Pink Floyd – Boredom And Pain (Sirene – 159)

Boredom And Pain (Sirene – 159)

Boston Garden, Boston , MA – June 27th, 1977

Disc 1: Sheep, Pigs On The Wing Pt. 1, Dogs, Pigs On The Wing Pt. 2, Pigs (Three Different Ones)

Disc 2: Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pts. 1-5, Welcome To The Machine, Have A Cigar, Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pts. 6-9, Money, Us And Them

This superb audience recording captures Pink Floyd at the Boston Garden during their American leg of 1977’s In The Flesh tour. The instruments are almost perfectly balanced with a nice clear punchy drum sound. It’s not quite as vivid or full sounding as the Oakland show from May 9th but definitely one of the better sounding ones from the tour. Comments around the microphone are kept to a minimum but can be faintly heard in places.

The first set consists of the entire Animals LP before taking a break and returning to play Wish You Were Here in its entirety before the usual “Money” and “Us And Them” encores. Overall, not a flawless show, but Floyd still delivers a highly enjoyable performance with plenty of standout moments. Snowy White adds solos at the close of “Pigs On The Wing Pt. 2” and throughout “Have A Cigar” and even handles the bass parts in “Sheep” and “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” while Roger plays guitar.

“Pigs (Three Different Ones)” features an extended Gilmour solo and the way they breakdown and jam at the end is an appropriate ending to the first half of the show. There are two cuts in the recording, one during “Pigs On The Wing Pt. 1” and the other at about 10:25 into “Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pts.6-9”. Sirene went for the quick fade out/ fade in as opposed to Cannonball’s straight cuts.

Boredom And Pain’s “Pigs On The Wing Pt. 1” has a slight decrease in tape speed just before the cut not found on Cannonball’s version. After “Us And Them” Roger says “The perfect end to a perfect day”. Given the almost perfect sound quality, I can only agree.

Sirene’s sister label, Ayanami, had released this as The Perfect Day on CDR prior to the Cannonball title so a proper silver presentation from this camp was in order. Sirene has reduced the highs and boosted the level over Have A Cigar, focusing more toward the mid range frequencies, giving it a punchier sound. Both silver titles sound excellent and this show belongs in every Pink Floyd fans collection no matter which version you may prefer.