Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Location: Hala Tivoli (small hall) / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: November 9, 2012
Attendance: 4,200
Ticket price: €35
Brit Floyd successfully recreated the authentic Pink Floyd magic and, with a hall packed to the rafters, blew past even the most optimistic expectations
These days Pink Floyd are the only legendary band from the golden age of progressive rock that stirs up plenty of strong, positive emotions even among Slovenes, a traditionally pretty reserved bunch when it comes to the experimental music of the last four decades of the 20th century, who usually know only the band’s two biggest hits, »Another Brick In The Wall Part 2« and »Wish You Were Here«, and would usually rather spend their concert money on the Vienna boys and our southern ‘brothers and sisters’. Of course, at least part of the exceptional popularity Pink Floyd still enjoy on our soil today, unlike their commercially less successful prog rock peers (only trio-era Genesis and maybe eighties Yes come close), has to be credited, beyond the musical legacy, to the megalomaniac stage production that long ago made their live shows some of the most successful and lucrative in rock history. Sadly, Pink Floyd played their last real concert in 1995, when they promoted their final studio album »The Division Bell« (1994), unless you count the brief, symbolic reunion of the classic lineup at Live 8 in 2005.
Since then, younger fans especially, the ones who never got the chance to see them in their prime, have been piously hoping the band would get together again and organize a new world tour. Thanks to the years-long rift between bassist/vocalist Roger Waters and guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour, that hope was bordering on science fiction. After Live 8 the two did somehow patch things up, so they’re talking again and occasionally even share a stage, but the last chance of Pink Floyd ever organizing a concert tour, rather than a merely symbolic appearance on special occasions, probably went down the drain for good with the death of keyboardist Richard Wright. So we’ll never see the classic Pink Floyd lineup again.
Luckily, if not as a consolation, quite a few quality Pink Floyd tribute acts popped up in the mid-nineties, carrying on their legendary musical heritage more or less faithfully. Of those, Brit Floyd currently stand out most when it comes to quality, as we could see for ourselves in the middle of a jam-packed small hall at Tivoli. Brit Floyd can boast even the support of David Gilmour, since they played at his birthday party, and they’ve made contact with all the Pink Floyd members except Waters. That means they don’t need any special permissions to use the recognizable Pink Floyd stage design. Unbelievably, the small Tivoli hall was completely sold out on the day of the hockey game between Slovenia and France, clear proof that most Slovenes are still willing to count out a not-insignificant sum for good music, even if it’s only a ‘substitute’ for a famous band that we’d most likely never have seen around here, even if it had never stopped playing.
Instead of the announced three trucks of stage gear, there was only one next to the tour bus, which meant a smaller stage production, without the inflatable »Animals« pigs and grotesque »The Wall« puppets, but most of the people who came for the music first and foremost probably didn’t lose much sleep over it, even though megalomaniac staging has always been an important part of the Pink Floyd live tradition. To kick things off, before the band appeared on stage, Brit Floyd wowed everyone in the hall with superb lighting and innovative animated projections, trying to recreate the atmosphere of their great idols as faithfully as possible. It might have been nice to cover the aesthetically rather ugly metal stage structure with curtains, but that’s only a minor gripe. The opening projection, in the middle of the round structure that vaguely resembled a ‘stargate’, was made up of film collages from the Pink Floyd archive and a display of the covers of their entire studio discography.
Many skeptics in the hall had to put their doubts about Brit Floyd to rest within the first minutes of the legendary evergreen »Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part I-V)«. Midway through, a brilliantly made computer-animated projection of a man in the desert played, and then, to the crowd’s universal delight, the face of the ‘crazy diamond’ popped up in the circle for a moment: original singer and guitarist Syd Barrett, sadly long gone, to whose eternal memory this classic was dedicated in the first place. The opening solo was played by rhythm guitarist Bobby Harrison, whose fingers were a touch too stiff for an ideal Dave Gilmour imitation. Even from his looks and stage moves you could tell he’s a ‘metalhead’ and not exactly a ‘natural’ pick for this kind of job. All the more convincingly, though, band leader and musical director Damian Darlington played Gilmour’s guitar lines and pedal steel and did an excellent job on vocals. Ian Cattell convincingly filled in for Waters on vocals and bass, while Rick Benbow watched over the realm of keyboards in place of Wright. As an interesting tidbit, Benbow is actually the ‘backup’ keyboardist alongside Rob Stinger, who wasn’t on stage this evening. Arran Ahmun sat behind the drum kit instead of Nick Mason. Individual members of Brit Floyd don’t look anything like Waters, Gilmour, Wright, Mason or perhaps Barrett, which some tribute bands consider very important, but they’re all the more spot-on as instrumental and vocal imitators.
»Learning To Fly« took us back to the eighties for a moment, specifically to the album »A Momentary Lapse Of Reason« (1987), so often overlooked by fans, to which Brit Floyd added African tam-tams for a bit of rhythmic spice. Those were played by multi-instrumentalist Carl Brundson, who over the course of the evening covered Dick Parry’s original sax parts and occasionally played percussion, acoustic guitar and keyboards too. On certain numbers he was joined by three backing vocalists, Emily Jollands, Jacquie Williams and Ola Bienkowska, who did their job brilliantly, and nobody fussed over the fact that Pink Floyd had one more backing singer on their stages. Brit Floyd have two more backing singers in reserve ‘at home’, by the way. Instead of the Native American who turns into an eagle, the stage animation for »Learning To Fly« showed a hang glider in flight, one of the few minor departures from the original visual concepts.
