April 17 2019 – The painful realization that we will never again see Pink Floyd perform again is setting in for even the most hardened optimists in the world. While that desire is absolutely impossible since the death of keyboardist Richard Wright in 2008, even the possibility of the remaining 3 members sharing the stage for a tour seems remote.
The three remaining members Pink Floyd have had incredibly different levels of live performances and touring in the last 25 years. Leading the visibility pack by a wide margin is Roger Waters who is as active as ever in his life with mega multi-year tours including what we have called the best concert of all time – The Wall Live (our review is here). He recently wrapped up Us+Them (our review is here) and even took The Dark Side Of The Moon out on tour between 2006 and 2008.
Next up in terms of public visibility is David Gilmour who took a much more subdued approach to his tours. He only did 26 shows on his 2006 On An Island Tour and only hit the road again in 2015/16 with Rattle That Lock (our review is here) and 56 further shows. One could say that Gilmour is not really into touring any more and we would be surprised if he has even one more tour left in him.
Last but not least is our hero for tonight’s show drummer Nick Mason. Mason has not toured or played consistently on the road for 25 years where his last big gig was the final The Division Bell tour in 1994 where Pink Floyd called it quits. Mason announced last year that he was putting together a bar band to play some old Pink Floyd songs and A Saucerful of Secrets was born.
This is not the first time we have seen the show as we traveled to London 7 months ago to see it at The Roundhouse (a killer venue that was a train turntable from 1847 that re-opened as a live music venue in 1966 and featured Pink Floyd as its opening night band). The difference between the crowds in London and Toronto were drastically different. In London the place was buzzing much like it would have been in 1966’s Pink Floyd show. The place was packed and the standing only crowd was grooving all night. This was not the case tonight at the Sony Center where the seating only crowd sat down all night and politely clapped between songs. Furthermore ticket sales were fairly poor as the venue was only at 75% capacity and for a month before the show tickets were available on Groupon for half price. What was surprising to us is that Brit Floyd, a Pink Floyd tribute band played the same venue 11 days ago and were able to sell more tickets. We are not sure why the vibe was so different but the experience between London and Toronto were radically different.
Opening the show was a one man acoustic band named Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, or Sam Duckworth (his real name). The 33-year-old British musician has had some moderate success in the UK but was essentially an unknown to us. He presented a half hour set of powerful acoustic songs with minimal banter and he clearly displayed his musical emotion. You can see a performance of his last song of the set below:
Mason and his band appear promptly at 8:30 and the audience prepare for the journey. One would immediately notice that the visual elements of the show were very toned down compared to the mega-epic sets of Waters and even the more subdued Gilmour shows and consisted of a large psychedelic back drop which had very little video projections on it and mostly the oil projections used in the late 60’s which the show paid homage to. Neither flying pigs nor Battersea Power Station would be appearing tonight.
The best way to get a sense of the night is by enjoying one of the highlights of the night in the form of If and Atom Heart Mother.
The 5 piece band aside from Nick Mason on drums consisted of Guy Pratt on bass and vocals (last time we saw him was as David Gilmour’s touring bassist a couple of years ago), Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp on guitar and vocals, and guitarist Lee Harris (of The Blockheads) and keyboardist Dom Beken (who we know little of but his bio shows he is more of a programmer/producer than a touring musician).
The vocals of three very different singers had to be tackled as not only do we have songs originally sang by Waters and Gilmour, the band played a large number of Syd Barrett numbers. The two singers of Kemp and Pratt did a great job and although they obviously didn’t intend on being carbon copies of the originals they kept the emotion and spirit of the words alive.
The show was 105 minutes long (no intermission) and consisted entirely of early Pink Floyd songs. The show was absolutely stunning and presented a discourse on how Pink Floyd evolved into one of the biggest selling album band of all time. We like to think of the history of Pink Floyd consisting of three era’s: The formative years (1967-1972), the mega era (1973-1983), and the post Waters version (1987-1994). Every single song tonight was from the first chapter of the band from ’67-’72 and below we break down from which album the setlist consisted of.
spot on review of the show..surprising everyone sat down for the whole thing..must’ve been the venue..but alas..i was not impressed with the vip package as a whole..yes the seat was magnificent..I was 3rd row off to the left..brilliant..so the seat was incredible..I bought the gold standard vip package..obviously you went all out for front row..sorry..I couldn’t fathom paying that amount..and very very glad that I didn’t..vip package consisted of..a piece of stone with the nick mason saucerful of secrets logo on it..2 stickers with same..a laminate with the same on a lanyard..a water bottle(?) with same..not even a meet and greet, nothing signed or significant worth keeping..reminded me of the Sex Pistols line..do you feel you’ve been cheated?