Roger Waters on 60 Minutes

If you have 15 minutes or so, or are looking for brain break, take a look at this fantastic 60 Minutes segment on Roger Waters and The Wall.



...and the 'bonus footage'





Going to see The Wall with my 14 year old son tomorrow night. I don't know who I am more excited for...

Roger Waters, David Gilmour Wall Reunion Video Posts

This a real treat to watch. Six minutes long, though -- I want the unedited footage, man!

Tell you what though, it warms my heart that these guys buried the hatchet from so long ago. It also gets me revved up to see The Wall as the show comes to Portland on Tuesday. I saw it last year - review posted here - and it's amazing.

Roger Waters and Foo Fighters Rock Jimmy Fallon

I am a bit on the fence with all this remastered Pink Floyd stuff. I mean, I already re-bought all of it a few years ago. How much better can it sound? And I am not an audiophile to the level that appreciates the "James Guthrie 5.1 Surround Mix in high resolution audio at 640 kbps" version found on the Immersion Set at more than $100.

But it is always great to see bands like Floyd get exposure to the level that might introduce the music to new generations. This remaster thing is all about that, I think.

Along those lines, Floyd fan(atic) Jimmy Fallon is trying to make up for his atrocious Roger Waters interview by hosting "Pink Floyd Week" and having Waters return the other night to talk a bit but to more importantly jam In The Flesh with the Foo Fighters.

Very powerful indeed, as the below video will attest. Also interesting to hear the song isolated from the rest of the album, where you realize it's a series of totally pummeling riffs with really only one verse! What do you think:

Backstage Details and Hi-Res Video of Floyd "Reunion" Emerge

As discussed earlier and known by any Floyd fan who has had their ear to the ground this week, David Gilmour and Nick Mason shared the stage with Roger Waters at a recent Wall show in the UK last week.

Waters has been pretty transparent about posting high-res video clips of the appearances (below), and now Rolling Stone has published a short article with an interview with Mason, here. Some of the more interesting tidbits:

When Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason got to London's O2 arena last week, he had no idea that he'd be walking into David Gilmour and Roger Waters performing "Comfortably Numb" in a soundcheck for Waters' show that night. "It hadn't ever been quite finalized – there'd been talk about maybe playing in Paris or something else," Mason tells Rolling Stone. "So it was very nice to get there and see that [David] was there."

After soundcheck, the three took seats at a table in a backstage room and had a light dinner. "We were all just a little bit nervous, because it was a pre-show moment so it wasn't that sort of totally relaxed, 'Let's all chat about everything.' Since [David] hadn't played the track in so long, he was probably worried about the technology of lifting him up on the Wall. It's quite scary up there – I've been up there once and it's a long way up."

Next, Mason retreated to his seat on the floor of the arena, where fans greeted him enthusiastically, and watched The Wall for the first time as a spectator. "It was mind-blowingly good," he says. "It's a shame in a way . . . if you could turn the clock back and have access to that sort of technology, 40, 30 years ago, it would've been fantastic. I mean, it's interesting because I think The Wall has been brought up to date. When you look at the stage sets and the lighting that goes on now, it so eclipses what we used to do."

This is all great but it really made me miss Richard Wright because you know he would have been a part of this too. It would have been so cool for the original four guys to get together one more time, and in front of that giant Wall. Makes me all that much more thankful for Live8 (also below).

Enjoy:

Outside The Wall


Comfortably Numb


Live8:

Waters and Gilmour Reunion Video - Comfortably Numb and Brick 2

David Gilmour's official YouTube page just posted full versions of the four songs played in July at The Hoping Foundation Charity Event. For sure not the best picture or audio quality but damn it's great to see these two together again! The below is video of the latter two songs - Comfortably Numb and Brick In The Wall Part 2. Enjoy:

Video of Rogers Waters and David Gilmour Reunion

I posted last month about the great burying of the hatchet on July 10, 2010 where David Gilmour invited Roger Waters to appear with him at a charity benefit for an intimate audience of 200 lucky-assed motherfuckers. Waters agreed, then hedged, but in the end did it after Gilmour upped the ante and said he'd play on Comfortably Numb at an upcoming to be determined Wall gig. Wow!

