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Monthly Archives: September 2018

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Nick Masons Saucerful Of Secrets : Nick Mason, Guy Pratt, Gary Kemp Interviewed With The Guardian

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 20/09/2018 by Col T14/01/2019


Nick Mason
of Pink Floyd is revisiting the band’s acid-drenched years – with Gary Kemp standing in for Syd Barrett. Are they serious?

If you didn’t know who he was, you would never take Nick Mason for one of the most successful rock stars of all time. Aged 74, dressed down in jeans and a white shirt, softly spoken and understated to a fault, he might be taken for a retired businessman, a solicitor or perhaps the architect he was training to be until a career as Pink Floyd’s drummer intervened.

Handily, his surroundings tell his story for you. The walls of Mason’s London office are covered with awards and memorabilia. Some dates back to when Pink Floyd improvised a soundtrack to LSD-fuelled happenings at the UFO Club. And some of it speaks of commercial success on a barely conceivable scale. What I think is a platinum disc turns out to be a 22-times platinum disc: “To commemorate the sale of more than 22 million copies of the album The Wall.”

Mason is giving an interview because he finds himself in a “very odd” situation. He’s going on tour for the first time in 24 years and the contrast between then and now is almost comically pronounced. In 1994, Pink Floyd’s Division Bell tour grossed $250m and required 53 trucks to ferry it around the world. This year, he’s performing in the kind of small venues no member of Pink Floyd has played in for half a century – and without the “considerable degree of luxury” their latterday tours afforded.

When I mention this, he talks about “the camaraderie” of his new band, Saucerful of Secrets, and mutters something, a little heavily, about how travelling around by chartered 747 doesn’t necessarily make life happier. He did, after all, live through the endless icy struggles that lurked behind Pink Floyd’s vast success.

The real shock is what Saucerful of Secrets, named after Pink Floyd’s 1968 album, are playing. No one expected Mason to see out 2018 as part of a band dedicated to performing the music Pink Floyd made before The Dark Side of the Moon catapulted them to superstardom in 1973. And no one expected such a group to be fronted not just by longstanding Floyd bassist Guy Pratt, but also by Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet.

“I never in a million years thought Nick would do it,” says Pratt. “But I thought I’d send him an email. And he just said, ‘Yeah, come and have a chat.’”

The email caught Mason in a reflective mood, arriving in the wake of Their Mortal Remains, the blockbusting V&A exhibition that finally seemed to draw a line under Pink Floyd’s career. “Well,” sighs Mason. “I always live in hope. They’ll write ‘I’m not sure the band’s really over’ on my tombstone.”

Mason was intrigued by the idea of revisiting an era when “we didn’t really know exactly what we were doing”. These were the years when the late Syd Barrett was Pink Floyd’s frontman and their brand of exploratory psych got very short shrift outside of London’s hippy enclaves. “Oh God,” groans Mason. “Playing a Top Rank ballroom somewhere, on a bloody revolving stage, with Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band on the other side of it, and the whole audience wanting them to come on and us to get off.”

Later, after Barrett’s mental breakdown and departure, Pink Floyd were written off by their own managers and, in search of a new direction, tried everything from spacey improvisations to epic orchestral pieces and pastoral country rock. “I hadn’t really examined these songs in 40-something years. It was a real eye-opener. Syd’s way of working and his writing, and some of the other things we did, you just think, ‘God, this has got such a modern feel to it.’” He smiles. ‘Obscured By Clouds! You could take that to Ibiza.”


Mason’s rediscovered enthusiasm for his band’s soundtrack to the French film La Vallée notwithstanding, Saucerful of Secrets looks like an enterprise fraught with risks. The Syd Barrett era may well be the most revered part of Pink Floyd’s career, its mythic nature bolstered by the saga of Barrett’s decline and subsequent reclusivity. Not every fan was overjoyed to hear that the man who wrote the Spandau Ballet hits True and Gold would be singing See Emily Play and Astronomy Domine.

“I had a very similar feeling when it got announced that I was doing The Krays,” says Kemp, referring to the 1990s biopic of the gangster twins. “Both times, it was people going, ‘What the fuck?’ I was looking at tweets I shouldn’t have, all of which were saying, ‘Gary Kemp’s the new Syd Barrett – what?’”

Kemp is keen to point out that his involvement isn’t as improbable as it seems. He is a longtime Floyd fan: in his teens, his tastes were torn between a love for glam rock and an interest in prog. “I went to a grammar school and all the more middle-class kids in the playground would be into Pink Floyd and Yes. They were the kids whose houses you’d go to and their parents would be reading broadsheets and talking about theatre – and they’d have a wok.”

