Month: August 2005

I was a tender 12 years old when I first heard Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), and I’ve never been the same since. It was 1980, the year after The Wall was released, and I’d just started high school. The song was being covered by a band comprised of older pupils at a school function welcoming us Standard 6 kids, and the lyrics ‘we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control’ blew my impressionable young mind.

Although I recall being quite horrified that fellow pupils were being allowed to perform a banned number in our school hall, secretly I absolutely loved the subversiveness. I didn’t yet know it was a Pink Floyd song, and it was much, much later that I understood the context of the song properly. While my appreciation for Pink Floyd grew over the years, it became apparent that I would probably never get to see the band play live. In those days, it was only the odd brave or foolhardy outfit that dared break the cultural boycott and perform in South Africa.

Now, of course, their performance at the recent Live 8 concert notwithstanding – Pink Floyd is no more, and I definitely will never see them live. Damn.

Then I heard that The Pink Floyd Experience, a ‘tribute-style’ stage production, was coming to the Civic Theatre, and I thought I might like to go to the show. Not that I had much choice in the matter – a close friend had made a block booking and harangued me into taking a couple of tickets.

The Pink Floyd Experience is a New Zealand outfit which – according to the notes in the show’s slightly disappointing program – started to ‘re-create’ Pink Floyd’s sound after thankless years of playing cover tunes to drunks in pubs. What had started out as a one-off production transmogrified into what I witnessed the other night – a dramatized musical collage, consisting mostly of songs taken from The Wall, but also encompassing elements of one of Pink Floyd’s other great albums, 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon.

As I took my seat in the Civic, I was flooded with doubts. What if they screw up or tinker with the songs – like farting in the Holy Church of Rock n Roll? Rows and rows of the front seats were also empty, and I fretted that the band would struggle to bridge that gulf between them and us.

But the moment the show started, kicking off with the very long Shine on You Crazy Diamond (from 1975’s Wish You Were Here), my worries evaporated. This was no second-string cover band: it was obviously a highly competent outfit, whose members love Pink Floyd and have taken great care to handle the material with the respect it deserves, and whose visuals captured a lot of familiar Floyd imagery – the hammer logo from The Wall, a wall that was gradually constructed as the show progressed, even a circular video screen.

Vocalist Stan Gratkowski and guitarist Darren Whittaker shouldered the responsibility of capturing the essence of Pink Floyd, and they did so admirably. I reveled in music I have loved for so long: In the Flesh, Mother, Hey You, Goodbye Blue Sky, Young Lust, the Another Brick in the Wall parts….virtually the entire The Wall song list, interspersed with stuff from Dark Side of the Moon, Money, Us and Them and Brain Damage.

I was a little let down by the rendition of Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), but Whittaker’s searing guitar solo in Comfortably Numb more than made up for it, reducing that band-audience gap to mere millimeters – it’s worth a ticket just to experience it.

Light years away from that amateurish bunch of school boys who introduced me to the contraband that was The Wall a quarter-century ago, they are guaranteed to satisfy old fans – and capture more than a few new ones.

By Willem Steenkamp – Tonight (www.tonight.co.za)Johannesburg Civic Theatre 12/08/05

“The Pink Floyd Experience, The Wall,” with Stan Gratowski (lead vocals, acoustic guitar and percussion), Darren Whittaker (lead guitar, acoustic guitars), Glen Ahearn (keyboards, piano), Rob Ju (drums), Ken Te Tau (bass), Roger Rangitaawa (sax), Olivia Wordsworth (backing vocals), Lynley Goodisson (backing vocals), Stephanie Hearfield (backing vocals). Venue: Nelson Mandela Theatre, Johannesburg Civic Theatre.

The days of the big open-air concert events featuring such luminaries as The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Tina Turner, U2 and Phil Collins seem sadly things of the past. Big sponsorships are badly needed if we are to attract some of music’s bigger rock stars to South Africa again – but that’s another story.

The closest South Africa music lovers will get to see another ‘real’ concert event, with big stadium aspirations, is this dazzling New Zealand production, ‘The Pink Floyd Experience – The Wall’. There is little chance of us ever seeing Pink Floyd in the flesh, though Roger Waters did pay a visit to this neck of the woods and was most impressive.

The Pink Floyd Experience comprises a group of highly versatile musicians and backing singers who have faithfully duplicated the many intricate patterns that make up the Pink Floyd sound. It’s an awesome experience to be caught up by wave upon wave of nostalgia as the band weave their spell through ‘The Wall’, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and a clutch of other Floyd classics. Added to this mesmerizing sound explosion, is a set of extraordinary computerized lighting effects. Evocative video images are also projected onto a screen, which help highlight the song’s strong social commentary.

Two stand-out individuals help lift this ‘experience’. They are the lead singer Stan Gratkowski, whose vocal flexibility allows the many shading’s of the songs to shine through, and lead guitarist Darren Whittaker, whose dynamic musicianship imbues the various tracks with fresh impetus. The theatrics of the event, like the building of the wall, and then its destruction, is never permitted to highjack the music. It remains true to its form.

If there is any criticism it comes at the end when one expects a grand finale but instead it all ends rather abruptly. On final analysis, however, this is one trip worth taking.

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The Pink Floyd Experience rocks!

It is billed as a tribute to Pink Floyd, without a doubt the best rock band in the world. Pink Floyd have been an integral part of my life for the best part of over 30 years. I have followed them since school, through varsity and now as a middle-aged father. Following Pink Floyd is like yoga, jogging and journalism – it’s a way of life. I saw former front-man Roger Waters when he came here some years ago and that was unforgettable. But this show was awesome.

The kiwis doing the show offer a proper homage to Pink Floyd. From the opening chord, they never missed a beat and if you closed your eyes, you could see Waters, David Gilmour, et al. The band is slick, professional and on the button. Three of the founding members had been playing in various pub bands in New Zealand as well as performing in bands playing original music but unable to get a record deal. So in 1997, they embarked on a project to recreate Pink Floyd, the quintessential rock band of the 20th century. That they have done with style, substance and sound.

Lead guitarist Darren Whittaker holds the show together. From the beginning, he dominates with his precision playing and cool demeanor. Glen Ahearn warms up as the show goes along and came into his own with the classic Another Brick in the Wall. Stan Gratkowski on lead vocals is the epitome of the front-man and excels with his mannerisms and voice slightly manic, slightly bent, but always in touch.

The only gripe I had was the venue itself. The Civic Theatre is a venue for theatre, ballet and plays. This kind of show deserves a wider audience. It should be part of the rock experience – a whisky in one hand, a smoke in the other and a blonde on your back. An arena would have been a better option.

Maybe a younger audience would have been bopping in the aisles, but the more mature audience on opening night stayed steadfastly in their seats. And just a note to the band: if you wanna be a bunch of rockers, and you obviously have the talent, then do an encore! But there can be no complaints. The Pink Floyd Experience is the best import to come out of New Zealand since, well, The Pink Floyd Experience.The real Pink Floyd will never come to South Africa. So, get along to Braamfontein and let this show rock your world. It rocked mine.