Today, Waters sent an email to his fan base with a two minute snip of the performance, saying:

"Hi everyone,

Here is a two minute taster of the gig David and I did together for The Hoping Foundation back in July. The sound quality is crap but it was a great night for me, and for him, and also for "US and THEM".

Please support the Hoping Foundation; they are doing great work for refugee children. David and I have given the charity the whole 29 minutes and I'm told they're going to put it up at approximately 5 pm BST on Monday, August 16.

Go to HopingFoundation.org to see the full video and please support the charity if you can."

Vimeo won't let me embed the video yet but you can see it here.

Gilmour to Play on Waters' Wall

Wow. I go off the grid on vacation for a week and Pink Floyd get back together. Well, not really, but close.

According to a Billboard article a couple of days ago, the recent Gilmour-Waters reunion at a charity gig came as an offer from Gilmour, who said if Waters joined him at the gig to do the obscure "To Know Him Is To Love Him" by the Teddy Bears, Gilmour would join Waters onstage for ONE Wall gig to rip his Comfortably Numb solo, presumably from the top of the wall just like in the old days.

Oh please do it in San Jose! Ha ha.

Here are some choice quotes from the article:

Waters says Gilmour emailed him with a tongue-in-cheek offer for them to collaborate at the 2010 benefit on the Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is To Love Him," in a nod to the pair's famously rough-and-tumble relationship. Waters says he "loved" the idea, and the duo agreed to also round out their set with the Pink Floyd classics "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb."

The only trouble: Gilmour began sending Waters "a number of very musical and eloquent demos of how we could do the song in two-part harmony." Waters then got cold feet and told Gilmour performing the song in that fashion was "way outside my vocal comfort zone," to his "eternal shame."

According to Waters, Gilmour then made him a better offer. If Waters would agree to perform "To Know Him Is To Love Him" at the Hoping Foundation Benefit, Gilmour would guest on "Comfortably Numb" at a to-be-determined show on Waters' upcoming tour featuring Pink Floyd's "The Wall" being performed in its entirety.

"You could have knocked me down with a feather," Waters says. "How f*cking cool! I was blown away. How could I refuse such an offer. I couldn't, there was no way. Generosity trumped fear. And so explaining that I would probably be sh*te, but if he didn't mind I didn't, I agreed and the rest is history. We did it, and it was f*cking great. End of story. Or possibly beginning."

The plan is for Gilmour's appearance to be a surprise, adds Waters.

Are you kidding me? This is a fantastic development and I hope it leads to further collaboration between the two. Hopefully Gilmour will have such a blast on his one show that he'll do a few. WOW!

The audio to the below is from the Live 8 reunion but there are lots of great photos from last weekend:

Waters and Gilmour Unite in Charity Gig

Logged into the "I swore I'd never see this happen" file is the news story I saw on Spinner.com this morning.

Roger Waters and David Gilmour performed four songs together over the weekend at a charity event for the Hoping Foundation Benefit Evening at Kiddington Hall in Oxfordshire, England.

The duo were backed by longtime side guys Guy Pratt (bass and acoustic guitar), Harry Waters (keyboards), Andy Newmark (drums), Chester Kamen (guitar) and Jonjo Grisdale (keyboards). The line-up performed in front of 200 people, raising some £350,000 for the foundation.

They played "To Know Him Is To Love Him," (a cover) "Wish You Were Here," Comfortably Numb" and "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2), and of course this was the guys' first time back together onstage since the Live 8 reunion in 2005.

This is obviously notable because despite the 2005 reunion, the two have not been totally complimentary of the other and most held out little hope of them playing together again.

This totally begs the question, will Gilmour join Waters to rip out his Comfortably Numb lead on top of Waters' giant Wall on any dates on the upcoming tour? Let's hope so!

Roger Waters on Jimmy Fallon

This is really interesting. Waters never does TV interviews and for some reason Jimmy Fallon got him. Fallon is slim on his Floyd history and is clearly intimidated and highly nervous (as I would be) and asks really dumb ass questions.

But at the same time, it's wild to see Waters on late night. Video is below.

As an aside, I signed up for the RogerWaters.com ticket presale lottery for Tacoma and San Jose and actually won the opportunity to buy San Jose tickets. I bought a good pair yesterday when that presale hit, so I am very happy to be seeing the show in San Jose on December 6.

