Let’s get this out of the way:

My favorite band is Pink Floyd, and Sir David Gilmour’s guitar work still gives me goose-bumps.

There will be little criticism of this concert, in fact, there will be only high praise. With once exception, there was a TERRIBLE audio delay on the concert disc. That really annoyed me, mostly since I pay very close attention to how he plays the guitar. The show itself was good, it wasn’t the typical Pink Floyd production (no large circular projections screen, crazy laser lights and flying pigs), it was very basic. It also had a really cool guest line-up, including David Bowie during Comfortably Numb. Funny, David Bowie talked about his parents taking him to a PF show when he was about 10… David Gilmour is freakin’ old! My only concern is that I’ll never get to see him in concert (I did at least catch Roger Waters in 99), other than that, his age has no other relevance.

This concert was to promote his solo album, On an Island, which was released on 2006. It’s a decent album, some songs are cheesy, and it always feels like each song is an excuse to belt out a super long guitar solo. Even when he plays the sax, he still treats it like a guitar. This is a contrast from the old Pink Floyd dynamic, where Roger Waters was completely focused on the message, while David seemed to be all about the tone of the music. This is why, in their stride, they worked very well together. Anyway, the first half of the concert was his latest solo album, the second half was a lot of classic PF songs, Echo’s being one of my favorites (I once copied a VHS version of their Pompeii concert, and learned how to play it by watching it over and over again).

The real gem of this Blu Ray concert is the second disc, with all the behind the scenes footage of the entire tour. It was incredible, and I have a new level of respect for the entire team that performed. Here was my favorite part:

a tuner attached to a wine glass

That is a tuner attached to the flute of a wine glass. Why is that cool?

They were at dinner, drinking wine, and they decided to play around with the wine glasses. Cool right? Then it cuts over to a sound check, and David is there with a handful of wine glasses, tuning them, and showing someone else how to play the beginning of “Shine on You Crazy Diamond Part I”, with the wine glasses tuned accordingly.

I think they all made the chords together

Thats the kind of awesomeness I always liked about the band. It gets better, because then in Venice, David stumbles across a street performer who uses wine glasses (and he’s really good, he’s playing Fur Elise with them). He then asks the guy if he would like to play a show with him the following night.. and the guy actually hesitates until Gilmour says “I’ll pay you of course…” :)

I really enjoyed this box set, from the concert to the bonus footage, and it has further fueled my enjoyment of playing the guitar. It also prompted me to search YouTube, and I came across this recording of “Theres No Way Out of Here”, from his first solo album in 1978

I like it, even the cheesy chorus is cool with me. I bought that album and have really liked a few songs on it. Him and Roger need to get back together though because it still doesn’t beat “Dark Side of The Moon”, “Wish You Were Here”, “Animals”, etc… Those are some really fascinating albums and I could post a full length post for each album.