Also, he notes, the London club scene from which Spandau Ballet emerged wasn’t that different from the milieu that first thrust Pink Floyd to fame: the reputation of both rested on being the London hipster’s house band of choice. “There were people at the Blitz Club who’d been at UFO. They were only 12 years apart. We started out as a cult band. We weren’t doing pop music as such – we went that way when we made True.”
Still, he concedes, playing with a Saucerful of Secrets brings some specific challenges: whatever else Spandau Ballet may have been, they weren’t big on improvising on stage, while Syd Barrett’s songs frequently didn’t bother with standard structures or time signatures. “His writing’s like a machine where some of the cogs don’t touch each other,” says Kemp. “It looks like it’s falling apart, but it still works perfectly. You have to learn where it suddenly jumps to a different bit, where he’s just stuck an extra beat in, or taken one out. But Nick,” he says with a certain wonderment, “didn’t even think about it. He just sat down and played it: ‘Oh yes, I remember this.’”

“It’s still fairly clear, the memory of it,” shrugs Mason. “One sort of looks back and wonders at seeing oneself as such a naive, occasionally pompous sort of character in a pair of William Morris print trousers and boots, but I just do remember a lot of it.”

Whatever anyone’s misgivings, the band’s debut gigs in a selection of tiny London venues were greeted with a rapturous response from audiences and critics alike. Belying Pink Floyd’s later image as the horizontal stoner’s soundtrack of choice, Saucerful of Secrets sound thrillingly raw and punky. Neither of the other surviving members of Pink Floyd attended. “I’m fairly certain,” says Pratt, “that the last thing David Gilmour wants to do with his evening is stand in the back room of a pub in Putney surrounded by 300 obsessive Pink Floyd fans.”

But they did give the project their blessing. Exactly how long it all lasts, however, is a moot point. “I’m concerned it doesn’t become too big,” says Mason. “You don’t want it to get to the stage where the improvisation has to go out of the window because there’s too many people there and it seems like a risk.”

He lapses into a thoughtful silence. I think he’s going to say something about Pink Floyd’s famously fraught relationship with vast venues, when they’d dolefully protest about stadium audiences just wanting to get drunk or stoned rather than listen. But he doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” he smiles. “I’m just trying to think what I’m going to say to you when we meet backstage at Shea Stadium in three years’ time.”

Article Used with permission from The Guardian
Written by Alexis Petridis The Guardian’s head rock and pop critic

 

Posted in News

Pink Floyd : Official 2019 Calender Now Available !

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 18/09/2018 by Col T14/01/2019


It’s a perennial Floyd fan favourite – particularly as a gift at Christmas time – is this annual official wall calendar.

An item which has been produced for many years now, the standardised format is roughly the same size as a vinyl album – roughly 12″ (or 30cm) square, with the calendar opening up to have a double page spread per month.

The calendar this year – as the full title suggests – could be considered a companion piece to the band’s lavish Pink Floyd The Early Years 1965-72 box set (and subsequent “breakout” year sets). Each month provides a blend of (mostly) black and white shots from the band’s initial years, and includes live shots, backstage, studio and posed press pictures.

The calendar each year is often squirrelled away as a collectable for the years to come, and earlier examples are now quite sought after, and we’re sure this one will prove just as popular.

If you want to place your order now, you can do so through the Official Pink Floyd Shop by Clicking Here

Posted in News

David Gilmour & Polly Samson Attend David Crosby’s London Show

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 18/09/2018 by Col T18/09/2018


On the
16th September 2018 David Crosby brought his 37 Date European Tour to London’s 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire. In attendance was none other than Polly Samson & David Gilmour.

Posted in News

Rick Wright : 10 Year Aniversary Of Passing – Celebrating The Incredible Music He Left Behind

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 15/09/2018 by Col T02/12/2019
Pink Floyd - Richard Wright "Wearing The Inside Out"

Rchard Wright, who co-founded Pink Floyd in 1965 and played on all but one album in the band’s discography, died 10 years ago today at the age of 65 after a battle with cancer. “It is hard to overstate the importance of his musical voice in the Pink Floyd of the Sixties and Seventies,” Waters said at the time in a statement. Wright’s jazzy piano and organ lines, his early songwriting credits and his venerable vocal performances were all hallmarks of Pink Floyd’s sound. “He was my musical partner and my friend,” Gilmour said. “In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick’s enormous input was frequently forgotten.”

Posted in News

The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains Opens In Dortumnd, Germany

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 14/09/2018 by Col T14/01/2019

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXECNjqkAmQ[/embedyt]

One of the most successful bands in the history of music allows visitors to take a look backstage. “The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains” grants visitors rare and unprecedented insights into the band’s 50-year history.

