The Australian Pink Floyd Show
10/22/08
Gwinnett Center Arena

On October 22, the most famous Pink Floyd tribute band, and possibly the most famous tribute band in general, came to Georgia on their 2008-2009 U.S. Tour. Throughout this tour, The Australian Pink Floyd Show has been doing Roger Water’s 1979 masterpiece that would set the standard for all concept albums following it -The Wall.

The brilliant music and plotline of The Wall could never have hinted at the original band’s growing state of disunity at the time. Fights over direction, especially on the style of “Comfortably Numb”, and the firing of Rick Wright by Waters were major roadblocks in the band, but they still managed to create the epic album. In case you were wondering, Rick actually benefited from the firing because the band couldn’t do The Wall ‘live’ without him, so they hired him as a touring musician. Ironically, he was the only member of Pink Floyd to make any money off the tour, due to the elaborate and extravagant stage props (a giant teacher and a stage-covering wall don’t come free).

I entered the arena about 10 minutes before show time, due to heavy traffic. The screen behind the stage lit up with the crossed hammer logo, but with kangaroos on the top instead of hammer heads. A solitary man came out and played the melody of “Outside The Wall” and then a little bit of the Australian national anthem before the speakers burst with the explosive opening chords of “In The Flesh?”, the beginning of Pink’s story. The band played energetically as animations of Pink’s father and a plane dropping a bomb flashed behind them before finally the stage went black again as “In The Flesh?” ended and the cries of a newborn baby flowed from the speakers. “The Thin Ice” began, accompanied by animation that made seem as though you were being born. This song about Pink’s birth and unawareness of his sad surroundings was followed by “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 1”. Pillars of light lit up as lead singer, Ian Cattell, sang about Pink’s first awful experience in his life, leading to the first few bricks in his metaphorical wall between himself and society. Animations of the funeral scene from The Wall movie, transformed into CGI graphics were on the screen, and so were bricks being laid one by one, before the loud noise of a helicopter burst through the speakers and a ring slowly formed in the middle of the screen. The familiar line, “Stand still laddie!”, was shouted by one of the members, followed by the sinister bass line that starts “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” and an animation of Pink being confronted by the monstrous teacher bent on molding him into a “productive member of society”. Soon the back-up singers accompanying the band belted out the “aaaah aaah aaahs” that precede one of the more famous tracks off the album, “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2”. This criticism of strict unimaginative schooling was done like Pink Floyd did it live. It had its usual famous guitar solo, which was complemented with marching hammer animations, followed by a keyboard solo, and then another guitar solo.

“Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2” came to an end with its haunting telephone busy signal, before a sigh was heard and the band played a song introducing us to another key influence in the building of the wall, Pink’s mother. An animation of the caricatured mother rocking baby Pink was looped throughout the song, “Mother”, and we were treated to an extended guitar solo before the band played the haunting, “Goodbye Blue Sky”. If you’ve seen The Wall ‘live’, or you’ve seen the movie, one of the most memorable scenes is from “Goodbye Blue Sky”. As the band played, this scene was played exactly the same, except in CGI, behind them. After we heard about Pink saying goodbye to his childhood, we heard the more sinister “What Shall We Do Now”. For those of you who own the album, but haven’t seen The Wall ‘live’ or the movie, this is an extended version of “Empty Spaces”. It is actually the original song, but due to the time constraints of vinyl, it had to be cut short into the far less superior “Empty Spaces”. The song was played wonderfully, exciting the audience, especially the man sitting next to me who felt the need to sing all the words to every song loudly and out of key (I moved for the second set). Of course, this number included the erotic “flower scene” played upon the screen behind the band.

After this song, the band took its first break. They welcomed the crowd, and introduced the next song, “Young Lust”, which featured an extra keyboard solo after the guitar solo. They then went into one of my favorite numbers of The Wall, “One of My Turns”, which I found really entertaining for a lot of reasons. First of all, while the whole groupie coming into the room scene was animated like a comic book on the screen, Ian actually sat on a couch, watching TV, while a back up singer recited the lines of the groupie. Cattell did a great job acting out the role of Pink in the song too, by getting into it and singing it while thrashing about the stage in frustration. He continued this act in the emotional next song, “Don’t Leave Me Now.” Following this great reproduction was the short, “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 3”, the most musically and lyrically angry of all the parts. Strobe lights blared as the band went into the instrumental “The Last Few Bricks”. This was a song only performed live, by Pink Floyd, and was not on the album. It’s a medley of previous songs that recapped the story and gave the roadies enough time to get all the bricks in the wall, but one. Aussie Floyd’s digital wall on screen finished during this segment, too, before zooming in on the one hole in the wall, where Pink, represented as a rag doll, is visible. “Goodbye Cruel World” was performed as the first set ended, with Pink completing his wall.

