Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii

I’m back again after a couple of weeks on the west coast of France. But I hope you don’t mind if I don’t say where we went because it is crowded enough already. Last year I had to deter people who asked what xyz-sur-Mer was like with lies like “I missed the drive-by shooting because I was at the hospital being treated for bites from the sewer rat which came out of the toilet in our hotel room.” Then, when the same people asked why we were going back to xyz-sur-Mer this year, I had to persuade them that it was a ghastly clerical error on the part of the travel company, but we just had to make the most of it and take the rat repellent and bullet-proof vests.

I wasn’t expecting to listen to anything on holiday (except the Atlantic surf) but I caught “Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii” late one night on the arts channel, and it was very good. I was fanatically into Pink Floyd for a couple of years in the mid-Seventies, and retained an admiration for them since, and although I had seen bits and pieces of this film I had never seen it all. The versions of “Echoes” (a song/piece/thing I’ve always found a bit boring - I once heard a busker do a 20-minute version of it in Munich) and “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun”, especially, have a freshness and energy which are far greater than the studio recorded versions but the thing which really made me sit up was the electrifying performance of “Saucerful Of Secrets”, especially the fast middle section. They may have become reliant on effects and gimmicks in their live performances later on but this has a rawness which is astonishing.

There are one or two bits which aren’t so good, especially the appalling “Seamus” (called “Mademoiselle Nobs”). It is also impossible now to watch any film involving a rock group (or, if you will, rockumentary) without thinking of Spinal Tap, and there were indeed some Spinal Tap-ish moments, like the shot of David Gilmour trying to sing in a very strong (presumably artificially generated) wind, or the scene at the beginning of the film showing the epic grandeur of the arena at Pompeii being transformed into another ugly rock venue, with the help of miles of cable and an articulated lorry.

But overall well worth while seeing.