From 15 September 2018 onwards, this interactive multimedia exhibition will be based in the Dortmunder U, a city landmark visible from afar that is also an established centre for art and creativity.

Tickets can be reserved on eventim.de and also at all eventim reservation counters. After London and Rome, Dortmund will be the only place you can view the exhibition in Germany until 10 February 2019. Be prepared – it caused quite a stir when it was shown in the UK and Italy

The unique interactive exhibition in the Dortmunder U looks back at over five decades of iconic rock history and has a wide appeal that goes far beyond Pink Floyd fans. Using an intense combination of sound, text and image, the exhibition draws visitors in and allows them to experience what it feels like to be up on stage themselves.

Previously unreleased gig recordings, original instruments, unknown scribbles and many personal mementos from members of the British cult band make “The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains” an absolute must-see show for music lovers from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and beyond..

The Exhibition is open at the Dortmunder U from September 15th 2018 through till 10th February 2019 tickets can be purchased online by Clicking Here.

Posted in News

Roger Waters : New Album – Stravinksky’s The Soldier’s Tale

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 12/09/2018 by Col T14/01/2019

As we previously reported back in August , it has now been officially confirmed that Roger Waters, in conjunction with the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival Orchestra, has been working on a new album – Igor Stravinksky’s The Soldier’s Tale – to be released via Sony Music Classical, on October 26th, 2018.

Due October 26th from Sony Classical Masterworks, Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale is a new adaptation of the narration for Stravinsky’s 1918 theatrical work solely for orchestra, where Waters is set to narrate the story and voice all of its characters. Waters worked with seven musicians associated with the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, forming an ensemble that sought to honor Stravinsky’s work while reinterpreting it for a new audience.

According to a press release, this project is but the latest in a string of forays into the world of high art for Waters. “Both here and in other works Waters certainly feels an affinity with this moment in the history of music whenever he has to decide how atonal to make his music. How radical should it be? And how is music related to the Classical and Romantic tradition? This is arguably the most important question that progressive music has to ask itself today.”

Waters’ choice of The Soldier’s Tale is serendipitous, give that “he has wanted for a long time to engage more deeply with the work of a composer whose weight and occasional inaccessibility may perhaps have much in common with” his own music.

Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale is set for release October 26th via Sony Classical Masterworks

Tracklisting and order details are available below


Part 1:
1. The Soldiers March
2. Slogging Homeword
3. Airs by a Stream
4. As You Can Hear…
5. The Soldiers March (Reprise)
6. Eventually, Joseph Reaches his Home Village…
7. Pastorale
8. The Soldier, Disconsolate…
9. Pastorale (Reprise)
10. The Soldier, Slowly Coming Back to Himself…
11. Airs by a Stream (Reprise) – To Stretch Out on the Grass…
12. Hey Satan, You Bastard…
13. Airs by a Stream (2nd Reprise)
14. Now to be Gained Here…

Part 2:
15. The Soldiers March (2nd Reprise) – Down a Hot and Dusty Track…
16. He Doesn’t Even Know Himself…
17. The Soldiers March (3rd Reprise) – Will he Take the Road to Home…
18. He doesn’t have a Home Anymore…
19. The Royal March
20. So all was Arranged…
21. Later that Night…
22. The Little Concert – Light Floods the Eastern Sky…
23. The Soldier, with a Confident Air…
24. Three Dances – Tango, Pt. 1
25. Three Dances – Tango, Pt. 2
26. Three Dances – Waltz & Ragtime
27. So First a Tango…
28. The Devil’s Dance
29. The Devil, Confused…
30. The Little Chorale
31. The Devil Recovers Some of his Wits
32. The Devil’s Song – All Right! You’ll be Safe at Home…
33. Hm, a Fair Warning…
34. Grand Chorale (Part 1)
35. Spring, Summer, Autumn…
36. Grand Chorale (Part 2)
37. Steady Now…
38. Grand Chorale (Part 3)
39. Steady, Just Smell the Flowers…
40. Grand Chorale (Part 4)
41. Now I have Everything…
42. Grand Chorale (Part 5)
43. The Princess, all Excited…
44. Grand Chorale (Part 6)
45. And so, Off They Go…
46. Triumphal March of the Devil

The Soldier’s Tale – Narrated By Roger Waters

You can pre-order the album from all the usual suspects such as Amazon and Itunes and Spotify Premium.

