Immceptible Pink Floyd. With their historic live recorded among the suggestive ruins of the ancient Roman amphitheater of Pompeii, they return to the top to the top ten. “Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMLXXII” is in fact at number 1 in the best -selling album ranking of the week, as well as in that of the vinyls, according to the FIMI/GFK surveys. The album came out in conjunction with the film, shot in October 1971.
The legendary English training bares from the top “Santana Money Gang”, the first joint album of the rappers Sfera Ebbasta and Shiva. However, the two maintain the command between the individuals with “Neon”. Third position, on the debut for Elodie, with “I love me hate me”. Stable, respectively in the fourth and fifth place, Achille Lauro with “ordinary mortals”, his seventh work in the studio, and Olly, triumpher of Sanremo 2025, with “Balorda Nostalgia”. On the other hand, the rapper Artie5ives with the album “Labellavita”, who sees collaborations with Capo Plaza, Tony Boy, Kid Yugi, Nily Savage and Guè, drops. Monster with “Metal and meat”, the new work of the Roman rapper after two years from “The Illest”, enters seventh place. Eighth place for Bad Bunny, the Latin Pop star who has just announced two live dates in Italy, with “Debí Tirar Más Photos”. They close the top ten Geolier with the stainless “God knows”, at the 48th week from the publication (ninth), and nuclear tactical penguins with “Hello World” (tenth).
The album “Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMLXXII” was published for the first time as a complete live. The 2025 remix by Steven Wilson is available in CD formats, Blu-ray, DVD, digital audio and Dolby Atmos. “The Pink Floyd – revealed the leader of the Porcupine Tree – have always been my favorite band. My father had practically made me washing the brain with 'The Dark Side of the Moon', but I did not know the other side of their music – the psychedelic and improvised one – until I saw 'Pink Floyd at Pompeii'. A 'Born to Boogie' of the T. Rex, who then became another great musical love of mine. From that moment, the link with the film has grown to become something intimate and lasting: “I bought it in VHS, then on DVD, and I saw it countless times times. I have always had a copy on the shelf. Working at the remix of the soundtrack was a real dream that is realized. The original recording is very essential: four mono tracks – battery, guitars, bass and keyboards. They were added to the studio in Paris, but for 85% it is a raw, instrumental recording.
“Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMLXXII”, legendary live – with an incalculable historical value – testifies to a period of incredible creativity of a band that sees the swan song of its psychedelic phase, which began thanks to the mind of the Syd Barrett of “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”. 1971 is therefore a year of transition between one phase and another, between the end of the purely lysergic sounds and the abbral towards a totally new road, almost a leap in the darkness, which will lead to limits and satisfactions without limits.
The greatness of Pompeii's live lies precisely in testifying a temporary and very short coexistence between this two phases that coexistly coexist for the entire duration of the recordings: the first phase is testified in the songs played live, a real monument of the Psychedelic period of Pink Floyd, from “A Saucerful of Secrets” to “Meddle”; The second, still in embryo, attested by the videos of the studio tests in which Richard Wright, David Gilmour and Roger Waters try “Us and Them” and the only Wright is looking for the piano melody of “The Great Gig in the Sky”. Two very different souls, which however coexist without clashing, almost as happens in a sunset that unites, but divides the day, the day and night.
Listening for the first time the Pompeii live in such a high audio quality (in 5.1 and Dolby Atmos), thanks to the work of Steven Wilson, who enhances the depth and clarity of the sound, respecting the authenticity and spirit of the original version, and being able to see the high -definition images at the cinema, is therefore an exciting experience for a concert that had never been published on CD (for this reason I do not find it in our album ranking. live).
Listening to “Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMLXXII” clearly makes the idea of what miracle they managed to create those four brilliant guys, so sure of their means that they raise madness and unconsciousness, so much so that they brought all their ideas to extreme consequences, at a time when the alchemy was at the highest levels. Precisely this balance between so debuting personalities is visible in all moments of the live: from the exhilarating version of a masterpiece such as “Echoes” – perhaps the apex suite of the British psychedelia, magnificent synthesis of the affinity between Wright and Gilmour – to the twin songs “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” and “One of These Days”, who reach a Lyssergrade style. Floydian So well recognizable as to be different from the sound of each British or American psychedelic band, practically unreachable in intensity even by the most renowned formations of the period.
Things do not change in the songs taken from their second LP. “A saucerful of secrets” and “set the controls for the heart of the sun”, with the iconic image of Roger Waters that affects the gong, testify to the coexistence between characteristics so outlined that know, however, according to the needs of the band, emerge or make aside at the right moments. Just in the very strong self -confidence was the seed of evil that would bring to the future imbalance and the subsequent breakage. As in fact, he says in one of the interviews of the film Nick Mason, “things will be fine until some of us think they can do without others”, effectively predicting the near future of the band.
A perfect live, therefore, whose historical value goes far beyond that of the individual songs, but it is precisely the testimony of an entire era, among the leaders of the golden decade of rock. A live in which Pink Floyd also know how to take moments of lightness in the blues “Mademoiselle Nobs”, an alternative version of “Seamus”, one of the acoustic songs of “Meddle”, “sung” magnificently by a Russian greyhound named Nobs who ululate as in “Seamus” had made a Border Collie. Total work recorded in a moment of change, Pink Floyd's Pompeii live of Pompeii marks (and closes) an era of the history of rock music. To listen and listen to. To see and review.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
