A Flying Pig (Destroyer- 05009-10)
Tampa Stadium, Tampa, FL – April 24th, 1977
Disc 1: Sheep, Pigs On The Wing (part 1), Dogs, Pigs On The Wing (part 2), Pigs (Three Different Ones)
Disc 2: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts 1-5), Welcome To The Machine, Have A Cigar, Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts 6-9), Money
Destroyer is a relatively new label. Several months ago they published two Eric Clapton titles. A Flying Pig, documenting Pink Floyd’s second concert on the US In The Flesh tour in Tampa on April 24th, is their first Floyd title. There have been lots of titles released over the past year from this tour and it seems we’ll have a complete set soon on silver pressed discs. This isn’t a bad thing by any means. This was Pink Floyd’s last full tour of the United States (The Wall tour was only in two cities), so it was the final time most of the states got to see the classic line up live.
The band played in Miami on April 22nd as the opener. Tampa was the second stop and the performance is very good with a very confident delivery of the material. Overall the sound quality of the tape is pretty good and clean with emphasis upon the high end. The master tape of this concert is floating around. Unfortunately Destroyer got their hands on the “faux” master that was circulating. The issue with the “faux” master is that the sound quality drops after “Wish You Were Here” and becomes muffled to the end, and it runs too slow. The label didn’t address these issues and are apparent on A Flying Pig.
So this title is good but could have been much better. The packaging is very nice with rare audience photos from the tour with the front cover shot from the Montreal gig taken by Wray Ellis. It’s exciting when a new label begins production because we always want to hear more shows. I hope that Destroyer continues to produce titles but be more careful in finding the best available tape sources in the future.