After switching locations and getting a drink of water, I was ready for set two, and I hoped it would be as faithful as set one. It began eerily, of course, with “Hey You”. The haunting guitar riffs filled the arena as the band played the song note for note. Green lasers and worm animations complemented the performance when the lyrics, “and the worms ate into his brain” were sung. Soon this song faded out and the equally haunting, “Is There Anybody Out There?” was performed, and the acoustic guitar solo in it was brilliant. An interesting fact is that the original acoustic guitar solo heard on the album is not David Gilmour playing. He wasn’t satisfied with the way he did it, so it is widely believed that the person playing is session guitarist Ron di Blasi. After this, the couch and the TV were used again as the band performed another one of my favorites off the album, “Nobody Home”, before the band went into “Vera”. During this song, a montage of pictures of Vera Lynn, whom the song is about, was on the screen. She did lots of songs that pertained to WWII, and one of them is “We’ll Meet Again”, and obviously Pink, as well as Roger Waters, never meets again with his father, which is why the lyrics question where Vera has gone. “Bring The Boys Back Home” was performed in all of its orchestral majesty next, fading out to set the stage for one of the most well known Pink Floyd songs of all time.

The band went into “Comfortably Numb” and performed it in all its glory. It’s generally seen as the best example of a Pink Floyd song, and also has a guitar solo that is up there with the solo in “Stairway to Heaven” on a lot of lists. During both guitar solos, lasers shone on the crowd, and during the end of the second solo there was some improvisation before the song ended as strobe lights flooded the arena. After this dramatic display of musicianship, “The Show Must Go On” was played, including a first verse that is not included on the album, before the band went into the first song in Pink’s fascist fantasy, “In The Flesh”. This violent reprise of the first song, symbolizing Pink’s second birth, had a ceremony hall background up on the screen, as Cattell came out from backstage to sing in full fascist Pink garb in a leather trench coat with the hammer sign on his arm. The song ended and the guitarist started playing with his delay pedal as lasers shown sporadically. Cattell gave a speech much like Roger Waters did before the next song was performed. He addressed the cowards in the audience, calling them pathetic, before introducing the next song, “Run Like Hell”. This catchy song with the disturbing lyrics follows Pink in his fantasy. The performance of the song was great, but the band sang the second verse for both first and second, which was just a minor flaw. “Waiting for the Worms” came next, further chronicling Pink’s fantasy, with Ian yelling certain lines into a megaphone. I was impressed that he knew the words to the nearly incomprehensible speeches in the song. This song’s ending was of course accompanied by the animation of the marching hammers, which turned into kangaroo headed hammers, before “Stop!” was yelled.

“Stop” was performed in all its short and helpless glory before the band went into the crazy masterpiece that provides a conclusion to Pink’s story,“The Trial”. The animation of “The Trial” was recreated in CGI behind the band, and it was faithful to the original, leaving the audience satisfied. Cattell really got into his part of a tortured Pink, as different members of the band played the roles of the prosecutor, the school master, the wife, the mother, and the judge. The digital wall fell as Cattell let out a scream and the stage went dark. After a minute or two the band came out again to perform an acoustic version of “Outside the Wall” to wrap up the story, much like Pink Floyd did when they toured in 1980 and 1981.

A greatest hits encore, to please the fans, followed. Although I would have rather had them just end with the ending of the wall, I enjoyed the encore. It consisted of Parts 1-6 of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” complete with an animation that referenced lots of famous Pink Floyd images, such as the diver creating no splash on the sleeve of Wish You Were Here, before concluding with a picture of Syd Barrett on the screen. Next, one of the back up singers took the stage for an amazing note-for-note rendition of “The Great Gig in the Sky” which was complemented with animations of the ocean. After this ended, “Wish You Were Here” was performed, followed by “One of These Days”. Finally, the keyboardist did band intros before the band closed with a bang with the combination of “Brain Damage” and then, of course, “Eclipse. The band left the stage, leaving everyone with a Pink Floyd song stuck in their head for the next few days.

-JJ