Pink Floyd Appreciation Thread

Floydoid wrote: The first time I technically saw them in action was seeing 'Live at Pompeii' at the cinema just after it was released. Only ever managed to see them live in concert once (at Earls Court in 1994).

I must mention that the *Blu-ray remaster of 'Live at Pompeii' is quite a big improvement over previous releases - visually it is much 'cleaner' and the audio remastering by Steve Wilson doesn't detract from anything either!

*which was a Father's Day gift this year

I believe it was released back in May of this year... tho there is no note of it on Floyd's page here.

Saw them in...

1977 (Cleveland, where the crowd destroyed the giant inflatable pig, Algie)
1987 (Pontiac Silverdome)
1994 (Again, Pontiac Silverdome where Gilmour announced they were playing DSotM in it's entirety for the first time since Detroit, 1975)

Best damn concerts ever.

I enjoyed all of their album in my youth, but in the last decade plus, the body of work from '68-'73 have become something more, almost an effective tool of emotional calibration as I went through the pain of losing loved ones.

Music is always therapeutic for me, but no other band "helped" at my worst points more than these albums. On a couple of the worst mornings, when leaving in the car to a funeral service or to inter a dear parent, Meddle was the only album to focus me on that long drive across town. As the recognizable reference points of childhood began to appear, Echoes was almost narcotic-like. All of the albums of that era were employed on the many mornings driving to my parents home while we were cleaning it out for sale, another funeral really, taking a space that saw over 60 years of family emotion down to the bare walls of a realty advertisement.

Once I'd exit the vehicle and the music abruptly stopped, the pain was right there again. But I'll always credit those album for being able to "pause" the pain while driving to these most difficult engagements.

Finnforest wrote: Well, here's a find! Rare Animals tour footage appears. Short but very sweet.

Now, something like this needs to be found. But a full video, good quality so that it could be remastered and released. It would be the best live album/video ever released.

Finnforest wrote: ^ Agree. I've never been able to fathom how one of the biggest bands of the 70s could have failed to have management smart enough to film full and complete concert footage at least once for ever tour. I guess they did for Meddle, but Dark Side, Wish, Animals, and Wall should all have their own record of live performance. Whether they chose to release physical releases is another matter, but at least the quality footage would have been in the vault (and by now, leaked)

I think there was a tendency amongst the large prog bands in the 70's to keep the mystique around their personas, faces, music & etc. Thinking about it, there weren't many of them who released full concert footage back in the day.

Of course there were live albums, but even many of these tended to understate the dramatic interplay between band and audience.

Famously with The Floyd, one of them (Mason, I think) said in an interview that the four of them could walk down Kensington High Street (London) and not be recognised by a single member of the public.

^^^
Concert footage films (with The Song Remains the Same and Yessongs being the best examples) in the 1970s/1980s were almost never shown to regular theatre audiences. They were reserved for "midnight movie madness" showings that only attracted fans of the band/high school/college-age viewers and ran for months on end. Had Floyd filmed one of these, I can't imagine it would have made them "even more recognizable" outside of their existing fanbase.