Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Pink Floyd
Label: EMI Records
Release: 2006
Rating: 4.5/5
As you probably all know, Pink Floyd toured in 1994 in support of their last studio album, “Division Bell”. It kicked off in March in the US, and in October Pink Floyd made a stop on the British Isles, playing a whopping 15 shows at London’s The Earl’s Court. One of them, on October 20, 1994, was captured on tape and released in 1995 on VHS. Midway through the tour the band decided to put a performance of the entire album “The Dark Side Of The Moon” into the set list, something Roger Waters also took on during his latest tour this year.
But back to the DVD. Obviously this is going to be a proper epic, but hey, it’s Pink Floyd. The band’s Earl’s Court shows were shot on video (PAL), directed by the legendary David Mallet. An official video release came out soon after, even though the footage was supposedly meant purely to promote the tour at first. Those of us without the original VHS, impatient fans that we were, made do with copies and bootleg “DVDs” to soothe our frustration. The official release of this DVD has finally set things straight.
Since the performance of individual songs will someday be “dissected” on RockLine in a review of the double live album “P.U.L.S.E.” (1994), we won’t dig into the differences between the originals and the stage versions this time. Instead we can kick off the debate right away by justifying the colorful bunch of musicians on stage with one simple fact: a lineup like this is just what it takes. The sheer multidimensionality of “The Dark Side Of The Moon” demands it if you want to bring the record to life on stage!
The stage is massive, built for arena-sized visions, dimensioned for the gigantism of stadiums! It was designed by Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park, who also created the stage Pink Floyd used on their 1977 tour in support of the studio album “Animals”. Add Marc Brickman’s lighting to that, a picturesque flashing of every conceivable combination of spotlights merged with laser beams of extreme intensity, and it builds a dimensional gateway above the stadium into a one-of-a-kind world. Add the music, of course, and all the conditions for a flight into that revived, unique Pink Floyd universe are in place!
The first disc mostly features songs from “Division Bell”, then two from “Momentary Lapse Of Reason” (1987) and just three from the era when Roger Waters was the band’s spiritual daddy! Highlights of disc one? Undoubtedly Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a classic whose eternity is still hard to top – the peak of disc one, and a tribute to the recently departed Syd Barrett, with an unforgettable projection of the film Storm Thorgerson shot for the song, who has been creating iconic film material for the band since 1967. The hairs on your skin stand up especially hard at High Hopes, with Gilmour’s mighty solo on “steel pedal guitar” in the outro, and at the bombastic lament Sorrow, with its venomously over-distorted, compressed guitar sound, whose effect is complemented above all by Gilmour’s masterful feel for tremolo. The first disc closes with the rebellious One Of These Days, marked by two balloons – huge, raging, tusked boars with laser lights mounted in their eyes, which swell up spectacularly during the song.
The second disc, or second part of the concert, is a complete tribute to the classic Pink Floyd legacy. As mentioned, it delivers the entire “Dark Side Of The Moon” album and wraps up with Wish You Were Here, Comfortaby Numb and a “monstrous” Run Like Hell. “Dark Side Of The Moon” is played with devotion, true to the spirit of the original studio record. Hunting for peaks at a Pink Floyd show is a thankless job and a double-edged sword, yet on the second disc A Great Gig In The Sky stands out in particular, with the bravura exchange of vocal improvisation acrobatics from the backing singers, split into three interlinked solo spots that create extraordinary feelings. Just as impressive is the performance of Any Colour You Like, which in the 21 years since its creation (up to 1994) has grown into an effective solo interplay between keyboards and guitar. The jamming in the middle of Money keeps setting things on fire, while the concert closes at the highest possible atmospheric gear with an encore of three songs, namely Wish You Were Here, where in the middle of the song and in the outro Gilmour lifts the atmosphere with a mix of vocal falsetto and acoustic guitar soloing. The Pink Floyd hypnosis “kills” especially during Comfortably Numb, when a huge glass flower opens at the other end of the hall, opposite the stage, and people get a proper brain concussion especially at the finale with the “monstrously schizoid” Run Like Hell, when they’re hit with a real wall of spotlight flashes and the effect of temporary hypnotic blinding.
Now, while the sound and visual perfection of the “P.U.L.S.E.” DVD is practically spotless, the first disc hides one small annoying factor, which is really the only minus of the whole DVD. Disc one includes only three “Waters era” tracks (one of them the obligatory Another Brick In the Wall pt. II, which probably even all the little ones still in baby teeth who hang out at Global know), because the band cut, say, Astronomy Domine and Hey You from the list, which the Floyds played on the summer leg of the European tour.
The film also got some reworking. You can no longer spot the split screen that appeared in places, made up of a camera feed showing, say, just Gilmour (or another band member) and a camera aimed at “Mr. Screen” during the concert (Mr. Screen is the unofficial name for the round screen the band has used for film projection at the back of concert stages since 1974). The picture is now unified, and the work, behavior and stage antics of the band members are brought closer to the viewer in an even more authentic way. At moments it may bother you that the gentlemen behave a shade too polished, too mechanical, with too little spontaneity… the situation is partly rescued by the fired-up bassist Guy Pratt and the hyperactive percussionist Gary Wallis.