The iTunes presale is running today (you had to buy a copy of the Wall film from iTunes to get access) and there is a LiveNation presale tomorrow. Lots of complaining on Waters' Facebook site about the insane prices for the premium packages ($750), but you can get decent seats for around $150 in most venues. It's a lot of dough, but really - this is a once in a lifetime chance, people.

Also, dig this Jim Ladd interview (Ladd was the DJ on Radio K.A.O.S by the way), talking about how the sound system will be quadrophonic and huge, the wall and gear will require 20 semis, etc. 100 stage hands to construct the wall...No wonder it's so expensive...

Part One:

Part Two:

Roger Waters U.S. Wall Tour Dates Announced

According to an article on MTV.com, Roger Waters has announced dates for his upcoming solo tour, which will feature the full stage production of The Wall, 30 years after the original album was released by the Floyd.

According to the article, Waters has "promised to perform an updated version of the original stage show, which included the construction of a massive white brick wall between the audience and performers during the course of the show."

Waters posted the following to his Web site:

30 Years ago when I wrote The Wall I was a frightened young man. Well not that young, I was 36 years old.

It took me a long time to get over my fears. Anyway, in the intervening years it has occurred to me that maybe the story of my fear and loss with it’s concomitant inevitable residue of ridicule, shame and punishment, provides an allegory for broader concerns.: Nationalism, racism, sexism, religion, Whatever! All these issues and ‘isms are driven by the same fears that drove my young life.

This new production of The Wall is an attempt to draw some comparisons, to illuminate our current predicament, and is dedicated to all the innocent lost in the intervening years.

In some quarters, among the chattering classes, there exists a cynical view that human beings as a collective are incapable of developing more ‘humane’ ie, kinder, more generous, more cooperative, more empathetic relationships with one another.

I disagree.

In my view it is too early in our story to leap to such a conclusion, we are after all a very young species.

I believe we have at least a chance to aspire to something better than the dog eat dog ritual slaughter that is our current response to our institutionalized fear of each other.

I feel it is my responsibility as an artist to express my, albeit guarded, optimism, and encourage others to do the same. To quote the great man, ” You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

Are you shitting me? This is another must-see show, right up there with Rush doing Moving Pictures this summer. Looks like the closest they get to me is one night before the tour closes, in Tacoma - not bad of a drive. And seeing the show near the end of its run should mean the kinks would be worked out of the massive scale and set-up involved. Wow.

Tickets go on sale May 10. Waters' site has more info and is redesigned to support the tour.

The Wall tour dates are below. Regarding pre-sales, like with the Led Zeppelin reunion a couple of years ago, you have to sign up for a lottery drawing to have the chance to purchase a pair of tickets. More info on that is here.

» 9/15 - Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre
» 9/20 - Chicago, IL @ United Center
» 9/21 - Chicago, IL @ United Center
» 9/26 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Consol Energy Center
» 9/28 - Cleveland, OH @ Quicken Loans Arena
» 9/30 - Boston, MA @ TD Garden
» 10/5 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
» 10/8 - Buffalo, NY @ HSBC Arena
» 10/10 - Washington, DC @ Verizon Center
» 10/12 - Uniondale, NY @ Nassau Coliseum
» 10/15 - Hartford, CT @ XL Center
» 10/17 - Ottawa, ON @ ScotiaBank Place
» 10/19 - Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
» 10/22 - Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center
» 10/24 - Detroit, MI @ Palace of Auburn Hills
» 10/26 - Omaha, NE @ Qwest Center
» 10/27 - St Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center
» 10/29 - St. Louis, MO @ Scottrade Center
» 10/30 - Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center
» 11/3 - New York, NY @ Izod Center
» 11/8 - Philadelphia, PA @ Wachovia Center
» 11/9 - Philadelphia, PA @ Wachovia Center
» 11/13 - Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Bank Atlantic Center
» 11/16 - Tampa, FL @ St. Pete Times Forum
» 11/18 - Atlanta, GA @ Philips Arena
» 11/20 - Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
» 11/21 - Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
» 11/23 - Denver, CO @ Pepsi Center
» 11/26 - Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena
» 11/27 - Phoenix, AZ @ US Airways Center
» 11/29 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum
» 12/6 - San Jose, CA @ HP Pavilion
» 12/10 - Vancouver, BC @ General Motors Place
» 12/11 - Tacoma, WA @ Tacoma Dome
» 12/13 - Anaheim, CA @ Honda Center

Floydian Slips & The Eugene Ballet -- Videos

First up, apologies to those who have seen this in other places on the Web, as this has been flying around a lot this week.

