Dark Side of the Moon

Back in 1980, my friend Nick asked me if I wanted to see Pink Floyd at Earls Court with him. The tour was to promote their most recent double album, ‘The Wall’, a record which had been slagged-off unanimously by the music press as being depressing and self-indulgent: cold, unwelcoming and gloomy. My punk rock credentials still firmly pinned to my chest (although warmly embracing the emerging electronic movement; the following June my synthesizer trio, The Voice of Reason, would play their one and only gig supporting Depeche Mode at the Bridgehouse in Canning Town), I was having no truck with any prog dinosaurs (as they were being labelled even back then), and certainly not ones who thought it was terrific fun to build an entire wall across the front of the stage so that the audience couldn’t see them, let alone go and watch them at such an enormodome. No sirreee! Music is about passion and intimacy; you’re not going to get that watching Pink Floyd at a 16,000 seat venue. I’m off to see The Revillos at the Marquee.

However one’s tastes change with time and whilst I can still excited when listening to late seventies New Wave (as opposed to punk, which was always a hugely limited genre), or indeed still obtain a thrill when hearing the early analogue synths manually played on those first Human League albums, Pink Floyd CDs now sit snugly in my music collection, sandwiched on the shelf in-between The Pine Valley Cosmonauts and Placebo, and those 1980/1981 concerts are now seen as historical gigs, the live recordings of which (released as ‘Is there Anybody Out There?’ in 2000) are documents of fierce performances all round as the off-stage bickering as the group were disintegrating creating a tension and electricity to their performances. Indeed, a superior version of the song cycle to the original release many people’s opinions, including my own.

I mention this because last night I went to see Roger Waters at the very venue I dislike so much, where he was performing – in it’s entirely, gentle reader – ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. How times change, eh? And what a splendid show it was. With the exception of a new unrecorded tirade on George Bush, ‘Leaving Beirut’, Waters ignored twenty years of solo material in order to play nothing but Floyd favourites, including several songs from ‘The Wall’ such as ‘Vera’, ‘In the Flesh?’, ‘Mother’, and, of course, ‘Another Brick’. The lighting was splendid and yes there was an inflatable pig. When it came to playing ‘Dark Side’, a second drum kit was brought on stage as Floyd drummer Nick Mason joined Waters band for the remainder of the evening. Mason’s presence seemed to notch the performance up a gear (and not through his playing which was, as ever, simple and steady), so that by the time they got to ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ with Carol Kenyon recreating the album’s wailing, it was actually – dare I say it – quite magical. Waters is one of most awkward and un-rhythmical bass player I’ve ever watched, but he was beaming throughout the show and the whole band seemed to be enjoying themselves. The evening ended with a lively rendition of ‘Comfortably Numb' in which guitarists Dave Kilminster and Snowy White traded solos whilst Waters grinned at Mason. A splendid evening. However, even with seats reasonably close to the stage (albeit to one side), I felt I was too far away. Lord alone knows why people go to Wembley Stadium to see concerts.