30 Days of Floyd, Day 1 - April 26, 1975

April 26, 1975

Los Angeles Sports Arena, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Welcome to the month of Pink Floyd, where I’ll be celebrating the 30-day countdown until the release of the Early Years box set. Technically, it’s 31 days, but I’ll be celebrating the 31^st day differently… maybe. I’m bad at commitment.

The plan is to look at 30 random concerts from Pink Floyd history, even going past the content covered in the Early Years.

The first concert is, actually, the best sounding audience recording available.

Pink Floyd were in their first month of the Wish You Were Here tour, taking a break during May and coming back on June 7^th. It was a North American tour, with a total of 25 concerts in the U.S. and 3 in Canada. Wikipedia counts the July 5^th show in England as part of the tour, as well. The set list was exactly the same for all shows, except for the June 22 show where Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI – IX) was not played.

This tour was the last time you could normally hear Echoes from this Floyd, and the last time Floyd was a “pure band”, that is, no help from other musicians besides female backing vocalists for Dark Side.

Our taper just so happens to be Michael Millard, the wheelchair hero. The concert selection was completely random, but it just so happened that the first concert I do is, quite possibly, the best sounding complete Floyd concert in the history of Floyd.

The Wish You Were Here tour can be split up into three segments. You are getting almost three full albums worth of content; half of Animals followed by the entire Wish You Were Here album, then the full Dark Side of the Moon album.

The concert starts off with a tame Waters introducing “Raving and Drooling I Fell On His Neck With a Scream”, a new one. And thank you Mr. Millard for your excellent recording quality.

Raving and Drooling is an early version of Sheep, from the Animals album. As with Pink Floyd tradition (pre-Wall), Pink Floyd liked to test their new songs out live. Raving and Drooling is still 13:32 minutes long, but is more simplistic than regular Sheep. The guitar is isolated more, and thanks to the wonderful sounding recording on display, Wright’s keyboard parts stick out. In fact, they mostly take the place of the guitar “fills” for this live version, doing double duty. It is a more jam-based song than usual, if you can believe that. Mid-way into the song the feeling switches into a sort of One of These Days type feel, complete with the keyboard sound. We even get a Waters scream at around 8:40 into the song.

You’ve Got to Be Crazy, and early version of Dogs, takes a bit to tune, and rightfully so since the keyboards and guitar needs to harmonize together for the song to work. And, oh, they do. Beautifully.

“You either get it or you won’t. There it is” says the man behind the bass as guitar kicks in. At this point, the song has different lyrics even to the live version available in Immersion, but still has the basic instrumentation that was laid down. I’d say, even though the song is in an extremely early state, the presentation of the lyrics is more in line with the studio version than the live Immersion version, and I prefer the Immersion version just because Gilmour yells at me to eat shit. He doesn’t yell here, and I don’t even think he tells me to eat shit. It does seem easier to sing than most pre-studio versions, but the lyrics don’t flow as well.

While the keyboards got their chance to shine on Raving and Drooling, I much prefer the sound of Gilmour talking to me with his guitar. This performance is beautiful in that aspect. Wright does get a solo around the ten-minute mark, and it’s not too flashy but just as wonderful. And while the harmonizing guitar/keyboards aren’t as great as Gilmour’s two harmonizing guitars on the studio version, it does just fine.

And thus ends the Animals segment.

Wright’s practicing makes it obvious what the next song is. “It has something to do with Syd Barrett, which some of you might remember, and some of you won’t.”

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I – V) has not been released yet in any form by the time this was recorded. The Wish You Were Here album would come out in September of that year, but it’s crazy to think of a time where even the diehard Pink Floyd fan would find new wonders in a song as iconic as Crazy Diamond. But here we are, in the best possible quality you could imagine. It’s very odd to hear the almost-quiet reaction the song’s introduction gets. Syd’s mention got at least twice as much as a response.

The solos are slightly different, to be expected, and they flow so delicately through the song. Also to note is a strange 1, 2-34 pattern on the drums during part III, slightly different from the norm.

Gilmour didn’t put as much emotion into his backing vocals as I wanted, but he does pick up the pace within the last 3 minutes. During part V, Wright does some smooth keyboard work behind the arpeggio.

I enjoyed this version so much, the 13 minutes felt like 6. I watched the time reach the end, and I wanted more.

Have a Cigar is raw, hard and heavy. The perfect quality of the recording makes it sound tamer than it actually was, but on other bootlegs that guitar is crunchy.

The ending guitar solo has that album-feel to it while being completely different.

The tape actually drops out for a couple seconds, which was pretty amusing.

Instead of going into Wish You Were Here, which was not played during the Wish You Were Here tour, we go straight into Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI – IX). It’s easy to blend in a song that starts off with a bass.

As a continuation of the first five parts, Crazy Diamond continues the beautiful guitar solos, the echo-y bass, the drum fills and the keyboards that control us all. It’s hard to find anything bad to say about this performance, except probably when Waters forgets the beginning lyrics to a verse, before “I’ll be joining you there”.

Finally, they Crazy Diamond jam to the outro and end the Wish You Were Here segment of the concert. You even hear someone in the crowd say “that was alright!”

“Alright.”

Then the Floyd take a break, but not before Waters asserts his dominance.

“We’re gonna come back soon, and do another set. And when we do, I’d appreciate it if you people in yellow shirts stop fucking wandering about in front of the stage, hanging the fucking shit up, alright, so just, sit down somewhere and enjoy the show if you can, leave everyone alone.”

Speak to Me signals the beginning of the Dark Side of the Moon segment and these people are getting their money’s worth. In Pink Floyd taping tradition, the Dark Side part is one track. Also, speak to me is over 5 minutes long, and the crowd cannot contain themselves anymore.

Waters sometimes likes to mess with his songs after they’ve had a chance to ferment. See, for example, his performances of Set the Controls. Even though he was trying to get away from the success that was Dark Side, it’s still the same old Dark Side. Here are some highlights:

·         On the Run is so satisfying. That explosion was recorded perfectly.

·         You can’t help but lose yourself to Time. Wright’s vocal abilities are underrated.

·         A Great Gig in the Sky was good, but to me, nothing beats the vocal performance from the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. Those performances bring me to tears sometimes.

Finally, we end the night with Echoes. This is probably the best version of Echoes you’ll ever get, unless those tricky Floyd have a soundboard or two up their sleeves yet.