Since this was a transfer from VHS to DVD, the producers had stricter limits on manipulating the original footage during processing. Colors are, in places, even more vibrant in their liveliness than on the original VHS. The picture is very sharp, with so much detail available to the viewer that I hope it’s enough to mention you can actually see the hair on Gilmour’s arms. Where the footage has intense color shifts due to changing lighting, you can spot “blocks” (a “blocky” picture) – especially in widescreen projection. In blackouts, or in parts of the footage with very little light, the picture is more “dotted” and hazy, which can be chalked up to an artifact of the digitization process. Contrary to expectations, the quality of the footage carries some of the flaws mentioned, probably down to the quality of the original recording.
On the other hand, the audio is a complete upgrade of the original. The DVD lets you choose between three audio options: Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1/448 kbps and Dolby Digital 5.1/640 kbps. The latter is a big win for any system that can decode such a signal. Pink Floyd’s longtime sound engineer James Guthrie, who handled the new sound, has received numerous awards for his work in this field and plenty of critical acclaim for his 5.1 SACD mix of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”. The man achieved a clear separation of the layers of sound, bringing the sharpness of the separation of individual instrument lines to the human cochlea in detail (the contrasts between them are now maximally emphasized, e.g. bass – percussion – drums, etc…), along with the vocal harmonies and all the other lines of sound, such as special effects. This is especially noticeable in the bombastic crashing of the bass line, which at times, in its updated, vivid prominence, now literally thunders out (One Of These Days, Run Like Hell). It’s all wrapped in a translucent envelope of sound effects that lift the atmosphere. The sound is thus noticeably upgraded on this DVD and reaches brilliant perfection.
And the bonus material? The first disc contains the film clips projected on “Mr. Screen” during the Pink Floyd concert for the songs Learning to Fly, High Hopes and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. There are also the original music videos for Take It Back and Learning To Fly (the latter differs from the MTV version of the video, which among other things won an MTV award), and a separate menu section collects stage construction plans (sketches) and tour maps. The biggest surprise is hidden in the section titled “Bootlegging The Bootleggers”, featuring some songs Pink Floyd played live on this tour but not at the Earl’s Court show. The hand-held camera versions are: What Do You Want From Me?, On The Turning Away, Poles Apart, and Marooned. Funny that Astronomy Domine is missing again!
The second disc contains a witty look behind the scenes, captured in a documentary, a 30-minute film titled “Say Goodbye To Life As We Know It”. Here again are the film clips projected on Mr. Screen during the concerts for all the songs of the “Dark Side of the Moon” performance. There’s also a photo gallery (some photos are taken from the booklet of the double live CD “P.U.L.S.E.”, 1994), album covers from “Meddle” to “Division Bell”, and as a curiosity a clip with Billy Corgan, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman, with a boringly drawn-out welcome speech that wears you out and drags you down to exhaustion (luckily the DVD lets you add English subtitles, since it’s hard to untangle his mumbling, or you can simply hit “forward”). After Corgan’s “crocheting” comes a clip of his static strumming alongside Gilmour and Wright, performing “Wish You Were Here” at the ceremony inducting Pink Floyd into the elite Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The DVD is packaged as a “digipack”, the menu is a breeze to get the hang of, and the discs also come with a booklet in “minimized” form. Given the upgraded sound of Pink Floyd’s Earl’s Court show and the added bonus material, the revamped “P.U.L.S.E.”, finally released on DVD, will surely delight all the band’s fans and stir up enough interest to turn the heads of even those who have their old, probably well-worn and chewed-up VHS tape at home. So this is a DVD that belongs in the educational curriculum of every (Slovenian) household!
Line-up
PINK FLOYD:
David Gilmour – guitar, vocals
Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals, backing vocals
Nick Mason – drums
SUPPORTING MUSICIANS:
Tim Renwick – guitar, backing vocals
Jon Carin – keyboards, backing vocals
Dick Parry – tenor saxophone, alto saxophone
Sam Brown – backing vocals
Claudia Fontaine – backing vocals
Durga McBroom – backing vocals
Guy Pratt – bass guitar
Gary Wallis – percussion
Production
James Guthrie & Storm Thorgerson
Track list
CD 1:
1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Live)
2. Learning To Fly (Live)
3. High Hopes (Live)
4. Take It Back (Live)
5. Coming Back To Life (Live)
6. Sorrow (Live)
7. Keep Talking (Live)
8. Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2, Live)
9. One Of These Days (Live)
10. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Screen Film)
11. High Hopes (Screen Film)
12. Learning To Fly (Screen Film)
13. What Do You Want From Me (Video)
14. On The Turning Point (Video)
15. Poles Apart (Video)
16. Marooned (Video)
17. Learning To Fly (Video)
18. Take It Back (Video)
19. Pulse TV Advert (Video)
CD 2:
1. Speak To Me (Live)
2. Breathe (Live)
3. On The Run (Live)
4. Time (Live)
5. The Great Gig In The Sky (Live)
6. Money (Live)
7. Us And Them (Live)
8. Any Colour You Like (Live)
9. Brain Damage (Live)
10. Eclipse (Live)
11. Wish You Were Here (Live)
12. Comfortably Numb (Live)
13. Run Like Hell (Live)
14. Speak To Me (Video)
15. Time (1994, Video)
16. The Great Big Gig In The Sky (Wave) (Video)
17. Money (1987, Video)
18. Us And Them (1987, Video)
19. Brain Damage (Video)
20. Eclipse (Video)
21. Speak To Me (1987, Video)
22. Time (Ian Eames) (Video)
23. The Great Big Sky In The Sky (Animation)
24. Money (Alien) (Video)
25. Us And Them (1994, Video)
26. Say Goodbye To Life As We Know It (Video)
27. Wish You Were Here (with Billy Corgan)