The setlist for the evening couldn’t have been better and could serve as a shining example even for Pink Floyd themselves. Besides the standard classics that must never be missing from any Pink Floyd gig, namely »Another Brick In The Wall Part 2«, »Wish You Were Here«, »Comfortably Numb«« and the four main, most beloved standards off »Dark Side Of The Moon« (1973), Brit Floyd threw in some very pleasant surprises you wouldn’t automatically expect. In fact, they touched on nearly every period of Pink Floyd’s career, though fans of the early, psychedelic era didn’t exactly get their fill. From that period they played only »See Emily Play«, a short but sweet psychedelic pop rocker from 1967 and Pink Floyd’s second single, on which Syd Barrett still sang. Although Brit Floyd were most convincing on songs from Pink Floyd’s ‘classic’ period (the seventies), they nailed this brief psychedelic foray too. The animation this time was the rollicking antics of a gothic girl in high spirits in the middle of a forest.
After that, Brit Floyd chose to land on »Dark Side Of The Moon«, and two classics off that masterpiece followed in superb renditions, »Money« and »Us And Them«, backed by suitably socially critical animations. »The Happiest Days Of Our Lives« and »Another Brick In The Wall Part 2«, on which the crowd, especially the younger attendees for whom it was the only Pink Floyd tune they knew (let’s hope there weren’t many of those in the hall), went into total ecstasy, were of course completely expected, though not this early, in the first half of the show. The unforgettable, melancholic »The Divison Bell« heart-wrencher »High Hopes«, during which the original video with flags, a church bell and a person lost in nostalgia next to a car was played, was one of the bigger surprises of the evening. It was great to hear »Pigs (Three Different)« too, another big socially critical Waters classic, which means they touched briefly on the cult album »Animals« (1977) as well. The inflatable flying pig didn’t float out over the hall this time, but it did keep showing up in the background animated projection with glowing eyes and curled tusks. After »Pigs«, Damian Darlington, who racked up his Pink Floyd tribute experience over a full 17 years in his previous outfit Australian Pink Floyd, announced a twenty-minute intermission, which was no big surprise, since Pink Floyd themselves used the same practice during their sets of more than three hours back in the day.
The twenty-minute intermission stretched into half an hour, but nobody in the hall got especially worked up while killing time, since the Brit Floyd members used the break to gather fresh strength for an almost even more demanding second half. To ‘warm up’ they went back to the distant past, specifically the album »Meddle« (1971), and confidently, with exceptional precision, played the more than twenty-minute prog rock super-epic »Echoes«, which with its shifting ambient nature and countless tempo transitions was, for many in the hall, the most anticipated performance of the whole night. Then, more or less as expected, they returned to »Dark Side Of The Moon« and played an outstanding version of »Time« and an even better rendition of »The Great Gig In The Sky«, in the middle of which singer Ola Bienkowska stunned everyone present with her fantastic (wordless) vocal performance. She delivered a very good approximation of Clare Torry’s original vocal turn. On »Have a Cigar« they once again wowed with their exceptional fidelity to the original, while »Wish You Were Here«, where Darlington, visibly enjoying himself on acoustic guitar, once more found himself in Gilmour’s shoes, was delivered in an especially convincing way. The title of biggest surprise of the night went, more or less, to »One Of These Days«, an instrumental (if you don’t count the distorted vocal improvisation) »Meddle« classic, on which the instrumental chops of the individual Brit Floyd members really stood out in their meticulous copying of the original structure of this complex evergreen.
After a short break, Damian and his crew announced a performance of almost the entire second half of the double concept masterpiece »The Wall« (1979), for which they imitated, with every means available, the stage design Roger Waters uses on his current solo shows. So, for example, Ian Cattell, who ‘played’ Roger Waters, found himself on a couch in front of a TV amid an imitation hotel room during »Nobody Home«, while during »Comfortably Numb«, as expected another of the night’s peaks, especially for the successful imitation of Gilmour’s iconic guitar soloing, he injected a sedative into a catatonic ‘Pink’ lying on the couch, dressed in a doctor’s coat. In between we were wowed by computer-generated animated projections that followed, in innovative ways, the visual legacy of the cult film »The Wall«, teacher, mother and wife included. As an encore they played, as expected, the lively hit »Run Like Hell«, during which Cattell put on a leather jacket and sunglasses, trying in the style of Waters’ iconography to create the character of a tyrannical dictator (he actually looked a lot more like Albert Wesker, the main villain of the sci-fi horror series Resident Evil), and together with his mates created one last unforgettable atmosphere that visibly moved most of the crowd.
Brit Floyd put on a splendid concert, simulating their great idols as well as anyone could, and with their confidence, tightness and exceptional stage chemistry they satisfied, if not thrilled, everyone in the hall, nitpickers included. Long after the Brit Floyd members had left the stage, the crowd stood in ecstasy demanding another encore, but after three hours the concert was irrevocably over. Brit Floyd have thus fully lived up to their reputation as the best possible live stand-in for Pink Floyd these days. It’s heartening that this show sparked such interest among the people. But it would be nice if Slovenes showed the same mass enthusiasm they display every time anything smells of Pink Floyd for their musical peers too, especially the prog rock ones, who still prefer to earn their hard-won crust of concert bread in other countries of central, western and eastern Europe, and usually show up closest to us in Trieste.
Setlist
1.Introductory Medley
2.Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)
3.Learning to Fly
4.See Emily Play
5.Money
6.Us and Them
7.The Happiest Days of Our Lives
8.Another Brick in the Wall Part 2
9.High Hopes
10.Pigs (Three Different Ones)
11.Echoes
12.Time
13.The Great Gig in the Sky
14.Have a Cigar
15.Wish You Were Here
16.One of These Days
17.Hey You
18.Is There Anybody Out There?
19.Nobody Home
20.Vera
21.Bring the Boys Back Home
22.Comfortably Numb
encore:
23.Run Like Hell
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