While the possibility of a full reunion has now been terminally limited by the untimely deaths of keyboardist Richard Wright and psychedelic casualty Syd Barrett, it’s a safe assumption that there are tremendously few fans that wouldn’t (literally) pay good money to see David Gilmour and Roger Waters reconvene Pink Floyd. After all, the Floyd haven’t toured in fourteen years and haven’t toured with Waters in twenty-three and given that both Gilmour and Waters are still playing select portions of the Floyd songbook (neither crosses that imagined line into the other’s half of the content for fear of legal repercussions) anyway, all a reunion would ensure is one great show rather than two that each leave something to be desired. Imagine it – with both songwriters back together, it would probably mean a series of audiences twice the size of the enormous crowd that congregated at the shipyard in Gdansk, Poland on August 26, 2006. Watching the performance from the best seat in the house (your easy chair), your jaw will drop as the camera moves in past the giant human mass that attended Gilmour’s performance and, while any show by Gilmour’s solo band is (this is where I betray my appreciation for Pink Floyd) basically, fundamentally and intrinsically flawed, it’d be both the height of selective vision and hearing to claim that this detailed set (2 DVDs, 2 CDs) doesn’t contain a remarkable show.
In the dual CD component of this set, Gilmour and his band, along with The Baltic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, deliver a most tasteful and spectacular set that sits at an even, fifty-fifty split between classic Pink Floyd songs and material from the guitarist’s most recent solo effort, On An Island. Overall, it’s a very good mix with equal amounts of zeal and care afforded to both sides of the songwriting divide and none of the songs come off as contract fulfilling performances even if one can pretty clearly see where the lines in the set get drawn. Of course each of the audio discs opens with the biggest Pink Floyd songs Gilmour has in his canon – as good as his solo stuff might be, people paid the big bucks to hear the Floyd; “Castellorizon” is a fantastic work of ethereal scenery construction but, as good as it is, it holds about as much chance of overtaking “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” or even “Take A Breath” in popularity as a candle has off staying alight in a Bell jar. Because of that too, conspicuously virtually all of CD two is comprised of Pink Floyd heavy fan favorites including “Echoes,” “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb” – those tickets weren’t cheap after all (not even in the cheap seats) and the band wants to make sure the audience leaves glowing.
Unlike most sets of this type, the CDs and DVDs do not feature all the same tracks; in fact, on the Gdansk DVD disc (the other is a batch of mixed performances from both London and New York) the set is comprised almost entirely (“Comfortably Numb” and some of the later-appearing songs on the CDs appear, but not the ones that open the audio component) of Gilmour’s solo material. On a tastefully unadorned stage (by Floyd standards) the band plays to marvelously compliment their surroundings in a set that crests and recedes and builds again to a wonderful climax in “Echoes” before closing with the sublime “Comfortably Numb.”In spite of the fact that there are no dynamic feats of bombast in Gilmour’s set (those are what disc four is for where the Floyd tracks in the audio component get some air in New York and London), it is still compelling in its own way; beautiful but not majestic.
Artist:
David Gilmour web site
David Gilmour myspace
