Assorted Lunatics (Sigma 40)
Festival Hall, Osaka, Japan – March 8, 1972
Disc 1: (52:29) Dark Side Of The Moon – 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
Disc 2: (72:29) One Of These Days, Careful With That Axe Eugene, Echoes, Atom Heart Mother
Festival Hall, Osaka, Japan – March 9, 1972
Disc 3: (51:15) Dark Side Of The Moon – 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
Disc 4: (65:12) One Of These Days, Careful With That Axe Eugene, Echoes, A Saucerful Of Secrets
Furitsu Taiikukan, Kyoto, Japan – March 10, 1972
Disc 5: (46:49) Dark Side Of The Moon – 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
Disc 6: (49:56) One Of These Days, Careful With That Axe Eugene, Echoes
Pink Floyd’s second tour of Japan took place in March of 1972. They played six concerts over the course of about one week with two shows in Tokyo (March 6th and 7th), two in Osaka (March 8th and 9th), and one each in Kyoto (March 10th) and Sapporo (March 13th).
Assorted Lunatics is a six disc set covering the Osaka and Kyoto shows. The concerts each featured two sets with the first dedicated to the newly written Eclipse suite. This early version of Dark Side Of The Moon was still in the developmental stage with the biggest differences being the guitar/keyboard jam in place of “On The Run” and “The Mortality Sequence”, which at this time bares little resemblance to “The Great Gig In The Sky”. The second set included the lengthy fan favorites while the encore section differed from night to night. Pink Floyd had really settled in during these shows and gives great performances across the board.
The first show from March 8th in Osaka was captured on at least three different sources. The first source was previously issued by Highland as Fourth Eclipsed Night (incorrectly dated March 9th) while the second source was featured on Sirene’s Darkest Moon and Highland’s Naniwa…Natural Dark In Osaka. A hint of source three was included on Sigma’s Missing Pieces featuring only “Echoes” from the new source.
Sigma uses the Darkest Moon source here for Assorted Lunatics, including the switch to source one for about one minute in “Brain Damage”. In comparison, Assorted Lunatics has a deeper low end (at times a bit heavy) and fewer highs than Darkest Moon and could be considered a slight upgrade in sound. One thing that puzzles me about this source is “Echoes”. It may come from an alternate source on both Assorted Lunatics and Darkest Moon. It sounds like there is a source change right after Roger whispers “This is called Echoes” and another at around 22:47 as they enter the final section. It doesn’t sound like either source one or three and could possibly hint at an additional source. “Atom Heart Mother” is tonight’s encore and makes its first appearance during this tour.
The second show in Osaka on discs 3 and 4 comes from a good slightly muffled but clear audience source. The overall level of the recording seems low and lacks some in the upper frequencies. Hiss is very evident in the quieter sections especially when turned up loud but reducing the highs any more would have left the tape dull and lifeless. Sigma made a good decision to not tinker with the sound any more than they already have and came out with a very listenable product. There doesn’t appear to be any musical cuts during the show, however, “A Saucerful Of Secrets” strangely sounds different from the rest of the source tape. It sounds considerably brighter and the drums cut through a little better. It may or may not be from the same tape but it does, however, come from the same source tape used on Sigma’s Missing Pieces.
The Kyoto show on the final two discs features a very good but distant audience source. There is only one known source tape for this show and having never heard it before I assume this is the same. The recording presents a decent atmosphere with too much echo on occasion but the quiet Japanese audience makes the listening even more enjoyable. Again, there are no musical cuts apparent in the tape with the exception of a very short “Speak To Me” at the start of the show. The taper didn’t capture the encore so the recording ends with the usual set closer, “Echoes”. Kyoto is one of the better performances from the tour and may be my favorite from the set even though discs 1 and 2 offer the best sound quality. The distant source certainly brings out the creepy atmosphere in “Careful With That Axe Eugene”.
Assorted Lunatics is a nice release by Sigma which presents the March 9th and 10th shows on silver disc for the first time. Pink Floyd’s 1972 tour of Japan is very interesting to say the least and Sigma 40 can be recommended to assorted lunatics everywhere.
11 Comments
Thx :). I felt the same, however I would give at least 3% range for Highland since guitar seems to play a bit too high in key for me.
Btw, do you have both Sigma titles in loseless copys and could you share it somewhere? I am keeping only mp3 copies taken from Big O site and will be much pleased for better quality if it’s not a problem for you.
AA, I checked my copies of each and can safely say that both Assorted Lunatics and Osaka Triple run at the correct speed (or extremely close to). Highland’s Fourth Eclipsed Night runs about 1% fast (which really isn’t that far off).
It looks like Osaka March 8th, 1972 show presented here runs a bit slow actually. I compared it with the Highland release and it looks like Highland is much close to the correct speed. I don’t have Osaka Triple so I cannot compare but it would be nice to know which title/source runs at correct speed.
Thanks for the info, alucard. I was unable to find much info about Echoes From Osaka and was unsure if it was a CDR or a silver release. I’ll modify the review soon to include the recent corrections. Thanks again to all that left comments here.
Let’s not forget “Echoes From Osaka” (BS-10/11) a no label silver release of the show from the 9th – albeit missing “A Saucerful Of Secrets” and with inferior sound quality.
Actually, I should apologize too…due to my own commitments, I’ve been unable to handle the reviews myself as of late, and it will still be some time before I can get rolling on that front again – so thank you wgpsec & everyone for taking care of these, period. It is very much appreciated, and I’m sure you don’t need the extra work! Hope to be back to writing novella reviews in a couple months!
Certainly no need for you to say sorry, wgpsec, as this is another great review that’s greatly appreciated – thanks. I already had received mine a couple weeks ago, as mail from foreign countries has suddenly seemed to speed up a lot the last month or so, and I tend to doubt that this particular title will sell out so quickly that anyone here will be adversely affected in any significant way by the timing of this review here.
Thanks for the corrections guys. For some reason, I always thought that Home Again was a CDR title. I would also like to add an apology for taking so long to post this review.
Close ;) It was Home Again (Dai-Sho-Gun Furitsu Taiikukan, Kyoto, Japan 3/10/72) [TOP/PF-72010D-1/2 – Sinsemilla ]
Just a quick correction. The show on the 10th has been released on silver before. It’s entitled “Home Again” and was released on the Sensemilla label (I believe that was the label anyhow) and it came with a vhs tape of various Floyd footage.
EXCELLENT REVIEW , I CHECKED MY COPY AND HAD SAME THOUGHTS, I STILL BELIEVE THERE’S SOMETHING WORKING NOT RIGHT WITH THE “DISCOVERED ” TRACKS AND MANY COLLECTORS ON SOME DIFFERENT FORUMS ARE STILL DEBATING AND SAME OPINION IS VERY VERY STRONG BETWEEN THEM, HOWEVER THIS IS A GOOD RELEASE ( BUT NOT FANTASTIC…)