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Prog
King documents the second of four Pink Floyd
concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York.
This occurred in the final week of their long six month long tour
promoting the new Animals
LP and is surprisingly
their first visit to the Garden.
Occurring
during the fourth of July holiday weekend during a sweltering summer
in the city along with marijuana being decriminalized in New York
State were all factored in to the electric atmosphere captured on this
tape.
Throughout the show there are very loud bangs (and I mean LOUD), the
most noticeable of which occur at 2:53 in “Sheep”, at 1:44 into
“Dogs” and several at the end of “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”.
Siréne’s
release is a two-source mix. The first source has a long history
dating back to the vinyl era. “Dogs”, “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”, and
the Wish You Were Here
suite appeared as Caught In The Crossfire
(Pharting Pharoah 13153 A/D), and was
repressed on The Live Biography:Volume 4 – Have
A Cigar on International Records (RSR-215).
The
International Records people produced the first CD reference to this
tape in 1989 by releasing the Wish You Were
Here suite on
Caught In The Crossfire on
Neutral Zone (NZCD 89017) along with
“Fat Old Sun” from the 1971 BBC session.
The Wish You Were Here
material was re-released the following year as
Welcome To The Machine
on The Swingin’ Pig 1990 (TSP-CD-061)
and
New York Live 1977
on Welfare Pig (WP203)
and in 1992 as
Live USA
on Imtrat (imt 900.051).
A more complete
tape surfaced on the fan produced ROIO In The
Grassland Away.
This was sourced from a DAT clone of the cassette master and
utilized a second tape for the second encore
“Us & Them”.
The sound quality of both sources is phenomenal.
“Us & Them”
sounds a bit more hissy although not at all distracting.
The first couple of notes of “Sheep” are cut, there is a tape flip
after “Dogs”, and the taper bumped into the record button at 12:30
in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts 6-9)”.
The sound
also becomes a bit unstable at the end of “Money”. All are very
minor blemishes on what is a superb tape.
The second
half of the show is very good with an extended piano solo at the end
of “Wish You Were Here”, and at the end of “Shine On (parts 6-9)”
both Gilmour and Snowy White play fine solos during the jam in the
which as always ends with Wright’s keyboard tribute to a number of
early Syd Barrett songs.
Siréne as
usual have done a fantastic job with the tape and this show
certainly deserves it.
As with
Live In Rotterdam
and
Wolfsschanze
they use very thick glossy inserts that are very classy.
The cover illustration is also very interesting with the black pig
over the Battersea Power Station.
Hopefully we’ll see definitive versions of the other three New York
shows in the New Year.
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