In nine years of blogging, I seem to have only mentioned The Pink Floyd about four times. I have no idea why this is, as they have been one of my (if not the) favourite bands for far longer than the lifetime of DaveWhite.Net. I never got to see them play, to my great distress. In fact, I had the opportunity to see them on two occasions, but circumstances played against me.
The first time was for the Division Bell tour in 1994. There was a Rocky Horror Picture Show convention on in London that we (as cast members of the Irish Rocky) were supposed to go to. I had quit my job about two weeks before that so I didn't go because I thought it would be a waste of money. Little did I know that Pink Floyd played their famous Earl's Court gigs that weekend and that there were tickets for us to go to see them. Those concerts were later immortalised on the P•U•L•S•E album. I found out about it on the Monday when someone came back and told me that the concerts were the best thing they had ever seen. Typical. The second time was for the Live 8 gig. The problem with that one was that Anna came home from a trip to the US early, sick, and in need of care. That trumps a concert in my eyes.
I have seen David Gilmour play in concert at the Royal Albert Hall for his On An Island tour, and that was awesome. The particular night we were there was the one where David Bowie sang Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb, and ranks up there with the best concerts I have ever seen. I do have the DVDs, but I haven't ever looked at them to see if we can be seen, being usually too concerned with what was happening on the stage. I think we (Trev, Dennis, Seamus, Duncan, me) should be pretty visible, as we were in a box centred on the left wall. I must check that out sometime.
I have all of Pink Floyd's albums, and have downloaded some bootlegs and variations I haven't found in physical format. Most of the albums are in CD format, but I think there's actually a couple of vinyl albums back in Ireland, that I'll have to dig out at some point. They are all of course digitised and on my MP3 player, and taking up a lot of room as I have them ripped at a high bit rate. Again, at some point in the future I'm going to make lossless rips of them (and possibly my U2 collection, actually probably most of our CDs, but that's a project for a later time) and to hell with the size implications. Disks are cheap now days, right? One that I don't have (yet) is the new boxed set Oh By The Way that they just released. Each of the CDs on it are miniature versions of the original albums and presented inside sleeves that look like the album slip covers. I also have a couple of their VHS videos - Live at Pompeii and a recorded-from-TV Earls Court concert.
I have also seen the Australian Pink Floyd many many times. They are perhaps one of the best tribute bands in the world, and have been around for a long time now. Stumbling across their updated web site yesterday prompted me to write this post, though I can't remember the impetus for looking at their site in the first place. It might have been something somebody on Twitter mentioned, but it eludes me now. Anyway, your chances of seeing them in concert are far better than seeing the originals, and while nothing will ever match the real thing, they're pretty damn good. We've also seen them in the Albert Hall, where they performed the 30th anniversary tour of Dark Side of the Moon, which was pretty special. Oh, I remember now what made me think of them. There was a track that I was looking for online which is their version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which had a sequence of sound before it (effects like the Skippy theme, Neighbours theme etc building into a slight crescendo and then fading rapidly to leave you with the familiar G minor opening sequence. It was in fact a rare moment that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up when I first heard it. I couldn't find it online, although some of the effects are audible on some sequences of the embedded songs on their site.
I guess its pretty safe to assume that they are my favourite band. As a general rule I listen to anything from metal to classical, but I have some staples in my taste. Rock and Roll, a la Pink Floyd, U2 and Bruce Springsteen being my most listened to genre. Those are the bands that I used to go asleep to when I was younger, and the ones that I now have on my MP3 player and routinely play.