A Saucerful Of Secrets

In my opinion this track is the standout of their career up until probably Atom Heart Mother's title track or Grantchester Meadows (though its solo). It was the first song of theirs from the early early period that I really got into (of all the post-Barrett stuff).

Though does anyone else agree that it is so much better as a live recording? The studio version seems so tame these days, particularly up until the celestial voices kick in.

I consdier the Pompeii version to be the best, particularly after making an audio cd from the dvd. the drums during the first 5 minutes are hyponitzing, David makes some amazing noises with his slide and Roger banging the huge gong just rules. Then the celestial voices lasts a good 5 minutes and the organ sound is great.

I recall David saying that Roger and Nick originally planned the track out as a graphical drawing with peaks and trouphs?

I listened to the studio track again yesterday, and it's not as bad as I remember it being. Essentially the same components as the live performance (slide guitar with echo, percussion and piano), but there are some boring bits that go on for a lot longer than they should, unfortunately.

Roger and Nick did plan it out on paper, but they should have tried playing it on the road for a while, before committing it to tape (like they did for DSOTM). That would have ironed out some of the wrinkles and polished it up a bit. By the time Pompeii was recorded, pretty much every performance was masterful.

Interesting point there about DSOTM, do you realise these days there is no way they could have performed their albums months (and sometimes years) before commiting them to album? The record company just would not allow it. The company would want them to promote the latest album predominently and would be apoplectic if they went on the road performing the next album, before it was even recorded. In the 70s there was a certain amount of bootlegging (winter tour 74 being a good example, as this had material not released for another three years!). Nowadays within hours of a concert being performed, that concert could be up on a p2p or torrent site and available to everyone to download who required it.

This side of technology is a shame, because it was the constant touring of albums up to and including Animals before recording which gave PF the chance to hone stuff to perfection (without the final piece becoming stale). I wonder if (magnificent as it is) The Wall would have encountered trimming and tightening up in places if they had had the luxury of touring with it for six months before locking it on tape in the studio?

Alas, apart from bands just starting up, the luxury of honing one's craft on stage has gone forever.

That's not true at all! Lots of bands still get away with that, Radiohead performed most of Hail to the Thief on tour just a few years ago, long before they went into the studio. And NIN are going on the road very soon, a full month before their album comes out. You can bet I'll be there, ticket in hand, ready to hear brand new music for the first time from my favourite rock artist on the stage.

Where's the problem with that? By the second night of Radiohead's 2002 Iberian Peninsula Tour, almost everyone in the audience knew the words to all the BRAND NEW songs! How can you think that's anything less than a fabulous application of this wonderful technology.

I don't think it would have worked that way... The Wall is as much a visual theatre performance as it is a musical piece, it would have been impossible to "hone" the films, and the set, and the props, as well as the music all at once, and would probably have made for a crappy show until they got it right.

I disagree. Take someone like Neil Young, he's toured many times with unreleased material, usually his least accessible efforts. Even his last tour in support of the ambitious concept album Greendale was done almost entirely before the album was released.

OK, I think maybe, I have been misinterpreted, Radiohead and NIN (and others) do play unreleased material, but I would bet that most of it has already been recorded, ready for release, whereas Floyd (also Led Zep, The who and others) used to use the stage as a step in the writing process to work out arrangements, songs etc BEFORE commiting the material to tape. A good example is of the Who hiring The New Vic, when they were trying to formulate the Lifehouse project, which in turn, morphed into Whos next.

Re your second point, nothing wrong with it at all from a fans point of view, but I doubt the record company want you to have access to unreleased new material. An example being when Oasis played Knebworth in 1986 or 1987 (I forget which), in the set they premiered two new songs, on the second night they broadcast the entire concert live on Radio 1, however, at the end, when the new songs were due to be played, Radio 1 had to instead play the end of the previous nights' encores missing out the two new tracks, as Creation records didn't want the new songs to be broadcast in stereo for fear of bootlegging.


Point taken about the Wall though, it would have been near impossible to change it much from night to night due to the other things going on at the time onstage, (films, animations, puppetry and the building of the wall itself).


Basically the point I was making, is that it seemed to have been a much more exciting time in the early 70s when bands (by this I mean major acts) could be quite experimental onstage.

Well if it doesn't fit with the record company's marketing scheme to broadcast such material too early, then they're welcome to withhold it. But if the band doesn't mind sharing the new material with fans, and someone records it for posterity, why should the band object to it being shared with others through a private medium?

I say that spirit is alive and well.