The Sixth German Show (Godfather GR382/383)
Westfallenhalle, Dortmund, Germany – February 18th, 1981
Disc 1 (56:25): Master Of Ceremonies, In the Flesh, Thin Ice, Another Brick in the Wall (pt 1), Happiest Days of Our Lives, Another Brick in the Wall (pt 2), Mother, Goodbye Blue Sky, What Shall We Do Now?, Young Lust, One of My Turns, Don’t Leave Me Now, Another Brick in the Wall (pt 3), Goodbye Cruel World
Disc 2 (54:03): Hey You, Anybody Out There, Nobody Home, Vera, Bring the Boys Back Home, Comfortably Numb, Show Must Go On, In the Flesh, Run Like Hell, Waiting for the Worms, Stop, The Trial, Outside the Wall
The Sixth German Show is the simply named title of the February 18th Wall show in Dortmund. It has circulated among Pink Floyd collectors under names like Dortmund 18.2.81, The Wall Live Dortmund 18Feb1981, The Definitive Wall Series, Dortmund Trial, and Between a Wall and a Hard Place. In common with all Pink Floyd releases on Godfather, this is the silver disc debut of the tape. The sound quality is very good boarding on excellent. There are places where both channels are saturated during some of the louder sections, and this recording seems to favor the left channel giving us a decent idea of where the taper was sitting. A little tinny in places, but nonetheless, quite an enjoyable listen.
The performance itself is very slick, tight and extremely slow for some reason. The tape runs at the correct speed, but it just sounds as if every song drags as the band take their time in delivering the piece. Roger Waters even comments on this in “One Of My Turns” saying “and this has grown slower.” It offers the band the ability to truly milk the words and overall narrative for its music and emotional force, something that can sometimes be obscured in the grand spectacle the Wall shows were.
The tape begins with the Wili Tomsik mc before the surrogate band crashes on stage with “In The Flesh?” The emotional force of the show builds in the first quarter of the show with one of the best versions of “Mother” on record. Waters’ vocals are perfect for expressing vulnerability in contrast with Gilmour’s soothing mother voice. Gilmour also plays a unique and pretty sounding guitar solo in the middle of the piece.
“Goodbye Blue Sky” is linked with the opening of “What Shall We Do Now?” by a gorgeous organ bridge by Richard Wright reminiscent of the old “Mortality Sequence” in the early Dark Side performances. “What Shall We Do Now?” provides another startling contrast in mood with the latter especially bringing the show up to its level of lunacy. Waters introduces “Young Lust” simply as “something to shake your arses to.”
The second half of the show contains some unique variations and surprises beginning with a change in the movie dialogue during “Nobody Home.” As with all of the Wall shows the venue erupts with “Comfortably Numb.” Tomsik duplicates his introduction in German (but this time with a loud burp in the middle) before “In The Flesh.” Before “Run Like Hell” Waters says, “Thank you, thank you. Do you like our pig? He doesn’t seem to like you very much. Go on, piss off pig. We’re not very keen on animals…the only good animal is a dead animal! In a minute, we’re going to play a number for all the asteroids in the audience. It’s called ‘Run Like Hell,’ and we can all CLAP, OUR HANDS! And it’s gonna be fun!”
“Run Like Hell” is extended as usual in these shows, but Wright plays interesting and unique keyboard solos over the disco beat in the middle of the song. The presence of these variations at this late stage in the tour probably shows how much the band (except Waters) really wanted to stretch the songs live. The rest of the fascist section and “The Trial” proceed as expected. Overall the sixth Dortmund show is tight with several interesting variations in the tunes. Godfather include a small poster along with the discs and several photos producing another sterling Pink Floyd silver release essential for the collection.
8 Comments
Thumbs up on this one!!
Sounds great and exceleent packaging.
Yes – Plomerus told me here that he experienced similar problems himself with his own “Oxfam Concert” on computers, and so he suggested trying non-computer CD players, which I did, and the Godfather discs played perfectly in them. Both of my PC CD players have had a compatibility issue only with recently-purchased Godfather discs – not with any other labels such as Sigma, etc., and only very rarely with officially-released CD’s. I’ve tried using lens-cleanings discs on both players, but there seems to be no improvement, and 1 of them seems to be somewhat worse than the other. Thanks.
DLee,
did you play the discs with another player, maybe not a PC one?
You have maybe some compatibility problems with them.
This is another outstanding (digipak) item by Godfather, just as I expected it would be, but if anyone here might remember those strange freeze-ups lasting up to several seconds that I experienced a few times sporadically on each disc of their “Oxfam Concert” 2-CD digipack in both of the CD-playing multi-purpose disc-drives of my primary PC, the same problem has unfortunately been discovered to occur likewise on a few other Godfather digipaks that I’ve recently obtained – incl. this new GR 382/383. A couple other non-Floyd titles are The Rolling Stones 1-CD “66 Route” & the Doors 2-CD “The Original Matrix Tapes”. Anyway, despite these annoyances, Godfather still continues to produce excellent releases.
Awesome title. I am surprised it took this long for a show that sounds this good to come out on silver. Great job on the sound and packaging.
i totally agree with plomerus:i bought “dortmund trial” on the “windmill” label some months ago, but this relesase smashes it under every way: really excellent mastering, amazing packaging ( tons of photos and a poster too!), and last but not least a really affordable price… do you need more? i thank again the “godfatherecords “guys for always providing sterling rarities, what else next for us????
I’m also happy to finally have this on silver and Godfather have done another amazing job with this release. Just one point though…four of the earlier Floyd releases on Godfather were not silver debuts, but were quality releases nonetheless; which are as follows: “Old Symphonies” (BBC Sessions 1970 – G.R.125), “At The End Of The Rainbow” (Hollywood Bowl 9/22/72 – G.R.176/177), “One Of Those Days” (Frankfurt 11/17/72 – G.R.50/51), and “Wishes, Echoes, And Desires” (Nassau Colisseum 6/17/75 – G.R.267/268). Pretty much since then Godfather have been consistently unearthing shows never before available on silver however, and I think we’re all thankful for this!
Very cool to finally see this excellent live Wall recording available on factory-pressed silver for the very first time. Now if only we could eventually have the rest of the best, or the best of the rest, live Wall shows released on factory-pressed silver as well, by either Godfather or Sigma, or any other boot label willing to do it.