Yes! There I was! The trip was even more accidented than I thought, with my inbound flight delayed and the return flight cancelled due to air controllers strike in France. I was finally able to get a BA flight back from Heathrow that ended with the police entering the plane in Madrid and arresting a man, pistol in hand.
The Half Moon is a pub in Putney are in London, a nice area by the Thames where I've never been before. I was surprised about the size of the venue, as I think it could barely hold 200 people. While queing to get the wrist strap, some of the band members passed along (Lee Harris, Guy Pratt and Dom Bekem, but no sight of Nick and Gary Kemp). Guy was as tense as usual, so no attempt to talk to him.
Once inside, the it was too warm and crowded to be comfortable, but the atmosphere was pretty good as we were all thrilled to see the band. 30 minutes before the start of the concert, some intro music started to be played on the PA. It was a combination of old movie dialog (The Committee?) with sound effects (some sounding pretty familiar, including the hearbeat). The sound rig was quite simple: a couple of small arrays on each side of the scenario, enough for such a small room. I was in the second row and I could hardly tell the keyboards from the guitars and bass, but I was told later that sound was better a bit far back. After the gig I had the chance to talk to Dom Bekem and commented this to him, telling him he should tell the mixing engineer to put him higher on the mix... to get him reply that that was surprising as the engineers was his friend. Funny moment.
Lightning rig was very simple too, but effective. A couple of projectors made psychedelic effects over the musicians and there was a third one below Nick's drums that projected a kind of light show on the ceiling. Nick's drums were decorated with car related drawings, nice.
The real start of the show with Interstellar Overdrive followed by Astronomy Domine was impressive. Both Lee Harris and Gary Kemp made a very good job on the guitar camp. One aspect of the show I did not like much was that Guy was placed on the scenario just in front of Nick, blocking his view. In fact, Guy was a little bit too much the front man of the show to my liking, shadowing Nick. Nick's only interaction with us was when introducing the band. He made a couple of funny jokes, one about a text message he supposedly received on the day before from David Gilmour. The text read: "Nick, break a leg tonight (preferrably Roger's)". But oh, Nick's hands were trembling while speaking and he looked quite old and frail. That reminded me of how lucky we are to be able to see him playing live.
Back to the concert, I was again surprised to hear Guy singing lead on most of the songs. His rendition of Lucifer Sam was quite good though. Nile's Song heavy moment was remarkable too. Gary played well too, specially on the mid section of Set the Controls. The "space jam" with ebow and speaker's feedback was amazing. I did not like his voice that much on Fearless, but it was freaking Fearless being played live, so who cares.
Perhaps my favourite moment was the Moog soloing during Obscured by Clouds/When you're in. Great work by Dom here.
90 minutes flew and the concert was over with the last section of Saucerful of Secrets followed by Point me at the Sky (the most unexpected closing song I could think of). Nick was good on the drums, very concentrated all the time and I just noticed a couple of missed beats. In general, the band was pretty relaxed and enjoying themselves. Even during the technical problems (Guy stepping on the wrong pedal or some feedback coming from the keybords), they all smiled.
I could not help but having the feeling of being in front of a cover band, but as I said a freaking nice cover band they are. The selection of the songs and being there one meter away from the guys reminded me of how lucky I was being. I stayed in the pub for a while taking a beer and hoping for Nick to make an appearance, but it did not happen. Some colleagues took a couple of pics with Guy, but the man always look so uncomfortable interacting with the fans that I didn't enter that game. I briefly met Matt from Braindamage.com, a truly institution in Pink Floyd camp.
There's a recording from this show already in Y!, nice quality, by the way (if anyone interested, you know who to ask).
I'm really happy I attended the gig, I only regret not stealing one of the two posters of the concert in the pub (that were stolen by someone else, grrrr). If you have not see it, it's a nice piece of psychedelic artwork.
And this friday Roger in Madrid, I'll also report back!
The Half Moon is a pub in Putney are in London, a nice area by the Thames where I've never been before. I was surprised about the size of the venue, as I think it could barely hold 200 people. While queing to get the wrist strap, some of the band members passed along (Lee Harris, Guy Pratt and Dom Bekem, but no sight of Nick and Gary Kemp). Guy was as tense as usual, so no attempt to talk to him.
Once inside, the it was too warm and crowded to be comfortable, but the atmosphere was pretty good as we were all thrilled to see the band. 30 minutes before the start of the concert, some intro music started to be played on the PA. It was a combination of old movie dialog (The Committee?) with sound effects (some sounding pretty familiar, including the hearbeat). The sound rig was quite simple: a couple of small arrays on each side of the scenario, enough for such a small room. I was in the second row and I could hardly tell the keyboards from the guitars and bass, but I was told later that sound was better a bit far back. After the gig I had the chance to talk to Dom Bekem and commented this to him, telling him he should tell the mixing engineer to put him higher on the mix... to get him reply that that was surprising as the engineers was his friend. Funny moment.
Lightning rig was very simple too, but effective. A couple of projectors made psychedelic effects over the musicians and there was a third one below Nick's drums that projected a kind of light show on the ceiling. Nick's drums were decorated with car related drawings, nice.
The real start of the show with Interstellar Overdrive followed by Astronomy Domine was impressive. Both Lee Harris and Gary Kemp made a very good job on the guitar camp. One aspect of the show I did not like much was that Guy was placed on the scenario just in front of Nick, blocking his view. In fact, Guy was a little bit too much the front man of the show to my liking, shadowing Nick. Nick's only interaction with us was when introducing the band. He made a couple of funny jokes, one about a text message he supposedly received on the day before from David Gilmour. The text read: "Nick, break a leg tonight (preferrably Roger's)". But oh, Nick's hands were trembling while speaking and he looked quite old and frail. That reminded me of how lucky we are to be able to see him playing live.
Back to the concert, I was again surprised to hear Guy singing lead on most of the songs. His rendition of Lucifer Sam was quite good though. Nile's Song heavy moment was remarkable too. Gary played well too, specially on the mid section of Set the Controls. The "space jam" with ebow and speaker's feedback was amazing. I did not like his voice that much on Fearless, but it was freaking Fearless being played live, so who cares.
Perhaps my favourite moment was the Moog soloing during Obscured by Clouds/When you're in. Great work by Dom here.
90 minutes flew and the concert was over with the last section of Saucerful of Secrets followed by Point me at the Sky (the most unexpected closing song I could think of). Nick was good on the drums, very concentrated all the time and I just noticed a couple of missed beats. In general, the band was pretty relaxed and enjoying themselves. Even during the technical problems (Guy stepping on the wrong pedal or some feedback coming from the keybords), they all smiled.
I could not help but having the feeling of being in front of a cover band, but as I said a freaking nice cover band they are. The selection of the songs and being there one meter away from the guys reminded me of how lucky I was being. I stayed in the pub for a while taking a beer and hoping for Nick to make an appearance, but it did not happen. Some colleagues took a couple of pics with Guy, but the man always look so uncomfortable interacting with the fans that I didn't enter that game. I briefly met Matt from Braindamage.com, a truly institution in Pink Floyd camp.
There's a recording from this show already in Y!, nice quality, by the way (if anyone interested, you know who to ask).
I'm really happy I attended the gig, I only regret not stealing one of the two posters of the concert in the pub (that were stolen by someone else, grrrr). If you have not see it, it's a nice piece of psychedelic artwork.
And this friday Roger in Madrid, I'll also report back!