But for those of you who are more casual followers of all things Isorski, I have been in a Pink Floyd tribute band called The Floydian Slips for about 13 years and we had a really cool milestone weekend the weekend before last.

This all started as a lark, playing off of an idea I and two college buddies had way back in 1988 to possibly play The Dark Side of the Moon live.

We realized that while sonically killer and obviously classic, the music was not that hard to play -- and I have tape somewhere of us doing Breathe, Time and Money (I think - it's been a long time).

Anyway, that project died on the vine after one rehearsal. Fast forward to 1997 when I was in between projects/bands. My buddy played bass and also happened to book The Wild Duck, a music venue in Eugene Oregon that held about 450 people and hosted nationally touring acts and local bands alike.

We put a group of local ringers together -- great players from other bands, and our friends too, and rehearsed Dark Side for real. The gig was booked and that was that.

Needless to say, the first show was a hit. We did all of Dark Side, Have A Cigar, One of These Days and Pigs and that was all we knew! For an encore we just winged it and jammed some songs.

Over the next 13 years we augmented the band, and tackled Dark Side and The Wall in their entirety, along with most of Animals, Wish You Were Here and Meddle, along with a smattering of pre-Meddle and post-Wall stuff (Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Learning to Fly etc).

The venues got bigger and we started selling out the Cuthbert Amphitheater and McDonald Theater in Eugene, The Aladdin Theater in Portland and the Triple Door in Seattle. We only play a couple of times a year to keep it fresh and kept the same core sound and lighting crew for most of the time.

New Years Eve and a summer show at the amphitheater were our usual big shows, though we did play on Main Street in downtown Eugene one summer (they closed the intersection so the stage could be set up there), as well as the Oregon Country Fair, a big hippie fest that happens every year outside of Eugene.

To avoid things getting stale, we kept pushing the musical boundaries, and recent musical additions include Dogs, Sheep and the epic Echoes.

But after every show, the feeling is, what's next? Do we keep doing this? How do we keep this from getting stale? The answer this year was easy -- The renown Eugene Ballet approached us to perform The Dark Side of the Moon. We would do the music live and they would dance in front of us.

The shows would be at the ornate and gorgeous Hult Center in Eugene, a concert hall that holds 2,500 and we'd do a evening show and a matinee.

Well, the gigs were last weekend and far exceeded everyone's expectations. The choreography was unreal and playing that big stage was a hell of a kick (we were on risers behind the dancers -- see the videos).

Saturday's show was to 2,100 people and we had 1,700 the next day at the matinee. Seeing dance interpretations of the lyrical and musical passages that make up Dark Side were very emotional for me and there were times I had a hard time singing.

I also was terrified I'd mess up the words or lose count in one of the instrumental passages but overall we put in a flawless performance. I was telling people that the last 13 years have been a dress rehearsal for these gigs! Hopefully there will be more. In the meantime, enjoy these videos from the shows:

Any Colour You Like - Brain Damage - Eclipse


Money


Time - Breathe

Roger Waters to Tour The Wall in 2010 in the U.S.

Just got my March 4 issue of Rolling Stone in the mail yesterday and flipping through could not help but notice this little sidebar on page 28:

Dates TBA -- Thirty years after Pink Floyd's legendary The Wall tour, Waters is going to re-stage the elaborate show -- which climaxes with the destruction of a giant wall -- on a U.S. tour. The original 1980-81 trek played only four cities and was infamously expensive. "Technology is much easier now," Waters says. "They were pretty heavy, those [bricks]. They would be easier to build now. Dates and venues have yet to be announced.

Holy shit! This is once in a lifetime if it comes true. Stay tuned.

