live stuff is ok. But it is still pretentious shit. There is a time and place for a good shit. In fact, sitting on the toilet with headphones is a good place to listen to Pink Floyd. The title of the album comes from Iain “Emo” Moore, a friend of and roadie for the band who used this Cambridge slang term for sex in conversation. Strange, since Pink Floyd might be one of the least sexy bands out there. Like Rush. They don’t fuck and Lou doesn’t fuck with them for the most part. Pink Floyd albums are soundtracks for incels.

Lou has said it before and he will say it again, “Echoes” is Pink Floyd’s apex. Lou will always give a listen to “Echoes” from Live at Pompeii. The very definition of sublime. Lou has a bunch of Pink Floyd albums, but they are in that long list of bands where all you need is the greatest hits. To be honest, their best stuff, like “Echoes”, is not their greatest hits so this is probably wrong. In fact, Lou just may be all wrong about Pink Floyd. It is possible, stranger things have happened. Like buying Ummagumma.

Lou has nothing much to say about Pink Floyd or Ummagumma. This is just an excuse to talk about the fact that David Gilmour’s black Stratocaster sold for $14.55 million at Christie’s auction of Jim Irsay’s memorabilia collection. Lou knows nothing about this Stratocaster or why it is famous. Lou suspects it is because Gilmour is acknowledged to be on the Mount Rushmore of rock guitar gods. This is bullshit. In fact, the three main guitars in the Irsay sale that hit the stratosphere were bullshit. Before the auction, the previous record for a guitar was Kurt Cobain’s 1959 Martin D-18-E acoustic-electric that he played during Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged” concert. It fetched $6.01 million. Gilmour’s guitar shattered that record. As did Jerry Garcia’s custom Doug Irwin guitar “Tiger” ($11.56 million) and Kurt Cobain’s 1969 Lake Placid blue Fender Mustang ($6.907 million).

Lou does not know shit about guitars and whether these are innovative models or limited-edition models or anything. Lou does know that David Gilmour, Jerry Garcia, and Kurt Cobain are three of the most overrated guitar players in the history of rock. Again, Lou knows nothing about guitar virtuosity. He can’t play shit. But Andy Edwards, the best and funniest of the music YouTubers, says they are all overrated, so Lou will go with that. Lou can believe it. Lou does believe it. Andy Edwards knows what he is talking about. Well, not really, Edwards likes prog, which is complete shit. Like Pink Floyd. Or maybe not. Nobody’s perfect. Not Andy Edwards and certainly not Lou.

If Lou could have one guitar it would not be that of Gilmour, Garcia, or Cobain. It would not be that of Hendrix, Page, Clapton, or Van Halen. Nor McLaughlin, Holdsworth, Beck, or Coryell. It would not even be the guitar of Snake of the Riverbottom Nightmare Band. Lou would be tempted to buy a guitar of Woodie Guthrie’s that has “This machine kills fascists” written on it. That would be cool. But not that one either. If Lou could buy one guitar it would be the guitar Robert Johnson played in the roadhouse on the day he was poisoned. That would be the ultimate. Lou would sell his soul for that guitar.

Such a guitar reminds Lou of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy must select which cup is the Holy Grail. The evil Nazis thinking of the central importance of the Grail select an ornate drinking vessel. It is the ultimate collectible after all. In essence, he selects a pimp cup. He dies. He chose poorly. But Indy knows Jesus was not a pimp, but merely a simple carpenter, so he selects the simplest, least ostentatious cup available. He too chose poorly in a sense and that was wise. Robert Johnson’s guitar is the Holy Grail of guitars and probably something simple and common. What is uncommon is what Johnson did with this humble instrument.

Jim Irsay also owned the most famous literary manuscript of all: the scroll version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Unlike these fucking guitars, the On the Road manuscript is worth every penny. It is not a literary manuscript; it is a work of art. A document of performance art to be exact. It is the literary equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting, the highest price of which is $200 million. If Number 17, 1948 is one of the heights of action painting, On the Road is the pinnacle of action writing. Check out Michael Hrebeniak’s Action Writing: Jack Kerouac’s Wild Form for the nuts and bolts of the argument.

Kerouac’s scroll sold for $12.135 million and was bought by country music star Zach Bryan. It has always bothered Lou that Irsay, a silver-spooned doofus, owned the scroll. Lou was happy it was in private hands, since it seems to Lou that On the Road should be out of an institution and out in the hands of an individual or a non-profit foundation. Irsay was not the idea of the common man that Lou was thinking of. Zach Bryan isn’t either, but Bryan seems to have big plans for it and will restore it as common property in some fashion to the people of Lowell. One hopes. Lou saw it in person at the New York Public Library. It just might be the closest Lou will come to seeing a religious relic. Lou felt something in its presence. Lou is usually numb. So, this is saying something.

Lou wishes that the scroll found its way into the hands of an Average Joe Kerouac fan. There was a time when Beat collectibles were tragically undervalued and lunch pail types could get a hold of incredibly important and rare items. Maybe not the scroll, maybe not even first editions, but landmark material, such as literary magazines and LPs, nonetheless.

Back in the day, Lou was able to get a hold of some of this stuff himself. But unlike Jim Irsay’s family, Lou’s heirs will never hit the jackpot at auction after his death. In fact, the dumbest thing Lou ever did was spend his money on rare books and records. He will never get his money back. Check that. The dumbest thing Lou ever did was spend his money on cigars and beer. So stupid. If Lou had invested his beer and cigar money in Amazon or eBay, he wouldn’t be writing this blog or doing much of anything but drinking beer and smoking cigars all day. This was a real possibility. Amazon and eBay were companies that Lou understood and believed in in terms of the business model. Books and auctions were close to Lou’s heart. But he drank and smoked it all away. And actually bought books and records not stock in companies selling books and records.

This reminds Lou of the late 1990s when he was marginally involved in the Dot-Com boom. Lou knew a guy who was attempting to start what WebMD became and he fucked around with internet types. Lou distinctly remembers having dinner at Maggiano’s with a couple of tech bros who wanted to get involved with internet porn. Lou could have gotten in on the ground floor. Or gotten on set. Or in the dressing room. Something like that.

Lou’s idea was doing porn documentaries, which were kind of like porn parodies. How about a series of documentaries about famous rock groupies, like the GTOs, but with sex scenes? Or famous people who died during sex, like Atilla the Hun, but with sex scenes? That would be like porn and Faces of Death. Or bordellos in history? Or historic strip clubs? Documentaries about the cultural history of sex and sexuality but with hardcore sex scenes. True Sex-Ed. Lou had tons of ideas for these documentaries and was ready to invest a few thousand dollars to get it going. The tech bros just stared into their shrimp diablos and begged off. Lou ordered another Peroni and wondered about what could have been. Maybe the time is now? Any tech bros out there?

— Lou Waxman