As a convenience to you we are providing these Amazon Links  USA | UK | CANADA We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

 

Posted in News

Roger Waters : Celebrates 75th Birthday With Impromtu Performance At Lucius London Show

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 07/09/2018 by Col T02/12/2019
Roger Waters & Lucius - Mother - Union Chapel, London - September 2018

Roger Waters & Lucius - Goodnight Irene - Union Chapel, London - September 2018

On the 6th September 2018 Roger Waters celebrates his 75th birthday.
Unknown to those in the audience at Lucius’s concert at the Union Chapel in London, Roger decided to get up on stage with th rest of the band to perform Mother and Goodnight Irene..

Posted in News

Nick Masons A Saucerful Of Secrets Tour Debuts In Cirkus, Stockholm – Exclusive Footage

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 02/09/2018 by Col T02/12/2019
Nick Masons A Saucer Full Of Secret Tour Debut In Stockholm - A Saucerful Of Secrets

Nick Masons A Saucer Full Of Secret Tour Debut In Stockholm - Atom Heart Mother

Nick Masons A Saucer Full Of Secret Tour Debut In Stockholm - One Of These Days

Nick Masons A Saucer Full Of Secret Tour Debut In Stockholm - See Emily Play

Nick Masons A Saucerful Of Secrets Tour Debuted Tonight In Cirkus, Stockholm we have been sent in some exclusive footage of the brand new stage show. With thanks to Stevie Klasson



Pictures Courtesy Of Åsa Helleberg

Posted in News

Roger Waters New Album To Be Released On Sony Classical

Pink Floyd - A Fleeting Glimpse Posted on 02/09/2018 by Col T02/09/2018

The Soldier’s Tale is a music theater work for small ensemble, created by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky in collaboration with the Vaud poet Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz.

The work was written for a traveling theater consisting of a reader, two actors, a dancer and seven musicians. For the theater text Ramuz used two stories from a collection of Russian fairy tales by Alexander Afanasyev. The text is partly declamated rhythmically in poem form by the reader (Roger Waters) together with the music, partly spoken by the reader and the actors (soldier, devil) as a drama (with the reader mostly in rhymes and the devil only in dialogue with the soldier speaks).

The first German poetry (The History of the Soldier) comes from Hans Reinhart, the brother of the Winterthur music patron Werner Reinhart, who premiered the work (on September 28 and after Stravinsky’s memoirs on September 29, 1918 in the Théâtre Municipal de Lausanne under the direction of Ernest Ansermet) and to which this work is also dedicated.

In 1919 Stravinsky edited five movements of Histoire du soldat for violin, clarinet and piano, which appeared under the title Suite from ‘The Soldier’s Tale’.

The basis of the story consists of a soldier that exchanges his violin with the devil for a book promising great riches. He also has to teach the devil to play the violin within three days. In truth, however, pass three years, so that the soldier is considered a refugee. Back at home, he is no longer recognized, and his bride is married. With the help of the book, he becomes a rich merchant, but the money does not make him happy. Instead, he wishes to heal the sick princess through playing the violin. In a lost card game with the drunken devil, he gets the violin again, but he must not enter his home country. When he does, he is already expected by the devil. Again in possession of his violin, he heals by his play the princess, and they become a couple. Whether the soldier in the end follows the devil into his kingdom, remains open.

The moral of this simple fairy tale is: “One should not desire what one possesses, which was before. At the same time, one can not be who one is and who one was. You can not have everything. What was, does not return. “

In this brand new release Roger Waters took the part of narrator as well as that of the Devil and the Soldier when Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” which is subsequently an addaption of when the story was performed by a host of artists including Roger live in 2008.

From a review of the 2008 show, The concert consisted of a 7 piece orchestra including an oboe, a bassoon, a trumpet, an trombone, a violin and viola, a cello (or bass – not sure which) and an assortment of percussion instruments including timpani. There were two performances before Roger’s, which were very technical and well done. The last performance was Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” in which Roger Waters was the narrator and played the voices of the devil and soldier.

We fully hope a full press release will be available shortly and are very excited to get our paws on this. This marks Rogers 2nd Classical release with the first being 2005’s Ca Ira.

The Soldiers Tale will be released on the 26th October 2018 On Sony Classical,

More information to follow as we get closer to the release.

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← Older posts

Col Meeting Roger Waters, In The Flesh Tour 2002
Col Meeting Roger Waters, Dark Side Of The Moon Tour 2007
Col Meeting Roger Waters, Dark Side Of The Moon Tour 2008
Col Meeting Storm Thorgeson, Taken By Storm Exhibition 2008
Col Meeting Guy Pratt, Breakfast Of Idiots Shows 2009
Col Meeting Roger Waters, Us & Them Tour 2018
Col Meeting Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets, Echoes Tour 2023


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