Pink Floyd's Richard Wright Left Millions to His Kids

It recently came out that Richard Wright who passed away last year was worth about $26 million, and he left the lion's share to his children, James, 42, Gala, 39, and Ben, 17. None of Wright's three former wives were mentioned in the will. But none of them have contested it, because presumably they were taken care of with divorce settlements.

Here is a cool bit: Wright also made arrangements for 'a really good party' to be held for his friends - putting aside $30,000 with a guest list to be drawn up by James and Gala.

Dang - I was not on that guest list! Didn't they know I am in a PF Tribute Band!!!???

More on this from the Daily Express here.

Nick Mason Interview Completes Floyd Reposts on ClassicRock.com

I posted earlier about ClassicRock.com re-publishing some fairly revealing interviews with David Gilmour and Roger Waters from 2000, when the Floyd released the live version of one of The Wall performances, called Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live.

The publication has now posted a typically witty chat with drummer Nick Mason from the same time period. Mason's dry humor is always a nice counterpoint to the seriousness of the other two guys. I didn't get as many new nuggets of info in Mason's interview, but it's worth a read.

Oh and by the way, if you don't have Is There Anybody Out There? and are a Floyd fan, you need to get it. Roger Waters shouting at the crowd to "Clap! Come On! Have a GOOD TIME!!! ENJOY YOURSELVES!!!" at the front end of Run Like Hell is worth the admission alone.

Plus, you get the song "Last Few Bricks," which is a medley that was inserted before "Goodbye Cruel World" to give the crew a chance to finish placing the last few bricks in the wall at the end of the first set. Many of the other songs are extended. "The Show Must Go On" has an extra verse, for example, and "Empty Spaces" is totally different from the album version.

I recently found a bootleg of one of the rehearsals for these Wall shows and Waters barks orders left right and center at band, crew, sound guys, the guys building the wall across the stage. He is large and in charge! Pretty classic.

Read Mason's interview here.

Top Five Albums That Took A While To Grow On Me

Fellow blogger Seano posted a list of five albums that took him a while to latch onto but once he did, they became seminal listening. He challenged his readers to post their own lists in the comments. Instead, I thought I would hijack his idea and make my own list here. Thanks, Seano!

So here we go:

August and Everything After - The Counting Crows
I know why I didn’t like this album when it came out. Too much initial hype. Too much whiny singing. And NO guitar solos. The horror. But after many years and faded memories of all the magazine cover stories, these songs hold up very well. They paint great stories and the band supports the songs – imagine that. We don’t NEED a guitar solo here, folks. It’s about the song. My favorite Counting Crows tune though is a cover that is not on this album. It’s their version of Friend of the Devil. Seek it out. It’ll move you.

Born Again - Black Sabbath
In high school, my buddies and I originally liked this album because it was so bad. I mean the cover itself was enough shock value for us to want to consume this album if it was good or not. Turns out that there are some great moments on it, despite it being a weird release in a dark time for the band. The title track is very stony and who can argue that the riff for Zero the Hero is as pummeling as anything Iommi and crew ever cooked up? Hell, Guns and Roses stole it for Paradise City, so there ya go!

Black and Blue - The Rolling Stones
Sandwiched between the Stones’ more fruitful, Mick Taylor era and the rebirth of the band with Some Girls, Black and Blue was kind of a throwaway. The band itself called the album the ‘guitar audition album’ because they had not hired Ronnie Wood yet and there are a ton of guitar players sitting in on this release. But over the years I have come to realize there is not a bad track on it. Crazy Mama is as rocking as the Stones get, Hand of Fate is a keeper and two of my favorite Stones tunes are on it – Fool to Cry and Memory Motel. Enough said.

Pre-Help! Beatles
I had pretty much written off the Beatles' early stuff as pop pap, with the exception of standout hits like I Saw Her Standing There. But candy-assed tunes like She Loves You always made me think that whole period was not very deep. But checking out the band’s first four albums showed me a couple of things. 1) Lennon was totally in charge of that band, as he sings almost all the songs, and 2) he is much more bluesy and ballsy out of the gate than I had recalled. Songs like All I’ve Got to Do, You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me and You Can’t Do That totally kick ass. This Boy is incredibly bluesy and shows how well these guys could harmonize. Finally, check out their take on Please Mr. Postman. It’s as raw as some of Lennon’s later stuff.

