Tonight was somewhat special, it wouldn’t be the first time that I had seen the surviving members of Pink Floyd in various guises over the years but it was the first time I had seen one of them on my doorstep in Plymouth! I saw Roger Waters et al at Wembley performing The Wall in its entirety (what a spectacle that was….), next up it was David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall and following that, I got lucky and managed to secure a ticket to see Nick Mason and his Saucerful of Secrets show at the Half Moon pub in Putney alongside a hundred or so other fans (including ex racing driver Damon Hill).
The Plymouth Pavilions venue was hosting a seated show (for obvious reasons) and I think it’s the only show I’ve been to in the past 25 years where the queue for the gents at half time was ten times longer than that of the ladies. Looking around the room, there were people from all walks of life, old, not so old but still old, and a few that might have aged better than others over the years but were still old all the same, yes folks, it was a more mature audience to say the least but one would expect nothing less for a band that were formed over 50 years ago and smashed the 70’s with 3 albums that appear in most people’s top 20 of all time classics.
There was no support acts tonight, the stage was setup and looked amazing, Nick Mason’s drums were setup in the centre (nobody puts Nicky in the corner) whilst he was flanked by his bass, rhythm and lead guitarists and the keyboard to one side of him. As the tension mounted in the auditorium, the backdrop displayed a mountain scene which came to life as the lights dropped and the band took to the stage.
The show kicked off with the thumping tones of ‘One of These Days’ which truly set the scene, the lights doing marvellous things as the room came to life with this magnificent offering which took us all by surprise, this was followed by the super psychedelic ‘Arnold Layne’ which sounded as present today as it must have done way back in the late 60’s as Pink Floyd were finding their feet.
Midway through ‘Act 1’, Nick Mason stood up and explained that the institution-baiting ‘Candy and the Currant Bun’ was originally titled ‘Let’s Roll Another One’ which would have guaranteed them ZERO airplay on the radio and even fewer appearances on television. This was followed by a touching tribute to Syd Barrett, without whom, Mason would never have been performing today.
The plaintive ‘If’ from the early 70s was next, with the first half of the song performed as a simple acoustic number, before the whole band came roaring in for the main section from the title track of ‘Atom Heart Mother’, before transitioning back into the finale of ‘If’ towards the end in a nice sequence that, although bordering on ten minutes, never outstayed its welcome.
Showing that they weren’t just capable of playing the straight pop and rock that formed a lot of Floyd’s earlier output, monoliths like ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ were played brilliantly, ebbing, flowing, pulsing and thudding along beautifully, and especially showed off Kemp’s expertise with delay, echo, reverb and distortion, manipulated via a series of pedals and dials, as Dom Beken conjured otherworldly sounds from his banks of synthesisers, adding a truly trippy dimension to proceedings. I have it on good authority that even the rather empty seats in the ladies’ loos were reverberating during this track!
After a short interval to compose ourselves, the group forged on, continuing the sixties “space-rock” theme with ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and ‘Astronomy Domine’, two classics from the debut Floyd album, that again allowed the guys to really let loose and drop practically any conventional verse-chorus-verse structure to the songs and boldly go where rock musicians had never ventured prior to Pink Floyd coming along and drawing the line in the sand and encouraging others to be more experimental with their work.
The song I was hoping for – ‘Echoes’, finished off the main set, whilst not the full song (owing to time restraints!) was still a decent portion of it, highlighting the main sections of the track. With the crowd refusing to leave before we’d heard more, the band reappeared for the song that gave Mason’s band their name (‘A Saucerful of Secrets’), another psychedelic, feedback-fuelled, gong-crash filled series of four or so ‘movements’ that brought to mind the performance from Floyd’s famous “live” show in Pompeii (where they were filmed theatrically, but without an audience). ‘See Emily Play’ sounded immense, wonderfully tripe and so ‘1960s’ it floated by in a matter of minutes and left the band asking if we wanted one more? Naturally we did….. and with that, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt shared vocals on the superbly silly ‘Bike’ – another Barrett-era classic with lyrics you can’t help chuckling at – mice called Gerald, anyone?
The band took to the lip of the stage to take a bow and share a standing ovation, Mason added that we had been a ‘very nice audience’ and thanked everyone for coming out to see the show. I for one wouldn’t have missed it for anything and was so thankful that it finally happened!
Review Courtesy Of Steve Muscutt
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