Thursday, January 7, 2021

Pink Floyd - 1969 - Live In Amsterdam 1969

Pink Floyd
September 17, 1969
Concertgebouw
Amsterdam
Live In Amsterdam 1969 - Top Gear

Part I - The Man

01. Introduction 1:00
02. Daybreak 8:11
03. Work 3:53
04. Teatime 3:34
05. Afternoon 5:13
06. Doing It 4:03
07. Sleep 4:37
08. Nightmare 9:14
09. Daybreak (Part Two) 1:21

Part II - The Journey
01. The Beginning 4:55
02. Beset By The Creatures Of The Deep 6:27
03. The Narrow Way 5:13
04. The Pink Jungle 4:48
05. The Labyrinths Of Auximenes 6:39
06. Behold The Temple Of Light 5:31
07. The End Of The Beginning 6:54

This is the complete soundboard source as recorded by Hilversum 3 Radio and is the "raw" source HRV used for their remaster
Several concert recordings exist of The Man and The Journey and many people probably possess cd's of these pieces without realizing it. The Man and The Journey were two parts of “More Furious Madness From The Massed Gadgets of Auximines” and consisted of several well-known Floyd tunes linked into a concept piece as follows:

MORE FURIOUS MADNESS FROM THE MASSED GADGETS OF AUXIMENIES

PART ONE: THE MAN (representing a day in the life of a man)

Daybreak (“Grantchester Meadows”)
Work (Sawing, Hammering in a I fashion)
[the band was served afternoon tea on stage at this point]
Afternoon (“Biding My Time”)
Doing It (instrumental) (“Grand Vizier’s Garden Party, pt. 3”)
Sleep
Nightmare (“Cymbaline”)
Daybreak (reprise)

PART TWO: THE JOURNEY

The Beginning (“Green is the Colour”)
Beset By Creatures of the Deep (“Careful with that Axe, Eugene”)
The Narrow Way (“The Narrow Way, pt. 3”)
The Pink Jungle (“Pow R Toc H”)
The Labyrinths of Auximines (“Moonhead”)
Behold the Temple of Light
The End of the Beginning (“Saucerful of Secrets” — final part)

The complete piece lasted about 70 minutes.




Do any recordings exist ?

Officially, no. However, the following shows are known to be recorded and are circulating on tape:

14 April 69: Royal Festival Hall, London (I think the original performance. A tape of this show exists but is very very rare. Easily identifiable because it has IO as an encore. A lot of people still list the 26jun69 show as this show).
22 June 69: Free Trade hall, Manchester. Has Set the Controls as an encore, tape contains lots of cuts
26 June 69: Royal Albert Hall, London. a.k.a. The Final Lunacy. Brass and Choir on the closing section of a Journey. Two different recordings of this show are available.
8th August 69: Plumpton Festival The Journey only — Roger introduces it as “the second half of… a kind of concept thing… we did around the country a bit earlier this year.”
17 September 69: Concertgebouw, Amsterdam Recorded and broadcasted by Dutch radio, and the source of many cd's. Recently the (almost) complete concert was rebroadcasted and treed on Echoes. This is the version to hunt for. The broadcast only misses the non-musical parts (Work, the bird noises in daybreak, etc.) and is in soundboard quality. This show had no encore. Behold the Temple Of Light lacks keyboards, because Rick Wright left his usual spot and ran to the big pipe organ of the Concertgebouw and plays that during the ‘The End of the Beginning’ section.

“Biding My Time”
There has been some debate as to who actually plays the trumpet during Biding My Time. Conrado Daws and Karl Magnacca settled this by providing the following information:

Rick Wright did, at least during live performances. We have a picture of him playing it in a “The Man”/”The Journey”-era concert, and, during the trumpet portion of the song, you can hear Roger-esque ass but no keyboard.

