30 Days of Floyd, Day 14 - September 17, 1969

September 17, 1969

Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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.

I think it would be a national crime if I didn’t talk about this concert. September 17, 1969, the most popular recording from Floyd.

In some twisted world, Pink Floyd had set up an entire double album worth of material for a tour, titled The Man and The Journey. It was to be a concept concert, with new songs, old songs with new names, and performance pieces featuring tea. It’s basically an entire album that went unreleased, and we reportedly don’t know about it because Ummagumma beat it.

It’s set up as THE MAN for the first half and THE JOURNEY for the second. Both contain songs and some of that popular 60’s Musique concrete almost equally. Luckily, all the songs have been shortened down to almost bite-sized portions compared to their normal live length.

This apparently was from a radio broadcast, and kudos to them. Even the drums are mic’d up perfectly in stereo, giving them a more dynamic sound. That’s rare, especially in the 60s, so bravo.

I'm really having a problem talking about this. It's so different, but it's also probably what Pink Floyd sounds like to most people if you talk about anything pre-Dark Side.

Daybreak, Part 1, or Grantchester Meadows. A lot of bird noises before an acoustic guitar breaks through the noise, possibly Gilmour’s. Waters is out of sync with his own acoustic and lyrics, going a little too fast, and it takes a while to recover. His voice also comes across pretty loud in an otherwise quiet song. What this song does have compared to the version we know now is two organ solos. The rest of the song is a little messy.

Work starts off like The Beach Boys’ The Elements: Fire and continues to sound like it if it was composed entirely with percussion instruments. Loud staccato drum cymbal crashing in one ear and a vibraphone in the other, and “musical sawing and hammering” like another song from Smile, Workshop. It’s pretty much the weird parts of Smile performed live by Pink Floyd.

And we’re not even done being weird, because now it’s Teatime. The crowd starts to laugh and then applaud, but I don’t think they truly know what they’re in for. This is a three-and-a-half-minute track of Pink Floyd being served tea on stage. The occasional sound of a tea cup with the much more frequent sound of the audience coughing and giggling. Some weird tape noises do come in later in the “song”, but obviously that’s not important.

Unfortunately, this track is not included in The Early Years box set, which is a crime. Why would you not include the full concert?

It does fade into Afternoon, which is Biding My Time. Sung by Waters, if you haven’t heard of it it’s because it’s only on the randomly released compilation album Relics. It starts with a simple and elegant guitar part before the bass slowly tiptoes into the fray. From there it plays a simplified and clean version of the song, but it does have Wright on a trombone doing a solo which turns into a hard, bluesy guitar solo. Mason is also particularly good here, like he always is. I love this song.

Doing It! Doing what? A drum solo, actually. Nick Mason’s solos aren’t flashy, but you don’t need to be flashy to have a great drum song. He starts off slow, traveling along his drumset like he would normally in One of These Days, and he only gets a little bit faster but it pretty much continues in the same pattern for 4 minutes. There’s supposed to be some sort of tape of someone speaking in this song, but it hardly comes up from behind Mason’s drums.

Sleep is Quicksilver from More. It’s another song with noise, a frequent choice for The Man and The Journey. Specifically, space guitars, light vibraphones, and tape effects like breathing and a clock ticking.

And then Nightmare, because none of these songs so far could count as Nightmare apparently.

Nightmare is actually Cymbaline, which isn’t really a nightmare in my book but ok. There’s more emphasis on a synth that was carried over from the last song for the intro, until jumping into good old Cymbaline with its high times and everything. I think I’ve already said this, but I think it’s funny how much more dynamic Gilmour is singing this live. He fluctuated pitch a lot like he’s practicing for the Great Gig in the Sky part. The guitar solo is a bit underwhelming, but we do get a little Wright jam afterwards so all is good I guess.

The only thing nightmarish about this song is the end because it gets loud for no reason and it frightened me and made me sad.

The ticking clock returns with Daybreak (Part 2). It’s the intro part of Daybreak Part 1 before the guitar come in, so just clocks and birds. The crowd is happy, and we go to break.

