Australian Pink Floyd
Yesterday morning Mom was telling me about the concert she heard on Friday — The Australian Pink Floyd. She raved and raved about how good they were — which was relatively hilarious to hear from a woman who didn’t think Rock and/or Roll was music until a few months ago, when she suddenly discovered that some of it is — and wanted to recommend them to Kirsten, so I googled them to see if they were playing up in SF. They’re not — but it turned out they were going to do a show at The Grove in Anaheim that night! Dan and I emailed back and forth about it, and I told him I really wanted to go and that Henry would be trick-or-treating with his dad and then spending the night, leaving us free to go out, so he bought tickets! A spur-of-the-moment decision that didn’t actually kill me!
I took Henry to the Bayshore Halloween party, I mean “Harvest Festival” lol, in the afternoon, which was nice. Lots of cute costumes and friendly people and fun and games.
I tried to rest when we got home but I was too excited about the concert! Dan got home and we ate dinner and then left for Anaheim, which is about 60 miles away. Got to The Grove a little after 7, wandered around and found our seats and waited. They were playing this bizarre C&W Pink Floyd cover band over the sound system.
The show was AMAZING. The band was superb, strong and powerful and note-perfect. I don’t even know how to describe it. They played all of Dark Side of the Moon and everything was perfect. They used samples for some of the sound effects but they did the creepy talking and laughing themselves. The woman who sang Great Gig in the Sky was marvelous, unbelievable. The bass player (Ian), who did a lot of the singing, sounded exactly like Gilmore AND exactly like Waters, when necessary. I don’t know how he did it. There were lights and lasers and fog, and projections on a huge circular screen behind the band.
After Dark Side they took a short break, and then came back and filled up the 3-hour show with more and more and more Floyd. Um, let’s see, they played Shine On You Crazy Diamond (with a huge photo of Syd on the projector at the end), a couple of songs from The Division Bell, one from Final Cut, a few from The Wall, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Fat Old Sun, Sheep — Oh My God this was awesome, you know the sustained notes at the end of each phrase that sort of become electronic? (“wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dreaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmm…”) Well I don’t know how they did it but they did it perfectly.
We’re hoping they’ll come to San Diego again next year so we can take Henry!