“So who or what is Auximines/Auximenes?”
No one knows. Dave Gilmour said in an interview that it might have been someone from Greek mythology, but he didn’t know for sure.
There is a Belgian (mining) company called Auximines.
It begs belief that the Floyd have released loads of inferior demo versions of tracks from The Wall but this remains unreleased and extremely hard to obtain, unless you want to remortgage your house to pay for it! The concepts are simply excellent, with The Man representing 24 hours in somebody's life, including Work (where I believe members even sawed up pieces of wood on stage) to Teatime (literally a tea-break in the middle of the gig) to Doing It (a drum solo with a recording of what sounds like John Lennon speaking) and the return of a ticking clock and birdsong following the eerie 'Nightmare' conclusion to Cymbaline.
Yes, you are going to hear live versions of some of the More tracks incorporated into the concepts, but they are simply amazing to hear in this format. My only criticism is the split second pauses between the tracks which slightly interrupt the continuity
The Journey includes the often bootlegged Behold the Temple of Light which uses 4 chords from the transition between parts 2 and 3 of Ummagumma's The Narrow Way to dramatic effect with huge percussive gong sounds.
Gilmour's vocal on The Narrow Way is a little wafty, but the rousing finale (actually the conclusion to A Saucerful of Secrets) may even rival the blistering live version on Ummagumma. The atmosphere from the audience is captured here too and adds to the charm of this recording IMO. There are even a few chuckles when tea is served.
It's such a shame that fans are virtually criminalised for listening to music they clearly want to hear, so come on guys, let's have a mainstream release, or do we forever have to scrabble about on YouTube to hear gems like this live set, Vegetable Man, Scream thy last Scream, Embryo, King Bee, Lucy Leave. . . I could go on!

Note, some versions omit Teatime and most of the Work section. Personally I feel that these non-musical tracks are essential to the concept.
In 1969 Pink Floyd were touring a show they called The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes. They would do 2 suites of songs, "The Man" and "The Journey", which varied somewhat from night to night. Later that year some of these songs turned up on More and Ummagumma, but here they are still carrying working titles which are different. Puzzlingly, for this show even the older songs were given different names; programmes from the tour list the titles seen here.
This 17 Sept Amsterdam show was broadcast by Dutch FM radio, and has very good stereo sound (by bootleg standards). It has been re-issued/re-packaged a great many times under different titles, so it can be tricky to avoid duplicates if you're collecting other '69 Floyd shows.

The re-named songs are:

"Daybreak" = Grantchester Meadows
"Work" = Biding My Time
"Doing It" = a bit of Grand Vizier's Garden Party
"Sleep" = Quicksilver
"Nightmare" = Cymbaline
"The Beginning" = Green is the Colour
"Beset by Creatures of the Deep" = Careful With That Axe Eugene
"The Pink Jungle" = Pow R. Toc H.
"The End of the Beginning" = the 'Celestial Voices' finale of Saucerful of Secrets

The songs all segue together, meaning there is little crowd noise. A radio host talks over the music a couple of times, sounding like he's covering a Dutch golf tourney, but this is a minor complaint.
What makes this recording so special is that the song versions here are often quite different and better than the studio ones. Often stunningly so! The instrumentals like "...Auximenes" and "Behold..." are unique to this tour and alone are worth getting hold of this recording for. Others, particularly "Teatime/Afternoon", were simply effects meant to showcase the quadraphonic PA system the band was using in live venues at the time. Fun if you happened to be in attendance, but merely a footnote for us now. "Work" (Biding My Time) was also unique to this tour until a studio version was finally issued on 1971's Relics compilation. The version of "Pow R. Toc H" (called The Pink Jungle here) will really amaze you if you've only heard the '67 official one.

A word about Dave Gilmour's shockingly off-key vocals here and there: Since his problem seems to be a unique to this show, perhaps the venue lacked proper stage monitors - still a common issue in 1969. Without stage monitors at a rock show, singers cannot hear themselves, with predictably dire vocal results. It seems likely that's what happened here. Still, Gilmour's issue in no way reduces the overall value of this unique recording.

I've been a casual Floyd fan for over 35 years, and this year marks the first time I've heard this amazing show. Pink Floyd were at their best during 1968-72, and this show is truly a highlight of that period.

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