New Year's Eve 1968 "Surprise Partie" with The Who, Small Faces, Booker T, Pink Floyd, Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac... Dawn of the Rock Revolution

“Surprise-Partie” (see clip below) was broadcast on French TV on December 31st 1968 from the ORTF Studios in Paris and features The Who, The Small Faces, Booker T and the MGs, The Pink Floyd, The Troggs, The Equals, Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac and French band Les Variations.

Nowadays New Year's Eve TV pop / rock specials are the norm - in the UK Jools Holland's Hootenanny has been running for nearly 20 years now - but back in the 60s Rock music was not accepted as mainstream family entertainment nor as prevalent on TV as it is now so this program is actually pretty cool and progressive for its time. Auntie BBC certainly weren't doing this kind of thing in the late 60s.

The Who

The Pipers at the Gates of Dawn
The program may have been a novel idea for its time but it also seems to show mid 60s pop culture in the last throes of its show-business trappings and on the cusp of the new age of rock. 1968 is remembered as a chaotic and revolutionary year - in France it almost brought the downfall of the government - but a musical revolution was also brewing which would affect all the bands here. 1968 can be seen as the last year in which rock'n'roll would still be seen as teenage "entertainment". The rock revolution of 1969 was about to turn it into an "art form" to be taken seriously and the hitherto "underground" hippy culture would go mainstream at Woodstock. The stage was set for change and some of the bands seen here, like The Who and Fleetwood Mac, would reinvent themselves and ride the new wave. Others, like The Troggs or The Equals, would soon find themselves cast adrift by the new rock cognoscenti who found their lightweight punk pop to be frivolous and ephemeral.

The transformation of The Who is perhaps the best example of the changes about to occur. They'd had a run of top 20 hit singles from 1965 to 1967 but had suffered a year long commercial dry spell in 1968. They were even starting to look washed-up. Yet at the time of this (mimed) performance of old hits they were just months away from releasing their rock opera Tommy, triumphing at the Woodstock festival and becoming one the great 1970s stadium rock bands.

It's also worthy of note that this show took place only 3 weeks after the band's stunning and show-stealing live performance in the Rolling Stones Rock'n'Roll Circus film. They didn't know it yet but The Who were about to have their most successful year ever in 1969.

The Small Faces

Unfortunately for the The Small Faces things looked bleaker. They were only weeks away from breaking up and this performance is possibly their last for TV. Singer and guitarist Steve Marriott, aware of the way rock was about to change and frustrated at being unable to shake off the band's Lazy Sunday / Itchycoo Park novelty "pop" image, went off to form rock boogie kings Humble Pie and conquer America. The Small Faces eventually cracked it by recruiting Rod Stewart and Ron Wood and reinventing themselves as the Faces.

Note - Look closely here, you can see Pete Townshend and Keith Moon sitting at the back of the stage - no doubt offering encouragement or the occasional acerbic witticism.

Fleetwood Mac were about to leave the blues behind and find considerable crossover success with chart hits like Albatross and Man of the World.

The Pink Floyd, however, were still finding their way after the loss of Syd Barrett 12 months earlier and were now on the way to becoming the premier live space rock band of 1969 - to which the live half of Ummagumma (recorded 5 months later) would be excellent testament.  

Joe Cocker, like The Who, was to find super-stardom the following summer when he put in a stunning performance at the Woodstock festival.  

The Troggs and The Equals, who might be about to find the new rock revolution a little tougher going, are certainly on fine form here and perhaps act as a portent of the late 70s punk era's return to the ethics of power and simplicity.

Fleetwood Mac

France's Les Variations are worth noting. This show was actually their TV debut and they soon left behind their rather splendid garage punk posturing here and started to write harder rock material that showed a strong north African and Moroccan influence. They became one of France's most successful bands of the early 70s and also the first French rock band to tour America and sign with an American label.

Booker T and the MGs

The Performances
All performances are live except The Who and The Small Faces who mimed for some reason. Did their gear get lost on the Channel ferry?

