Boston 1972 (Siréne-068)
Music Hall, Boston, MA – May 4th, 1972
Disc 1: Speak To Me, Breathe, On The Run, Time, Breathe (reprise), The Great Gig In The Sky, Money, Us & Them, Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage, Eclipse
Disc 2: One Of These Days, Careful With That Axe Eugene, Echoes, Blues
The Boston Pink Floyd faithful become impatient during the very long heartbeat intro to the Dark Side Of The Moon suite. Once the band get into “Breathe” we are in for another tape from the Joe Maloney cache, posted on the internet recently and released simultaneously label last week as Boston 1972 on Sirene and Mademoiselle Pink on the other big progressive rock label in Japan. This is a good to very good sounding audience recording with hiss evident and several cuts scattered throughout. “On The Run” has two cuts at 2:22, 3:32, “Us & Them” is cut at 7:07 and “Any Colour You Like” is cut at 5:17, plus one at 2:53 in “Brain Damage” that loses some music. It’s a notch below the 1973 tape released earlier this year but still very enjoyable with minimal audience interference.
The first set is the Dark Side LP, announced by Roger Waters as “Eclipse”, played a year before it’s actual release. In an early stage of development the spring performances in 1972 were interesting but nothing like the final product. The tapes from this year show the band gaining confidence in the material to where there are very dramatic versions by the autumn. “The Great Gig In The Sky” was changed between the Japan tour in March to the US tour, being now swirling psychedelic organs with a voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer and another speaking about progress.
“Money” has a good keyboard solo in lieu of the saxophone, and “Us & Them” was always the most advanced number in the suite. The second set gains the better reaction from the audience and is much more effective overall. The blues encore goes on for about twelve minutes and is very mellow. Sirene claim to not have simply downloaded the file from the Internet but utilize a digital copy of the original master cassette. The photo on the inside is very interesting with the whole road crew sitting around the stage and Nick Mason off to the side looking very glum. This is another very good release, limited to only 150 copies, and another piece of Floyd’s live history surfacing after thirty-three years.
3 Comments
Despite the Highland title running a bit slow, I actually prefer “Mademoiselle Pink” for the aforementioned sonic reasons – even though more imperfections are audible, it makes for a more enjoyable listen overall. Could be a candidate for a Sigma treatment to balance out the best of both worlds?
DLee, I agree with what you say about the sound quality on this one. I did a comparison between this and Highland’s Mademoiselle Pink back when they were both released. In my review I wrote “Mademoiselle Pink runs about 2.5% slow where Sirene’s title is much closer to actual speed. Sirene chose to cut the highs to lessen tape hiss and cut out some of the background noise leaving it sounding a little dull. This Highland title sounds much brighter and their mastering of this tape seems to allow for a fuller range of frequencies to be heard. The downfall, background noise is louder on Mademoiselle Pink so distortions and imperfections in the original tape source are more evident on this one.”
I haven’t heard any other version(s) of this particular show, but I’m not crazy about the sound quality on this one. It’s not so bad, but it sounds rather dull & muffled to me. Plus, there may even be volume inconsistencies, such as the start of ‘Breathe’ seeming to sound significantly louder than the rest of the show, especially the 2nd disc.