Forget the 12 days of Xmas. While you were sleeping, Pink Floyd quietly gave us the 13 concerts of Xmas. Repeating a holiday gift from two years ago — when they temporarily added 18 concerts from 1972 to streaming services — the band just released 13 full concert performances recorded 50 years ago. There are two France shows from June ’74, eight shows from Edinburgh, Newcastle and London from November ’74, and three December ’74 shows from Manchester and Bristol.
These are full shows, as they would have sounded when Floyd were taking their breakthrough masterpiece on the road for the first time. Dark Side Of The Moon was released on March 1, 1973. That year they spent January and February performing a series of shows in collaboration with French choreographer Roland Petit.
The Pink Floyd Ballet featured five songs — One of These Days, Careful With That Axe Eugene, Obscured by Clouds, When You’re In and Echoes. They did eight shows — two a day on Jan. 13, Jan. 14, Feb. 3 and Feb. 4, all at Paris’s Palais des Sports. Then, nothing until March 4 — when the band started rolling out Dark Side Of The Moon to audiences in the United States, with two Canadian shows in Toronto and Montreal on March 11 and 12, respectively. The album began its record-setting 736-week nonconsecutive run on the Billboard 200 on March 17 — the day they played Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
This North American swing wrapped at the end of March and the band flew back to the U.K. Their first show on home turf was at Earl’s Court on May 18, 1973. Dark Side Of The Moon was No. 10 on the charts at that moment. There was some obvious stuff ahead of them, and some maybe-not-so-obvious stuff. David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane was No. 1. Then you had the blue and red Beatles compilation albums… and Max Bygraves? Yep. The English comedian’s Singalonga Max Vol. 3 was No. 5 on the charts. No. 4 was a bloody K-Tel compilation (Believe In Music). No. 8 was also a compilation — 40 Fantastic Hits From The ’50s And ’60s. The rest of it makes sense, though — Red Rose Speedway by Wings, Billion Dollar Babies by Alice Cooper, and Roxy Music’s last romp with Brian Eno, For Your Pleasure, which dropped three weeks after Dark Side Of The Moon.
So, Floyd did two London shows and immediately flew back to the States for the formal Dark Side tour, which started June 17 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. They did a ridiculous 13 shows in 12 days and flew back to the U.K., finishing the year with two October shows in Germany and Austria, and two more on Nov. 4 at London’s Rainbow Theatre.
Between the Europe shows and the two London ones, Dark Side Of The Moon dropped off the Billboard 200 (on Oct. 19). It didn’t re-enter until Dec. 18, 1976. In England, the album stayed on the charts from March 31 to Sept. 29, 1973, and again from Oct. 13 1973 to May 8, 1976.
So now we come to 1974 — the year from which these new live streaming releases were recorded. The band did 27 shows in 1974. We got 13 of those overnight.
Let’s start with the centerpiece of the new titles: A series of shows at Empire Pool Wembley. The band played four gigs there from Nov. 14-17, 1974. For the 50th anniversary of Dark Side Of The Moon last year, they released a live version of the album compiled from those four shows, wrapped inside a cool, alternate sleeve based on the conceptual sketches of graphic artist George Hardie. Now you can hear three of the four source concerts and figure out what the band believed were the best bits versus the ones they left out. A safe bet is they didn’t use any of the first show on Nov. 14, because that’s the only one of the four not included in the new streams. We get the Nov. 15, 16 and 17 shows. Check out the Nov. 16 show below. We’ll get to the others gigs in a minute.
The setlists for these shows are interesting. When the band performed the album in the States earlier in the year, they were still opening their shows with Obscured By Clouds. But, when they started gigging in 1974, they were fresh from a seven-month break. During this time, they started work on new songs which would end up on either their followup album, 1975’s Wish You Were Here, or 1977’s Animals. As such, the new shows all started with Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Raving & Drooling (Sheep) and You Gotta Be Crazy (Dogs), before launching into the Dark Side song cycle. They were consistently performing Echoes as an encore.
Jumping back a few months, the first shows of 1974 were a seven-concert French summer tour from June 18-26. Two of these shows are among the 13 released last night — June 22 and 24 in Colmar and Paris.
Then the band took the rest of the summer and fall off, resuming live performances in November 1974. The new streaming releases include three of their first four shows after that break. We get the first two at Usher Hall in Edinburgh on Nov. 4 and 5.
They don’t give us the first of two shows in Newcastle on Nov. 8, but do give us the one from the very next day on Nov. 9.
The next three shows are the Wembley ones, which — as I mentioned — are all included. They have identical setlists, apart from the third show which started with Raving & Drooling and then went into Shine On…, while the other two shows have them in reverse order.
It’s actually shocking how close the performances are. For example, Money was only two seconds longer on Nov. 17 than it was on Nov. 15.
Coincidentally, on Nov. 14, EMI re-released Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett’s two solo albums in a special two-record set, just as the band were opening shows with a tribute to their troubled former frontman and principal songwriter.
The next show was in Stoke-On-Trent on Nov. 19. This show is included in the streams, and has the same setlist.
After that, they played a show in Cardiff, Wales, which isn’t included. Perhaps it wasn’t recorded, but I doubt it, considering the consistency otherwise. From Wales, the band went up to Liverpool for three shows at the Empire Theatre Nov. 28-30. The new streaming releases include the middle show on Nov. 29.
Curiously, the Liverpool stand was followed by a run of three more shows in Birmingham from Dec. 3-5. None of these concerts have been made available. Meanwhile, EMI (Capitol / Harvest) re-released Floyd’s first two albums as A Nice Pair on Dec. 5, 1973, to capitalize on the popularity of Dark Side Of The Moon in time for Xmas.
The Birmingham shows were followed by a pair of gigs at Manchester’s Palace Theatre on Dec. 9 and 10. We get the first of those two shows.
Pink Floyd wrapped 1974 with a final pair of concerts at the Hippodrome in Bristol. We get ’em both.
The band spent Christmas with their families — perhaps listening to these recordings just like you are 50 years later. In January, they convened at Abbey Road to start putting their well-rehearsed, road-tested new material on tape. They didn’t perform live again until April 8, 1975 in Vancouver.
Maybe we’ll get that show next year at this time.
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
