You can go to a Pink Floyd concert without waiting for the Pink Floyd reunion that will never happen. I've had that experience three times in the past couple of years and, as with any rock concert, the results have been variable, ranging from not very good (as in, we left after the first set) to absolutely amazing (as in, I'm thinking of moving closer to the band's home base so I can see them more often.)
First the bad. We saw The Pink Floyd Experience play to a sold out house here in Jacksonville. Lots of lights (an annoying array of lights) highlight (no pun intended) this attempt to reproduce the experience of a Pink Floyd concert. Maybe they were having a bad night. Maybe I had seen a really good band do Pink Floyd a few weeks earlier. Or maybe they just sucked as bad as I thought. I've seen Pink Floyd live. I've seen all of the concert videos, and I've seen good musicians have a bad night. But the problem I had here is that it seemed like these guys were playing at or near the limits of their ability. They just aren't the musicians I would expect to try an pass themselves off as a reasonable approximation of Pink Floyd. Add to that some of the arrangements (The Great Gig in the Sky with saxaphones instead of vocals????) and you have a recipe for a truly bad evening. As I said, we walked out.
If you really want to see what a Pink Floyd concert looks like, as it were, In the Flesh I highly recommend The Australian Pink Floyd Show. These guys not only do the light and effects right, they also do the music well. Sound was balanced and loud without distortion, the level of musicianship was top notch, and the ensemble included enough musicians and singers to actually reproduce the sounds you would hear at a real Pink Floyd concert. I don't know if they have an arrangement with Pink Floyd for the use of videos and images, but they add their own twist to the videos from Pink Floyd's Pulse tour that both show a sense of humor and honor the original. It's hard not to like them, and if these guys come by your town, buy tickets. They are that good.
Finally, we saw Classic Albums Live do The Wall a couple of years ago. CAL promises "note for note, cut for cut" and they deliver on that promise. These guys are not a tribute band. They don't try to look like the original band on-stage, and their stage lighting is minimal. Their goal is to get the best musicians to reproduce a classic rock album live in concert. Did I mention that they succeed? Performing The Wall is an undertaking, and they nailed it. Their musicians (and singers!) are nothing short of amazing. After performing The Wall, they came back and did a rendition of The Great Gig in the Sky that rivaled the version I heard on Floyd's original Dark Side of the Moon tour. If you get a chance to see Classic Albums Live perform, and they do a couple of dozen artists and albums, don't miss it. It will be the best $30 you ever spend on a rock concert.
It's no secret that the music industry is a mess. Major artists can't make money on "magnum opus" albums anymore, most people download individual songs rather than buying CDs. This means that longer, personal, and complex works like The Wall are probably going to appear less and less often. In addition, big acts are touring more to create revenue (tours used to be to promote a new album) so that tribute bands, and especially Classic Albums Live, can find themselves competing with the creators of the music they are performing. That happened last year when Classic Albums Live's Hotel California show sold poorly because it The Eagles were scheduled to play the local arena. I love The Eagles, but how often do they come to town? We really need to support Classic Albums Live -- who have been here at least six times in the last year -- and groups like The Australian Pink Floyd Show, so that we can have a steady stream of good, live music. SO BUY SOME TICKETS NEXT TIME. And go to the show.
See also: