Summer Pops review: Australian Pink Floyd, Aintree Pavilion

Jul 9 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

Australian Pink Floyd performing at the Liverpool Summer Pops, Aintree _320

WITH rumours that the real Floyd may be considering resolving their differences for a tour, what future awaits these wizard pretenders from Oz?

Who knows and, for the time being, who cares would be the opinion of those at Aintree on Saturday night. Certainly while the Summer Pops still exists it would be inconceivable for it to go ahead without these Adelaide perennials being added to the line-up.

Floyd’s followers elsewhere have always been associated with reserved beard strokers who would still shuffle around wearing old RAF greatcoats from the Army and Navy stores if they could get away with it. As perverse as only Liverpool can be, that support here has been augmented with a large and gregarious scally brigade spanning the generations whose weed-addled dreams with the Floyd as soundtrack have been so superbly spoofed by city comedian Keith Carter in his Nige persona.

Thus, from the off, as the band launched into a complete and meticulously perfect rendition of the real band’s 1973 album monster Dark Side of the Moon, the audience was up on its feet bellowing the lyrics word perfectly.

And why not?

The work, widely considered Floyd’s masterpiece, still resonates with great power , Roger Waters’s world-weary reflections still capable of bringing a chill to the bones 34 years on.

It’s something that no Floyd aficionado could ever tire of hearing and took up a worthy first half, ecstatically received.

The second half was littered with more classics - a stunning Shine on Your Crazy Diamond, an imaginatively Aussie-fied mutation of Set The Control For The Heart Of The Sun and the copter blade guitar thump of the instrumental One of These Days featuring the trademark 20ft blow-up pink kangaroo bouncing on stage

But there were a couple of clunkers there too as an unintentional reminder of Floyd’s occasionally deserved reputation as predictable plod rockers.

Still, who could pick hairs with amiable doppelgangers who could reproduce something so wonderfully cynical and true as Comfortably Numb.

It finished the set to a great roar of satisfaction from the comfortably satisfied.