Pink Floyd - P#U#L#S#E (EMI)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Why have Pink Floyd adored by so many, for so long? Because, one guesses, something about them still seems completely untouchable, utterly alien, completely removed from the workings of other bands, other music, even humanity. Pink Floyd exists like some kind of entity unto itself, not made up of mere people, not restrained by the forces that hold other outfits back. Pink Floyd does what the hell it wants to do and you will never, ever be able to comprehend how and why. Shut up and be grateful about it. Watch 'P*U*L*S*E', and feel about an inch tall.
That, one secondly guesses, is why Pink Floyd live shows are such flamboyant affairs. When actually playing their songs, the Floyd cannot get around the fact that those behind their composition are human beings, not extra terrestrial life forms, and that at some point, a bunch of balding, fattening, boring looking middle aged men will have to do something as mundane as bang a drum, give a guitar a strum or tap on a piano. Best dress it up with enormous pigs, fireworks and ker-ay-zee visuals then, hadn't we? Can't have the public finding out what we're actually like as people!
'P*U*L*S*E*', a double DVD set of a live show from 1994, is ridiculous. It's the live show to end all live shows, props, gimmicks, pyrotechnics, the whole kit and caboodle. Every effort possible is made to make Pink Floyd, even in the flesh, come across as otherworldly. If you were there on the day. Granted, there is something funny about David Gilmour's face, he does look a bit like an alien (and also somewhat like a frog), but the rest look remarkably normal. Sitting in Earls Court, one wouldn't be able to notice, but the DVD puts you up Richard Wright's nostrils, in Gilmour's eyes, right next to Nick Mason's sweaty brow. The myth of Pink Floyd is completely destroyed. My Dad looks cooler, and they talk like posh prats. The mask is coming off and I don't like the face behind it.
Thankfully, the music still maintains an ethereal quality which can't be damaged even by ridiculous amounts of unnecessary DVD extras that show you what the band are like when they're waiting in airports, playing with their babies and indulging in toilet humour. On the first disc, they run through the hits (OK, and some stuff from 'The Division Bell'), and sonically it's marvellous - 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' pompous enough to make you consider whether punk rock was actually that cool anyway, 'Another Brick in the Wall' still has a spookiness to it that little other mainstream guitar music has matched since, and the closing trio of 'Wish You Were Here', 'Comfortably Numb' and 'Run Like Hell' really shows a band playing a strong final hand. The second disk, however, is where the real treat lies - a complete, note for note run though of signature record 'The Dark Side of the Moon', delivered coldly, calculatedly, passionlessly - exactly how the marvellous thing sounds on the record.
After four hours of it, you deem you'll commit mass murder if you ever hear another slow hand Stratocaster solo. But the success of 'P*U*L*S*E' is that by showing them for what they are - boring blokes in an interesting band - it makes Pink Floyd seem human in a way that strips away a lot of the superfluous, inflatable pig shaped crap that surrounds the band and leaves you with the only thing anyone should have cared about in the first place - the music.
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