Atom Heart Mother - Pink Floyd
Even the guys in Pink Floyd hate this album. I got it in high school and liked If and Fat Old Sun but that was about it. My perception turned when it came out on CD and it seemed…well, louder. I think they mastered it louder. And it sounded pretty good. The Atom Heart Mother side-long suite is dodgy in spots for sure but has some great moments. The notion of Floyd working with orchestrator/artist Ron Geesin must have seemed like a good idea. But remember that he also did an album with Waters that was nothing but songs made up of body noises. Rick Wright’s sub-par song on side two benefits from killer horn breaks thanks to Geesin. I think Gilmour’s latest work leans back towards Fat Old Sun much more than anything Floyd did in the late 70s or 80s. The album has a kind of dreamy quality and little of the intensity of something like Careful With That Axe Eugene or One of These Days. The night Wright died, for some reason I put this one on and it did the job.

That’s my five. So what else? Three bands I am trying to get into but it just ain’t clicking for me yet are The Foo Fighters, The Decemberists and Wilco. I mean, I like what I hear but maybe they’ll make the next list.

Seano, for your next roundup, how about guilty pleasure albums? Ones we like but probably shouldn’t? I’d be happy to take first crack, and then you can swipe MY idea!

Surprising Pink Floyd Interviews from 2000

Classic Rock Magazine is pretty big in the UK but I don't think it's available very widely in the States. But thanks to the Web I am able to get a look at the content now and again.

So I wanted to let you know that the magazine has been re-running interviews from 2000 when Pink Floyd put out the live Wall performance Is There Anybody Out There.

Now really. I thought I knew all there was to know about Floyd and its internal strife and the break with Roger Waters after The Final Cut. But in the interviews with Waters and especially Gilmour, I learned a lot. For example, the two were not really fighting during the recording of The Wall except for a couple of artistic arguments. It was really during the filming of the movie that things got bad.

Also, both Gilmour and Waters were very disappointed with Richard Wright at the time, who both say was contributing absolutely nothing to the band or the albums by that point.

In classic form, Waters said, "he played less and less and less and generally wasn’t interested, really. If he thought he’d written a good keyboard part he’d hoard it and put it on one of his awful solo albums. He didn’t want to share anything with anybody, he just got really anal."

Waters fired Wright sort of behind Gilmour's back, but Gilmour puts the blame mostly on Wright, who did nothing fix what was broken.

Anyway, this is the tip of the iceberg. There is loads of info in these interviews.

If you dig Floyd, make a few minutes to check out the article and Waters interview here and especially the Gilmour interview here.

Floydian Slips Debut “Echoes” on New Year’s Eve

On New Years Eve last week, my Pink Floyd tribute band The Floydian Slips played for close to 1,200 people as we entered our 12th year as a band. That is longer than my oldest kid – who is in 5th grade – has been alive. Clinton was President when we started!

The band only plays a couple of times a year, so it stays very fresh. The other thing that helps is that we don’t let the song list get too stale. The band started out all those years ago by performing The Dark Side of the Moon all the way through. After a couple of years of that, we did The Wall end to end (that was fun and I’d like to do it again soon). But that too got a bit stale after a while.

So next, we did what the real Floyd had been doing, which is to just play a bunch of songs, and to make that interesting we delved into the back catalog, learning One of These Days and Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun, as well as Learning to Fly from the Waters-less Momentary Lapse of Reason.

Our latest full album was Animals, and we have been doing that for a year or so. Dogs is one of our faves by far, and Sheep is a new fave.

But for New Years Eve, we decided to give Animals a rest too, and embarked on an endeavor we had talked about for years but thought might be too daunting – to play the 20-plus minute Echoes – side two of the Meddle album for those who still spin vinyl.

We’d seen Floyd do the piece as a simple band of four musicians on the Live at Pompeii movie, but it still seemed somehow too epic for us eight musicians to pull off. But everyone did their homework and we were all pleasantly shocked at how fast it came together.

Due to Arctic Blast 2008 in Portland, we were not even able to rehearse until two days before the show. So, the videos below represent our fifth complete run through of the song. I think we did OK but I am looking forward to playing it more so we can get to that state where you are not really thinking, you’re just playing.

