•
Rating:
In 1971, Pink Floyd was already a well-established band in the alternative music scene (which at the time was more or less identified with progressive music). On a commercial level, they had some good successes, but certainly not the ones that would come in the next eight years. On a purely artistic level, they already had a respectable track record, from which interesting insights can be drawn.
Under the guidance of Syd Barrett, they had explored the most extreme boundaries of thinking in music and recounted all sorts of mental trips. With Barrett abdicated, lost in one of those trips he praised, and with Waters leading, the Floydian production became decidedly more grandiose. They moved from experimenting with new ways of writing music to exploring new frontiers related to production. The four studio albums ("Saucerful of Secrets," "Ummagumma," "Atom Heart Mother," and "Meddle") and the two soundtracks ("More" and "Zabriskie Point") showed an eclectic band evolving from the blues and esoteric nuances of the second album through the four solo sides of the monumental "Ummagumma," passing from the baroque progressive of "Atom Heart Mother," to the classic psychedelia of "More" and "Zabriskie Point," arriving at the true turning-point album, that "Meddle" which, according to this writer, was the general rehearsal for the epoch-making "Dark Side of the Moon."
1971 is therefore a year of transition for the Floyd, during which they found the path that guided them for all the following years. The live performance we discuss is an interesting testimony of the pre-Dark Side Floyd. Essentially, it is a Bootleg containing the complete recording (although the sequence of tracks is not the same as the actual concert) of the Brescia concert on June 19, 1971; the date indicated on the cover is incorrect, as it refers to the concert that took place the next day at the Palazzetto dello Sport at the Eur in Rome. There are various editions of this album: the first published with a color cover, featuring the title and recording date in white on the back; subsequently, a new version with red writing was made, the vinyl itself was colored (one disc brown and the other gray), and a third version in pink vinyl, which had a limited edition of 50 copies.
The concert setlist included: "Atom Heart Mother," "Careful With That Axe Eugene," "Fat Old Sun," "The Embryo," "Echoes," "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun," "Cymbaline" and as an encore "A Saucerful Of Secrets"; whereas the tracklist presented on the album is as follows: "Echoes," "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," "Cymbaline," "A Saucerful of Secrets," "Atom Heart Mother," "Careful with That Axe, Eugene," "Fat Old Sun," "Embryo". A "track by track" description of the album is unnecessary; it is nonetheless a setlist dense with all the great masterpieces of the early era of the Cambridge quartet (perhaps with the exception of Astronomy Domine). In particular, "Atom Heart Mother," in the version without Ron Geesin's orchestra, acquires the features most suited to a rock band (although this definition is restrictive for a band like Pink Floyd). Essential, at least for me, is the encounter with "Careful with that Axe, Eugene" with Waters' devastating scream and those esoteric sounds that were the hallmark of the bassist's early productions. The peak of the performance, as in all the 1970 - 1971 shows, was represented by "Fat Old Sun" and Gilmour's legendary solo, practically the prototype of all solos, which this refined guitarist offered us in all the years to come (from Time to Comfortably Numb).
The appointment, for those fortunate enough to obtain this record, is absolutely unmissable. I nevertheless recommend obtaining pre-'72 Pink Floyd bootlegs, as they testify to a band that had no precedents or successors!
Loading comments slowly
