Collectors Music Reviews

Disc 2:  Speak To Me, Breathe, On The Run, Time, Breathe (Reprise), The Great Gig In The Sky, Money, Us And Them, Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage, Eclipse, Echoes

The April 26th. 1975 Pink Floyd concert from L.A. is one of the most famous nights ever captured on tape. From reasons to the taper, the late great Mike Millard and the quality and performance that he captured that night, but also because these dates in LA. were the spark for Roger Waters  to write “The Wall”. Apparently, in 1975, Pink Floyd fans posed a major threat to the quality of life in Hollywood, and the L.A.P.D. could not let that stand and took it upon themselves to physically straighten out those long haired freaks. The scene of police beating up the kids at Pinks concert came from these L.A. shows.

Pink Millard is a complete show on two CDs that does run at the correct speed. It is evenly balanced throughout with a little surge in the volume at the beginning of Raving and Drooling. At the beginning of disc 1, there is no mike check as found on some other CDs. There are fireworks, which are also found at the start of disc 2, as well as someone laughing into the microphone. There are no fireworks or any real crowd noise at any time during the music. Most if not all of the crowd is hearing Raving and Drooling, You Gotta Be Crazy, Shine on You Crazy Diamond Pts 1-5, Have a Cigar and Shine on You Crazy Diamond Pts 6-9 for the first time. The Shine On.. section is played almost as it is on the album. SOYCD Pts 6-9 does stretch out into a nice almost jazzy jam session, Gilmour’s slide work and Wrights interplay really do smoke. The vocals on Have A Cigar are shared by Roger and Gilmore. Of course, at the end of SOYCD Pts 6-9, there is the infamous outburst made by Roger at the “people in the yellow shirts” to stop wandering around and bothering people. Most likely security guards/police wannabes maintaining law and order.

Disc 2 starts out with crowd noise and someone laughs into the microphone, and that’s it as far as crowd interference. The DSOTM suite has all of the great jams associated with the time and the band is just fantastic. During “Any Color You Like”, Gilmore starts to go into his solo and a great one at that, there does seem to be a micro-second of a cut, and I had to have this brought to my attention to even notice. It’s a seamless cut and if one second of Gilmore hitting the power chord on his black Strat is missed, it’s a lot, but you really need to be listening for a cut to notice it. About two minuets on, still in the same solo, there is a full second of tape wobble. Again, hardly noticeable. One minor performance issue I do have comes with Rogers vocals during Brain Damage/Eclipse. His voice really doesn’t stand out. His signing is almost timid. Echoes is the encore, and between Eclipse and Echoes there is a noticeable cut in the crowd noise. Most likely done to keep this on two Cds, which keeps costs down as well! But this entire set does run at perfect speed, so the cut doesn’t bother me.

I did make comment about this release being equal to any commercial release, and I stand by that. We will most likely never get one from the real Pink Floyd, so this is it for the ’75 tour. There are some collectors who feel this is the best live Floyd show ever taped, quality and performance wise. The Oakland show from May of ’77 could argue that point.  The 4/26/75 concert is also one of the widest booted shows ever. I personally don’t own a copy of Highlands Late Great Millard Tapes set, so I can’t rightfully say that this is now the master version. But this will be released again, that’s a guarantee. I for one won’t buy it because I now have a copy that doesn’t need to be replaced and I’ll spend my money n another show, or a concert ticket.

Pink Floyd did play five shows at the Sports Arena that week and there are tapes of the 27th., but the quality isn’t that good. There are no known tapes for the 23rd., 24th. and 25th. It’s time for those hoarders to step up. If Sigma can work it’s magic or find better copies for the 27th., then by all means do so.