FNV: Echoes

This morning, Glyph posted a video of a live performance of “Comfortably Numb” from Pink Floyd’s Division Bell tour, and I have not been able to listen to anything but Pink Floyd since. You see, I’m a Pink Floyd fan. I mean, a really, really big fan. I saw them on that tour, at Dudley Field, where Vanderbilt University plays its football games (the first concert there ever; I saw the second, too, when the stones played there 3 years later), on May 8, 1994. I don’t think I remember the exact date of any other show I’ve ever seen, but that one? That one was a religious experience. Heaven for me would be going to that show over and over and over. From the moment they played the first note of “Astronomy Domine,” to the intensity of “One of These Days” accompanied by giant dancing pigs on either end of the stage, and even through the Division Bell songs, which gained whatever energy they lacked in the studio recordings, I was enraptured. I have seen nothing else that compares to that show. The only thing missing, of course, was Waters. If Waters had been there, I’d probably have died from an overdose of awesomeness.

My favorite Pink Floyd album (for largely sentimental reasons), which I’ve gone through twice today, is Meddle. I even love “Seamus,” damn it. I have heard the album so many ties that I can listen to it in my head, in its entirety, including the 23 1/2 minute song “Echoes.” And it never gets old. Ever. So for tonight’s Friday Night Videos, I give you a little bit of both Pink Floyd live and Meddle, in the 24 minutes of Pink Floyd playing “Echoes” live at Pompeii in 1972. If you make it all the way through, your life will be better.