Pink Floyd – Hunting Animals In Berlin (Godfather GR-254/255)

Hunting Animals In Berlin (Godfather GR-254/255)

Deutschlandhalle, Berlin, Germany – January 30, 1977

Disc 1:  Sheep, Pigs On The Wing 1, Dogs, Pigs On The Wing 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

Pink Floyd’s tour in 1977 has always been popular, but the past four years has seen a constant stream of releases on silver that is really quite remarkable.  Hunting Animals In Berlin contains the second of two concerts in Berlin a week into the long tour in support of Animals.  Godfather use the same complete audience recording also utilized on Berlin 30.1.77 (Hip Records), Berlin 1977 (Windmill 028) a five CDR set with the January 29th show, and the fan produced Absolut Floyd.  The sound quality is good to very good with a very quiet audience throughout the show.  The taper was somewhat distant away from the stage and there is very slight fuzziness during the very loud parts of the music.  There are also noticeable drops in sound quality before “Pigs On The Wing Part 2” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 6-9).”  But the sound compares favorably with the other shows from the first week of the tour.  The taper also caught the minute and a half announcer at the beginning who was laying the ground rules for the audience.  

With the Animals LP, Pink Floyd achieved the perfect balance between form and content.  The previous two LPs dealt with such abstract concepts that there was some obscurity about what they were singing about.  David Gilmour stated that people still to this day that people ask him what Dark Side Of The Moonwas about.  And with Wish You Were Here, the issues they were singing about, the rapaciousness of the music industry and the descent into madness of Syd Barrett, were hopelessly obscure that the audience wouldn’t know that unless told beforehand.  Animals, by contrast, deals with more concrete themes and is an indictment of the very structure of our culture.  Anyone who would pay a fleeting glimpse to the lyrics can understand and identify with what the songs are addressing producing a greater point of contact with the audience.  

This show in Berlin occurs a week into the tour and the delivery of the material is very good.  The songs do not stray too far from the their studio counterparts and wouldn’t be expanded significantly until they played in North America the following summer.  The 23rd Psalm part in “Sheep” is very well recorded.  There seems to be some PA issues in the latter half of “Dogs” because Gilmour can’t be heard during the “Who was born in a house full of pain” part until the final couple of lines, leaving Waters to sing most of them.  The final song of the first half “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is fifteen minutes long and includes Gilmour’s big solo of the set.  Some collectors claim to hear Waters shout a “choked six” at 11:46, but it is very hard to tell and is doubtful he says anything.  Although this is the sixth show of the tour, he would shout that number the following night in Vienna.

The second half of the show sounds tentative at the beginning but turns out to be the stronger of the two sets. There are some problems with Dick Parry’s sax in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts 1-5.”  Either he misses his cue at 11:43 or the microphone wasn’t turned up.  He can be faintly heard until he comes blasting in at 12:24.  The radio between “Have A Cigar” and “Wish You Were Here” does not pick up anything too interesting and they hurry along to the acoustic number.  The only encore played in “Money” which comes to a screeching halt and Waters says, “Guten Abend” at the end.  Hunting Animals In Berlinis packaged in a tri-fold gatefold sleeve with many photos from the tour.  It is nice to see a bright colorful cover instead the normal dark cover with stenciled title used by labels in Japan.  This is a title worth having.