The Booker T and the MGs set is outstanding although there seems to be a bit of a mystery with regard to the date. The Stax / Volt tour of Europe with the MGs, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Carla Thomas and Sam and Dave was in early 1967. Did the MGs return on their own the following year?

The Equals, who were one the UK's first racially integrated bands, perform a frantic set of soul stompers. Fleetwood Mac are also on fine form with Jeremy Spencer, in full-on Elmore James mode, taking the lead on two of the three songs.  

Les Variations are simply classic 60s garage rock. Playing before an, at times, wildly enthusiastic home crowd this is an impressive TV debut. I'm sure many of those present would even have claimed that they stole the show.

Les Variations

All in all, this is great stuff. Like Hugh Hefner's "Playboy After Dark" it is another classic example of late 60s grooviness from a glittering day-glo era which was just about to change into a darker shade of denim and take itself far more seriously...

See below for artist order and tracklisting.

The WHO
01 - I’m A Boy
02 - I Can See For Miles
03 - Magis Bus
Roger Daltrey : vocals
Peter Townshend : guitar, vocals
John Entwistle : bass
Keith Moon : drums

The SMALL FACES
01 - Odgen’s Nut Gone Flake
02 - Song Of A Baker
03 - Rollin’ Over
Steve Marriott : guitar, vocal
Ian McLagan : keyboards
Ronnie Lane : bass
Kenny Jones : drums

BOOKER T & The MGs live at “Bibelot", unknown date”
01 - Green Onions
02 - Hooker Loo
Booker T Jones : organ
Steve Cropper : guitar
Donald “Duck” Dunn : bass
Al Jackson : drums

PINK FLOYD live at “Bilboquet" - Paris, Sept 7, 1968
01 - Let There Be More Light
David Gilmour : guitar, vocals
Richard Wright : keyboards, vocals
Roger Waters : bass, vocals
Nick Mason : drums

The EQUALS
01 - Softly Softly
02 - Equality
03 - Baby Come Back
Derv Gordon - lead vocals
Lincoln Gordon - guitar
Eddy Grant - guitar
Pat Lloyd - bass guitar
John Hall - drums

Les VARIATIONS
01 - Around & Around
02 - Everybody Needs Somebody
To Love
03 - Satisfaction
Joe Lebb : vocals
Marc Tobaly : guitar
Jacques “Petit Pois” Grande : bass
Jacky Bitton : drums

The TROGGS
01 - I Can’t Control Myself
02 - Peggy Sue
03 - Somewhere My Girl Is Waiting
Reg Presley : vocals
Chris Britton : guitar
Pete Staples : bass
Ronnie Bond : drums

JOE COCKER live at "Tour de Nesle" - Paris, unknown date
01 - I Shall Be Released
02 - With A Little Help From My Friends

FLEETWOOD MAC
01 - Homework
02 - My Baby's Sweet
03 - Dust My Broom
Peter Green : guitar, vocals
Jeremy Spencer : slide guitar, piano, vocals
Danny Kirwan : guitar
John McVie : bass
Mick Fleetwood : drums



Bonus tracks
Other artists who performed on the show but are not included in the clip above: Davy Jones, Marie La Foret, Jaques Dutronic, Aphrodite's Child, Antoine, Herbert Leonard, Johnny Haliday, Francoise Hardy and PP Arnold. The latter two are worth seeing though PP Arnold suffers from a bad sound mix.

Francoise Hardy - À quoi ça sert / Où va la chance / Suzanne

PP Arnold - If You Think You're Groovy
The Small Faces played on the recording but, funnily enough, are not here to mime to it.

More stranger than known

Hugh Hefner's "Playboy After Dark" 

Peter Green - "A Mind To Give Up Living" - The Blues of Despair and Salvation

The Faces BBC Sessions - 5 Guys Walk Into The BBC...

Parallax - The Pink Floyd BBC Sessions 

Amazing Journey - The road to "Live at Leeds". The Who Live in Philadelphia 19/10/1969

The Birth of the British Voice in Rock. British Psychedelia 1967 to 1974 - A Radio Kras podcast (in Spanish)

Last Friday I had the pleasure of appearing again on Gimi's show "In Campo Aperto" on Gijon's Radio Kras in Spain.

We decided to put together a program about British late 60s / early 70s psychedelia and the birth of the "British voice" in rock music.

One of the notable things about late 60s British psychedelia is that for the first time British rock bands stopped the pretense of singing in American accents and started to sing about more homegrown themes in an English accent - albeit quite a middle class one. British psychedelia gave the Brits a chance to take American music and really make it their own.

© D.Mainwood

It should be remembered that right up until the mid 60s everyone, including the Beatles, was singing American inspired pop and R'n'B in their best fake American accents. The true "British voice" in rock was born with Ray Davies and the Kinks singing about London's dedicated followers of fashion and well-respected men but then, around 1967, under the stewardship of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Caravan and quite a few others, it emigrates from the city to "get it together in the country" and explore the idyllic sultry summer afternoons of hazy childhood reminiscence in a manner that seemed quite heavily influenced by Lewis Caroll. British pop music of this period seems to take on a much hazier and greener hue as if to reflect the countryside itself. As I have observed elsewhere I can't help but think Jonathan Miller's (somewhat psychedelic) 1966 film interpretation of Alice In Wonderland may have had an influence on this new exploration of the pastoral but anyway, by the summer of 1967, a new interest in all things arcadian in British pop can plainly be heard in the addition of a new palate of instruments, such as flutes, mellotrons, harpsichords and horns, to create a kind of bucolic English baroque 'n' roll. Traffic and the Pink Floyd may have led the way but even the Rolling Stones sidestepped their usual R'n'B to make Ruby Tuesday and Dandelion - two of the finest examples of the new sound. The Beatles, as usual, topped everyone with Strawberry Fields Forever - a song and production which, in my opinion, is a kind of impressionist pop classic. In fact, considering its themes, perhaps this period can even be seen as a kind of British musical version of 19th Century French impressionism.

It has been criticized as an ephemeral and rather naive stage in British rock but some glorious music came out of it. So here is the show we put together as a kind of celebration of British pop's impressionist psychedelic baroque'n'roll period and its first attempt at a uniquely "British" sound. It is a mixture of the popular and well-known with a few unreleased rare things like the Traffic and Pink Floyd BBC concerts from 1970 and 1971 respectively.

Enjoy. The commentary is in Spanish.



Pink Floyd - See Emily Play / Paintbox / Kinks – See My Friends /  Victoria  / Shangri-la / Beatles – Strawberry Fields Forever / Rolling Stones - Goodbye Ruby Tuesday / She’s a Rainbow / Traffic – Paper Sun /  40 Thousand Headmen  / Traffic BBC in Concert (April 1970) - Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring? / Every Mother's Son / Medicated Goo / John Barleycorn Must Die / Pink Floyd BBC Concert (September 1971) – Fat Old Sun / One of These Days / Yardbirds – Happenings 10 Years Time Ago / Tomorrow – My White Bicycle / Pretty Things – Defecting Grey / Zombies - Beechwood Park / Hung Up On A Dream / Caravan - And I Wish I Were Stoned / Don't Worry / Robert Wyatt – A Last Straw / Little Red Riding Hood Hits The Road / Kevin Ayers – Stop This Train /  Religious Experience / Rolling Stones - Dandelion

Download here
https://archive.org/details/Aperto200614

http://radiokras.net/index.php?id=2162




More stranger than known
Jonathan Miller's Psychedelic Alice in Wonderland

Parallax - The Pink Floyd BBC Sessions

The Intergalactic Sofa - A Radio Kras Podcast 

My Radio Kras Podcasts - From Punk to Funk

Ten 21st Century Summer Psychedelic Nuggets 

Celestial Voices - The Pink Floyd live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam 1969

 

Celestial is right. This is one of the best Pink Floyd live recordings from their under-rated post Syd Barrett pre Dark Side of the Moon lost in space era.

The first half of this disc is 40 minutes of absolutely gorgeous interstellar Floyd in full-on warp factor space rock mode. It was recorded at a gig at the Paradiso in Amsterdam in the summer of 1969. The Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun here is intense. The Careful With That Axe, Eugene is sensorially bewildering and the Saucerful of Secrets has an empyreal glory the album version merely hints at.

The set was recorded by Dutch Radio Hilversum but due to some kind of technical foul-up the vocals were not recorded or are so far back in the mix as to be inaudible. This doesn't actually matter. Most of what the Floyd were doing at this time was instrumental anyway and the lack of vocals just adds to the unearthliness. David Gilmour's guitar is well up in the mix so what you get is a powerful set of space rock instrumentals with some really incendiary guitar playing from the man himself. There might be a few rough edges; this does not have the finesse of the live disc on Ummagumma or the BBC In Concert shows but it more than makes up for it atmosphere. It's rough but remember this is the avant garde Floyd as space rock pioneers. Tangerine Dream must have been orbiting somewhere nearby because it's only a short space shuttle ride from here to their classic 70s trailblazing space rock albums Atem, Alpha Centauri or Zeit .

Listen to this. Believe me, this really is some of the finest and most intense Floydian space rock around. And for its age the sound quality is superlative.

Fasten seat belts and set the controls...


Pink Floyd live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam, Holland. Saturday 9th August 1969.
1. Interstellar Overdrive (part)        
2. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun        
3. Careful With That Axe, Eugene        
4. A Saucerful Of Secrets

If you can find the bootleg CD two superb unreleased late 60s BBC sessions follow the Paradiso gig and make this one of the best Floyd boots to come out in recent years. These pastoral BBC recordings (more of which here) allow for a safe and gently floating reentry into the planetary atmosphere and subsequent happy landing.
   
Paris Cinema, Lower Regent Street, London. Monday 12th May 1969.
5. Daybreak (Grantchester Meadows)        
6. Nightmare (Cymbaline)        
7. The Beginning (Green Is The Colour) / Beset By Creatures Of The Deep (Careful With That Axe, Eugene)        
8. The Narrow Way (Narrow Way Part 3)
    
BBC Studios. 201 Piccadilly, London. Tuesday 25th June 1968.
9. Top Gear Introduction        
10. The Murderotic Women Or Careful With That Axe, Eugene        
11. The Massed Gadgets Of Hercules (A Saucerful Of Secrets)        
12. Let There Be More Light        
13. Julia Dream        
14. Top Gear Conclusion


stranger than known
More on the Pink Floyd BBC Sessions here
Parallax - The Pink Floyd and the BBC


And
Golf, Fine Wines and Match of the Day - Jill Furmanovsky remembers Pink Floyd

Golf, Fine Wines and Match of the Day - Jill Furmanovsky remembers Pink Floyd

Floyd not drug crazed hippies shock!
Roger Waters played golf!
Hobbies on the road were fine wines and sport!

Jill Furmanovsky by Nick Mason

In the audio clip below photographer Jill Furmanovsky recalls hanging out with Pink Floyd around the time they were making Dark Side of the Moon. Apparently the band were more interested in watching football than taking drugs...

An interesting listen.
Beggars the question of how many of those excess fueled shenanigans from the 1960s and 70s (Led Zeppelin, The Who, Stones etc) are in fact just myths and legends exaggerated and reinforced by time, the tabloid press and our own need for (rock and roll) fantasy.

listen to ‘'Pink Floyd would end gigs in time for Match of the Day' ’ on Audioboo

Pink Floyd discussing if favourites Leeds United or plucky 2nd division underdogs Sunderland will win the 1973 cup final.
Nick Mason studies the wine list.
Photo - Jill Furmanovsky

More
BBC News - Pink Floyd's early Brighton Dome gigs recalled

 
More stranger than known
Parallax - The Pink Floyd and the BBC 

Redeeming the 70s - Brian Eno 1971-1977: The Man Who Fell To Earth

Jonathan Miller's Psychedelic Alice in Wonderland

 

Shown on BBC TV just after Christmas 1966 Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland caused a similar media furor to that of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour exactly one year later. The Daily Mail called the film X rated and it was even seen as an attack on family values. This is not therefore the Alice in Wonderland of Disney or more recent adaptations for children. This was made for adults and most of the characters are played by actors in standard Victorian dress. It also explored some of the more philosophical and existentialist themes that are often ignored in other versions of the story. Alice asks "Who am I?" and is lost in world where nothing is real.

In other words, this is 1966 and Alice is going down to Strawberry Fields...

Seen now, this film can be viewed as an evocation of the same ethereal spacey English summer afternoon that The Pink Floyd would explore on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, or The Beatles on Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds and Strawberry Fields Forever.  A multitude of other British psychedelically inspired bands were also about to trip through these same fields during 1967's "summer of love" which was just round the corner. The soundtrack features the sitar of Ravi Shankar which also imbues the film with a humid air of psychedelic sensory abandonment.


US band Jefferson Airplane probably recorded the most famous ode to Alice and the psychedelic exploration of inner space with their White Rabbit but, unlike their American counterparts who took acid and headed off into both inner and outer space, British hippies took hallucinogenics and were transported back to a kind of idealized magical summer afternoon of childhood innocence. There is a very strong pastoral influence in British psychedelia which can be heard in many recordings from this period. Try watching this film with the sound off and listen to the first couple of Traffic, albums or Donovan, The Zombies, The Incredible String Band, Sgt Pepper, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, The Rolling Stones' 1967 singles Dandelion and Ruby Tuesday as well as parts of Satanic Majesties, or any decent late 60s psychedelic compilation; Mojo magazine's Acid Drops, Spacedust & Flying Saucers for instance, and you will hear the mood that is evoked by the film is also that which is explored by the music of this era

As this film was shown on TV in late December 1966 it's no stretch of the imagination to suggest that this film must have had an influence on the development of British psychedelia in the months that followed.

Miller's directing style is slow and photographic. Scenes appear at times to be staged for a Victorian photo album.The film also features some of Miller's acting friends and acquaintances and can perhaps also be seen as part of that surreal strand in British humour that was prevalent in the 60s. Peter Sellers is the King of Hearts and two of Miller's fellow cast members from Beyond the Fringe, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett are the Mad Hatter and the Mouse. Steptoe and Son's Wilfrid Brambell plays the White Rabbit, Leo McKern (who would go on to play No.2 in The Prisoner) is in drag as the Ugly Duchess and even Malcolm Muggeridge (the journalist and broadcaster famous for accusing Monty Python's Life of Brian for  blasphemy) is in it as the Gryphon. Coincidentally, it also features Monty Python's Eric Idle as an uncredited member of the Caucus Race.
.
So if you are in the mood for a trip back to the pastoral psychedelia of Grantchester Meadows or Strawberry Fields Forever then follow the white rabbit below.
But make sure you're home in time for tea...


Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland (1966)

• Directed by: Jonathan Miller
• Produced by: Jonathan Miller
• Written by: Lewis Carroll (novel); Jonathan Miller (teleplay)
• Music by: Ravi Shankar
• Cinematography: Dick Bush
• Editing by: Pam Bosworth
• Release date: 28 December 1966

Note on location

The scenes of Alice running down corridors of wide open windows at the beginning of the film were shot at the now demolished Royal Victoria Military Hospital in Netley near Southampton. Part of the building still exists as a museum and the stairs Alice runs down can be seen from the entrance. The museum commemorates the old hospital which was originally built in 1863 and  was used for military personnel during various wars of Empire and the 1st World War. Psychiatrist R.D. Laing worked there in the 1950s when he was in the army.


The grounds are now a country park. I've often been down there walking the dog. There is a duck pond and fields and woods at the back. And on humid soporific summer days, when there's no one else around, it can still cast a spell...

Bella at Netley © David Mainwood

More
Jonathan Miller's Alice In Wonderland (1966): A Suitable Case for Treatment
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01439685.2011.572607#.Ub7xwJySIx5




Now try this
Parallax - The Pink Floyd and the BBC
http://strangerthanknown.blogspot.com.es/2013/02/parallax-pink-floyd-and-bbc.html

Parallax - The Pink Floyd BBC Sessions

Photo: David Mainwood

With the surfeit of BBC sessions CDs around nowadays it seems strange that the Pink Floyd refuse to countenance a release of any of the 3 hours worth of material they recorded for the BBC in the late 1960s and very early 1970s. One wonders why. It certainly can’t be a lack of demand. Legal Problems? Band members not agreeing?  Quality control?  Does David Gilmour really regard them as being substandard?

How do the Pink Floyd sessions compare to the official recordings and are they deserving of release?

The sessions run from the Syd Barrett era in 1967 through to the release of Meddle in late 1971 when they were only a year or so away from massive international success with Dark Side of the Moon. Historically therefore, they are of quite some importance. They catalogue not only the Barrett period but also the transitional experimental years when they got lost in space and wrote slightly scary songs about axes and grooving with Picts. Sound quality varies from “listenable” on the early Barrett sessions (the BBC wiped them and what survives is thanks to fan recordings off the air) to excellent mono on the 1968 to 1970 sessions, and the last “In Concert” recording from 1971 is in stereo.




BBC2 Look of the Week. BBC Television Centre, London, 14 May 1967
Fascinating Syd era performance of part of Pow R. Toc H., Astronomy Domine and interview. Musician and writer Hans Keller asks Roger Waters and a well-spoken and articulate Syd Barrett "Why does it all have to be so loud?" and then declares their music to be somewhat infantile, “A little bit of a regression to childhood. But after all, why not?”
Indeed.

Studio Sessions 1967 - 1969
1) Recorded September 25, 1967 at BBC Playhouse Theater. Broadcast October 1, 1967 (on Top Gear). Flaming / Scarecrow / Matilda Mother / The Gnome / Set The Controls / Reaction in G   
   
2) Recorded December 20, 1967 at BBC Maida Vale Studios. Broadcast December 31, 1967 (on Top Gear). Pow R Toc H / Vegetable Man / Scream Thy Last Scream / Jugband Blues

3) Recorded June 25, 1968 at BBC 210 Piccadilly Studios. Broadcast August 11, 1968 (on Top Gear). Let There Be More Light / Murderistic Women (aka Careful with That Axe Eugene) / Julia Dream / The Massed Gadgets of Hercules (aka A Saucerful of Secrets)

4) Recorded December 2, 1968 at BBC Maida Vale Studios. Broadcast December 15, 1968 (on Top Gear). Point Me At the Sky / Embryo / Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major (aka The Narrow Way, Part 1) / Interstellar Overdrive

5) Recorded May 12, 1969 at BBC Paris Cinema. Broadcast May 14, 1969 (on Night Ride, then rebroadcast June 1, 1969 on Top Gear)
Daybreak (aka Grantchester Meadows) / Nightmare (aka Cymbaline) / The Beginning (aka Green is the Colour) / Beset By Creatures of the Deep (aka Careful With That Axe, Eugene) / The Narrow Way (Part Three)

"Lucifer Sam" Photo: David Mainwood

The first Barrett session at the BBC contains an early brisk version of Set The Controls and a snatch of the unreleased instrumental Reaction in G. The second session is perhaps the most interesting. Pow R Toc H has a slightly more jazz boogie inflected piano solo and demented Barrett guitar playing than the LP version. There are also the unreleased Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream (Old Woman with a Basket) which would have been singles had Syd stayed. However a month after this session was recorded the band “forgot” to pick him up on the way to a gig in Southampton. So Syd bows out here with a version of Jugband Blues where kazoos replace the brass band and Rick Wright provides a short eastern inflected psychedelic organ coda. After making it clear that he’s not here Syd asks, “And what exactly is a dream? And what exactly is a joke?” and then leaves us bereft to rue his madness.

Jugband Blues

Post Barrett the band was left without a major songwriter. However, it comes as no great surprise that they continued venturing into spacier and more pastoral areas as they’d already started to explore these themes in Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine, Pow R Toc H and Scarecrow.

So Julia Dream, on the first (June 1968) session without Barrett, leads us into languid idyllic summer dreamscapes of rivers, trees and meadows. I rather prefer the shorter (6:50) A Saucerful of Secrets (here called The Massed Gadgets of Hercules) as it cuts out some of the rather tedious arsing about on the LP version leaving the rather wistful finale more or less intact albeit with the voices somewhat buried in the mix.

Rick Wright has now become integral to the band’s sound. His ethereal layered keyboards lead us through a December 1968 session notable for a Barrettless Interstellar Overdrive with definite prog-rock tendencies, the flop single Point Me At the Sky and a very trippy Embryo.

On the May 1969 session the songs appear to be thematically connected and it is perhaps the most enjoyable set here. The band was developing an idea of turning some already existing songs into a piece called A Man and A Journey at this time. As Grantchester Meadows / Cymbaline / Green is the Colour / Careful With That Axe, Eugene / The Narrow Way (Part Three) segue musically and thematically into one another, this session seems to reveal the first signs of a desire to come up with a larger more integrated work. Again Wright dominates the sound as the band guide us through a layered audio mist to somewhere which, rather like on an old episode of Star Trek, seems to be another earth like planet but where all the people have mysteriously disappeared and you’re not quite sure what’s going to pop out from behind the bushes.

This last studio session seems to suggest that the band have surmounted Barrett’s loss and now have a few ideas of their own. It is also notable how much Rick Wright contributed to the band’s sound in these years. The sound of the Floyd in space owes an awful lot to his keyboard textures.

The 1968 - 1969 Sessions

>

In Concert 1970 and 1971
6) Recorded July 16, 1970 before a live audience at BBC Paris Cinema
The Embryo / Fat Old Sun / Green Is the Colour / Careful With That Axe, Eugene / If / Atom Heart Mother

7) Recorded September 30, 1971 before a live audience at BBC Paris Cinema
Fat Old Sun (long version) / One of These Days / The Embryo (later version) / Echoes / Blues Jam    

Photo: David Mainwood

The July 16th 1970 show, introduced by the great John Peel, was the first of two one hour long “In Concert”  live sessions to be recorded live at BBC Paris Cinema. Green Is the Colour is segued with Careful With That Axe, Eugene and Atom Heart Mother is performed in its entirety with choir and orchestra. To be honest I’ve never been impressed with AHM. It seems to spend its 25 odd minutes chasing its own tail and falling flat on its arse. Here is no exception.

The 1971 show is far superior and reveals a band now confident and mature. David Gilmour's guitar playing has become more prominent and tastefully compliments Wright's spacey textures. The extended version of Fat Old Sun is sublime even if it is a little restrained compared to later performances on the same tour. One of These Days really kicks into a groove and Echoes, although occasionally rather sluggish and not as polished as the studio version, is a far more successful creation than Atom Heart Mother. A much longer Embryo now comes with spooky sound effects and the band encore, as they usually did on the 1971 shows, with a straight 12 bar called Blues.

There are some gorgeous moments on this show (the extended guitar solo on Fat Old Sun especially) and it stands up well against the live half of Ummagumma. Along with the 1969 studio sessions it is some of the best music the band recorded in this rather underrated period between 1968 and 1971. These BBC sessions draw a superb outline of the band's work at a time when the Pink Floyd set off in search of deep space only to find themselves on the Dark Side of the Moon.

So yes, these BBC sessions definitely deserve a release, and as Hans Keller would have said, “But after all, why not?”

The September 30th 1971 show

Moonhead 
Instrumental recorded for the BBC’s 'But what if it's made of green cheese'. Broadcast at 10pm on 20th July 1969 - the evening of the first moon landing.

More Floyd on stranger than known
Celestial Voices - The Pink Floyd live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam 1969

Golf, Fine Wines and Match of the Day - Jill Furmanovsky remembers Pink Floyd





My moon-landing jam session by David Gilmour
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/02/apollo-11-pink-floyd-session

 
Keeping It Peel http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/artists/p/pinkfloyd/