Comfortably Numb

A quick update to my November 7 entry about tribute bands--I was dismissive of the efforts of Australian Pink Floyd after seeing only one song on their recent PBS broadcast. I would now like to apologize--they were utterly sensational.

My friend Pat McGreal (whose comic series Chiaroscuro: The Private Lives of Leonardo DaVinci has been recently re-released by DC, and is well worth picking up) asked the sensible question even before the show started: Is there, finally, any difference between a group of very good musicians choosing to play very good music they did not write, and the Chicago Symphony playing an evening of Beethoven? No, there isn't--particularly when the music being played is, like Pink Floyd's, orchestral in scope to begin with.

Thus the whole question of the validity of a tribute band is dismissed in a stroke, and the only thing that matters is whether the experience of the concert was a good one.

Ohmyjeezus yes.

They start the show with a complete recreation of Dark Side of the Moon, then they take a break and come back with individual singles--from early stuff like "Careful With That Ax, Eugene" to the bigger numbers everyone knows. The singing was much, much, much better than on the PBS show--when they got to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," the tune I saw on PBS and turned off in disinterest because the singing lacked passion, this time there was nothing lacking. The musicianship was stellar, and when they would into second-level Floyd tunes like "Learning to Fly," it was suddenly okay for them to stray from the note-for-note thing that you expect with the pillars of the Floyd catalogue.

What APF really understands, though, is the dynamic range of Pink Floyd's music. The build in "Us and Them" didn't quite happen, which was disappointing; but in the second half of the show things really clicked together, and song after song built beautifully. There were moments when the sound seemed to be playing me like a harpstring, and my ears are still ringing this morning. The point of a good build, of course, is to try to reach a transcendant moment, and they did a great job of it. The audience was wildly enthusiastic, and on the whole I think I must conclude that this was one of the best rock concerts I've seen. No, really!