Not sure when our next gig is, so for now enjoy the below videos. I had to split it into three parts due to YouTube’s video length limitations. And apologies to Asher on the keyboards, as my camera slid on the tripod a bit and therefore periodically cuts him off when he is on the Hammond organ on the far right of the stage. D’oh!

Part One


Part Two


Part Three

Floydian Slips to Rock Portland on Halloween

Time yet again for shameless self-promotion. Tomorrow night after the kiddies rake in their candy stashes, my Pink Floyd tribute band, The Floydian Slips, will take the stage at the Roseland in Portland to bust out, among other things, the full Animals album. If you are in or close to Portland, please come say hi.

Take a peek at our rehearsal from Monday night, from which I assembled a short "promo reel"

Pink Floyd's Richard Wright Passes at 65

Pink Floyd keyboardist and co-founder Richard Wright died today at age 65 from cancer.

From the band’s start, to The Wall album, Wright was a crucial, important member of Pink Floyd.

He brought an easy jazzy piano style to the band’s music, but also added fantastic wicked Hammond organ playing and spacey synths and effects. He was also as much a part of the minimalistic style of the band’s arrangements as anyone. He knew that the space between the notes was as important as the notes themselves.

To me, Wright’s greatest Floyd moments are The Great Gig In The Sky, Us and Them and most of Shine On You Crazy Diamond (all of the parts, especially the last few minutes of the album).

But let’s not forget his voice. Wright provided backing vocals on much of Floyd’s music, up to Wish You Were Here. Then it was more of the Gilmour/Waters show. But his harmony work on Echoes from 1971's Meddle is classic Floyd and is a great example of how fragile and dreamy his voice was. You got the sense that he wasn’t very comfortable singing, yet he was probably the best singer in the group until Gilmour and Waters got more dominant post 1975

My take is that Wright provided as much of Floyd’s sound as Gilmour’s guitar and Waters' lyrics – at least up to the Animals album, where he seemed to lose interest, not contributing any new music until the 90s.

Of course this can be as equally attributed to Waters, who slowly squeezed Wright and then Gilmour out of the band by doing all the writing and then all of the singing. When Floyd came back without Waters in 1987, Gilmour involved Wright late in the project and he is barely on A Momentary Lapse of Reason – though I saw him on the tour and he was very involved live.

But by The Division Bell, Wright was back in the fold, contributing some really nice instrumentals and a song called Wearing the Inside Out. He also put out a final solo album (Broken China) that included the song Breakthrough, which he sang on Gilmour’s solo live DVD David Gilmour in Concert (below).

While he wasn’t as vibrant and prolific after 1975, he made a huge impact in the use of keyboards in prog rock. While Keith Emerson, Jon Lord and Rick Wakeman played circles around each other in the 70s, Wright was content to play for the song, and that is tougher than it sounds.

I was really glad when Waters buried the hatchet long enough for the band to reunite at Live8 a couple of years ago. They didn't show him much, but when Wright was on camera at the end solo of Comfortably Numb, he was standing up, rocking the shit out of his organ part. Once again adding crucial textures to Floyd's music.

Now I am really glad that reunion happened because along with the Beatles and The Who, death has robbed us of another reunion of one of the biggest bands in history. As recently as last week, Gilmour was saying he was done with Floyd for good, but now that door is shut for sure.

Weird thing is, when I put my iPod on random shuffle just now, Floyd’s Let There Be More Light came on. One song out of almost 15,000. Spooky.

The photo is from the LA Times. Below are two nice videos. Enjoy:

Breakthrough (from David Gilmour in Concert)


Echoes Part One (from Live at Pompeii)

Floydian Slips at the Cuthbert - The Lead Up

This coming Saturday is the Floydian Slips show in Eugene at the Cuthbert Amphitheater. Outside of the McDonald Theatre, the Cuthbert is kind of our home base summetime gig, and we love it. It's outdoors and we usually sell it out (or come really close), meaning it's my personal largest gig of the year.

I am also excited about it because we are going to debut an album end to end that we have never attempted before. We have done The Wall and Dark Side, so it's one of the others. You figure it out. Ha ha ha.

We get together tomorrow to make sure we still remember the chords to Brain Damage. I will try to post something. In the meantime, here is a repeat from New Year's Eve this year, at the McDonald: