10 things of 'Live at Pompeii McMLXXII' of which to discuss with other Pink Floyd fanatics

The Live historian in Pompeii returns (again), and with a great pump. They are Pink Floyd before the moon, animals, wall, and obviously the final cut. It is the first result of the recent passage to the Sony of the Pink Floyd catalog for the imzia of 400 million dollars (but copyrights are excluded). But now it's called Pink Floyd at Pompeii McMLXXIIwith the charming addition of the Roman number that reports the date of the first release in cinemas. But what are we about to see and feel, exactly? There is many things to say, which is why we try to dissimulate them with the misunderstood expedient of the list of the 10 things that you could discuss with the other patients of Pink Floyd – Hey, are we not all?

From 24 to 30 April it will be possible to see the film in over 200 Italian cinemas – in a very cleaned version in 4K starting from the original coils (“miraculously found”, as it is used) and with the audio remixed in Dolby Atmos obviously by the accommodation Steven Wilson. Immediately afterwards, from May 2, DVD, Blu-ray, LP (double) and CD (double) will be available. The disc versions had never come out before, unlike the video. And here we begin the digressions.

This is a fourth version of the film-concert. If, like the writer, you lost the original version of 1972 for shabby registry reasons, know that that first exit was a fiasco and induced the director Adrian Maben to make a second in the following months with the precious addition of interviews with the four Floyd, and of the “behind the scenes” made of Abbey Road while they engraved The Dark Side of the Moon. And this second version of 1974 was seen by a little more people (but not exactly ocean masses). In 2002 a Director's cut With some non -essential additions (Spatial images of the NASA, a little Gulf and Vesuvius absent in the first take) and others more interesting, with some more interviews and the images of Gilmour and Wright who overwhelms the voices for Echoes. For this version of the MMXXV (i.e., now) a step back has been taken. We would not be able to tell you with certainty because, even if we are doing some illunctions to do. Probably squalid, like all the illications.

In October 1971 the Pink Floyd were not yet one of the emblems of high loyalty, they were in the post-Barrett phase of experimental credibility. They were a very strange animal, perhaps the only rock group really loved by intellectuals, who sought them insistently – from Antonioni to Roland Petit, from Polansky to Nureyev. Hit did not talk about it, they still had an underground fame but they were already becoming punctilious for the sound aspect. However, Steven Wilson warns: “I worked to return the original naturalness of the execution, but the recording is very elementary: music was engraved through four mono sources. Then they went to Paris for the overdubs of the voices and some instrumental additions, but for 85% the ribbons were those of an instrumental group on four slopes, so I had no great room for maneuver “.

Effectively, Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun And Careful with That Axe, Eugenein the film proposed with a fictitious Pompeian background, they were recorded in the studio in Paris in early 1972 (as well as Mademoiselle Nobs). Three songs were performed in Pompeii: two of the disc Meddle out at the time, or Echoes (astutely divided into two parts) and One of These Daysplus the (relatively) old (relatively) In Saucerful of Secretsrequested by the director but always present in the group setlists. The acoustic differences are intangible, even if the witnesses speak of the unreal silence of the amphitheater (in those days of October 1971, closed to the public) and how music reverberated in a unique way on the surrounding stones. But we presume that you must have very fine ears to grasp these nuances even in the splendor of Dolby Atmos. On the other hand, you have the feeling that Wilson has emphasized the tools, trying to make them stand out individually. Sometimes it seems that, like the director, Sympatizi for Nick Mason: the battery often seems to dominate everything. In Echoespartially covers one of the-clou moments of the song, Gilmour's riff after the long central build. But perhaps we are (inevitably) distracted from what the images suggest. So let's go back.

In reality, one of the reasons why for almost half an hour we go through we witness the baton drivers's blows it is not only because at that moment it is the only one of the four who really seems to be a rocker. Among the “miraculously found” coils there are no those that rebalanced the situation for the benefit of others. So for example in One of These Days He is the absolute protagonist also in the part in which we would like to see Gilmour's threatening gusts of guitar or waters's pounding bass.

It is not entirely clear to us the reason why some of the interviews present in the Director's cut: The reasons can be different, from the (many) open wounds that can be further revived by certain phrases at the time simply honest on personal relationships within the group, to the fact that while it gives some answers, the bassist has fun playing games with the puffs while he is not not by by (we do not exclude any hypothesis, however bizarre). However, being in the privileged position of those who know how it ends, it is fascinating to note something that perhaps in the 70s no one could grasp, namely that alongside three quiet musicians (and far from being Rock'n'roll Animals), the black and gram type is the one with the artist license, which goes to rage on the gong or the Cimbali, which brings the greatest aspects of physicality and instinct, until we enter almost literally in Waters' mouth for the primordial cry of pain of Careful With That Axe. It is also one of the moments when the director uses images in the best way. Even if then the song, and we do not say it in a negative but fatalistic sense, today it sounds ancient as the Pompeian frescoes.

The corset of the four on the slopes of the volcano, giving up brats like the Beatles of the beginning, has something of bizarre – in reality even more than one of the moments deprecated by Nick Mason, the flawless freestyle of the dog Mademoiselle Nobs: a lesson for many authentic dogs to which a microphone is given in 2025. In any case, all that wind the Pink Floyd deserved it, given how many times they made it feel in the records. Too bad that the very real anxiety experienced by all the production in the middle of the days passed in Pompeii is not documented, for the procession of the Virgin that blocked the trucks, or for the energy insufficiency of the area, a problem resolved with an endless cable that, depending on the interviews, ran from the amphitheater to the town hall of Pompeii or the nearest church. However, one of the lovable things to see is the amount of cables necessary for rock'n'roll to reach the world. You could also say: removed the cables, after the rock'n'roll.

The film, the director said several times, was born as a semi-polemic response to the musical films of the time, especially Woodstock, those with the concert in front of the praised crowd, who were the norm “together with those who told the group how A Hard Day's Night». A lot could be discussed on this belief (there had been the cinema-verité phase of Let it be with the beatles or One Plus One with Rolling Stones). But always in hindsight, seeing the wall of Wem amplifiers and thinking about a group that escapes the public is a fascinating premonition of what would have happened for The wall. Not to mention the fact that it could be the first real “Arena” in which the Pink Floyd perform, who in front of the arenas full of people reserved for them from the near future would always have had sensations of forefront. Mason: «Suddenly there were more than 10 thousand people who asked us Money Because they wanted to shake the buttocks, and they made a mess during the pieces of the other records ». This would bring Roger Waters to a well -known cathartic episode (with built -in spit), but this has nothing to do with Pompeii.

On the other hand, his complement and arcademic Gilmour in Pompeii returned to us in July 2016 for two extremely spectacular concerts, and with a thick paying audience. It could be said that if the Live at Pompeii It was supposed to be an anti-woodstock, Gilmour in Pompeii was an anti-Live at Pompeii. Let me be clear, things change, people change, music changes, and in short, we love them the same, even as it gives on the nerves to Waters, to whom we want as well. If they never met, many interesting things would have happened.

Despite his fascinating Richard Wright sweaters, the member of the group driven on the sidelines by the images (not by Waters, for once) and by the placement of the keyboards, is sadly, while the battery is almost always at the center of everything, curiously if you think that in the drums ranking with a hypertrophic ego, Mason would not enter the first thousand. On the other hand there is a lot of melancholy beauty in the fragments in which the plan rings during the recording of Dark side of the moonthe album that is coming as an eruption on the four, and which in its own way will cover many layers of music and popularity and paranoia and rock'n'roll many of the things we see in this film. But it is thanks to the Simptern Prisma that this film is returning to theaters, this is clear to everyone.

“It went down the night. You would hear the moans of women, the screams of the children, the cries of the husbands. There were those who for fear of death, invoked it. Many pleaded the gods; many believed that there were no longer, and that that was the last night in the world”. This was Pliny the young man-nephew of that other, who died during the eruption of 79 AD from cardio-respiratory crisis, in Stabia. He had gone both because he was fascinated by the phenomenon and the curiosity to see what the hell was happening, both to try to save a friend during the apocalypse. We insert this to emphasize that yes, the frescoes, the amphitheater, in agreement … but in the film only the title tells the public something of the place where the concert takes place, and of its history. Perhaps we are excessive, but in short, at least a minimum of hint. Also because the walls of amplifiers with peremptorily written “Pink Floyd. London” give the feeling of – Boh, is it too much to say cultural appropriation? Yes, you're probably right. But thanks for reading so far.