And return with The Beginning. Green is the Colour. Whatever. Seagull noises overlapped with tuning before the regular song starts. The song is mostly just the guitar, drums and vocals, so very much a simplified version again. It’s also a little short so it can segue into Careful OH I MEAN

Beset By Creatures of the Deep, or Careful with That Axe, Eugene. The transition here is so much better than what I reviewed for the 1970-04-29 show, going from the high point of Green to a quiet part of Eugene. Surprisingly, they even cut this song short, running for 6:26. It’s also a great version of it, being more of a Eugene jam than the song itself. Really, only the drums sound like the song until we get into what we call came for: the screaming. Gilmour is also singing away like his voice is an exotic instrument. The guitar solo is a bit tamer this time around, but it’s definitely up there as one of the best performances of this if just for how unique it is.

The Narrow Way, or- oh wait, it’s actually The Narrow Way. I guess I can say it’s Part 3. A hidden gem of Ummagumma, this performance doesn’t do it much justice. I can’t even figure out why I don’t really like it, but it probably has something to do with Gilmour. His voice sounds so out of place here, like he just returned from a jog and just caught his breath long enough to do the song.

And it’s The Pink Jungle, almost immediately recognizable as Pow R. Toc H. for Waters’ screeching noises. It’s a weird song to re-make, but this whole concert is pretty high on the weird scale so anything goes. Waters makes enough noises to simulate every animal in a swamp during the Jurassic period here, but it is called the Pink Jungle so it makes sense. For the midpoint of the song, Wright plays a single chord while Gilmour dives into a solo and never returns, probably fighting off whatever animals responded to Waters’ mating call. In the end it almost turns into Atom Heart Mother with the bass / organ combo.

The Labyrinths of Auximines is the bass slowly turning into Let There Be More Light with some keyboard noises, before being shut down by the rest of the band’s noises. In this song, everybody is doing their own thing; Gilmour and Wright are lost in space again, Waters is teasing Let There Be More Light and Mason is occupying his time with drum fills for a bit until everyone stops for the footsteps approaching us. A door opens, and now the owner of the footsteps is running and breathing heavily. He stops to do something, and then he explodes.

After what seems like a cut of some sort by the radio station, we are in The End of the Beginning. On this bootleg it’s the second to last song, but Pink Floyd says it’s the last song, so I guess we have to agree with them. They also include “footsteps / Doors” as part of Auximines but not Tea Time? Those bastards.

Oh anyway, it’s apparently the Celestial Voices part of A Saucerful of Secrets. It’s sort of a cleaner version of the original, with more heavy guitar after a slow keyboard intro. Gilmour starts to go “ahh” with the song but by the time he appears in the mix at all it’s too late. Dammit, that’s my favorite part, and something went wrong. Of course. What is there, though, is exactly what I needed. It’s just great.

Behold the Temple of Light is “last”. According to Wikipedia it takes its roots from the end of The Narrow Way (Part 2). It sounds like something you’d hear as background music in a spaghetti western if they had more organs.  It’s mostly Gilmour quietly playing his guitar. Halfway through the song, cymbals are crashing and Gilmour and Wright pick up the pace a little bit. Doesn’t really go anywhere, though, because it ends the same way.

It’s an amazing recording and a great performance. I’ve heard better, definetley, but you can’t beat the quality. The Man and The Journey is basically an entirely new album, and also a live version of More. If you’re a fan of Pink Floyd, I hope you’re ready for a trip, because that’s what you’re getting. Music, experiments, music and more experiments. 


R.I.P. Pete Burns. Tomorrow, Super Deluxe Edition will post an interview they had with him. I recommend reading that, because it will no doubt be very interesting. The stories that have come from interactions between him and his fans are some of the most entertaining.

Unfortunately, I have to write more.
R.I.P. Bobby Vee. A beautiful stand out voice from the early 60s.

2016 is almost done, folks. Hang in there for just a little longer.