With rumours of a new David Gilmour album circulating, Pink Floyd fans can now fill the waiting gap by hearing more of the whole band playing live.
The band has just added 18 concerts from 1973 to their Spotify discography. Fans though may have to be quick to listen as the recordings could disappear as quickly and quietly as they were added.
If you look at the discography section for Pink Floyd at Spotify you’ll now see the added albums. These are all live concert recordings. They run from Kiel Opera House, St Louis US on March 6, 1973, through to two recordings from November 4 ,1973, at the Rainbow Theatre in London. The band played an early and a late show there that day.
Pink Floyd play Dark Side of The Moon songs live
The set list doesn’t vary much through the period covered. But of particular interest will be that this is very much the Dark Side Of The Moon period. The classic album was released on March 1, 1973, just a few days before the first of these live recordings. These were early opportunities to hear the released album tracks live.
The likelihood is that this 18 strong live release continues a practice the band have adopted of officially releasing via streaming services bootleg recordings which they have acquired. This helps protect copyright in favour of the band where artists must use or lose their rights within 50 years. It’s essentially good catalogue and rights management for Pink Floyd but they still seem to like to keep quiet about it.
Listen now before Pink Floyd remove the releases
Now here comes some health warnings. The first is about the need to act quickly if you want to hear the music. Pink Floyd have had similar live concert releases added quietly and without announcement in the past. They usually withdraw the albums quite quickly afterwards, having achieved their rights protection purpose. So you may only have days or weeks rather than months to dive in and hear the band in action on these 1973 gigs.
The second health warning is on quality. In effect the band are releasing a range of bootlegs of very varying quality. These aren’t highly polished and enhanced in true Pink Floyd style. They are a quite rough and noisy in places. The bands playing and vocals haven’t been edited either, so you will get them in their true live off moments too.
Variety have dipped into the recordings and if you want to hear the best of the 18 recordings then head for the Vienna Stadthalle recording from October 13. Variety rate that as pretty good. In their not bad category, Variety include the Radio City Music Hall, New York from March 17 and Earls Court, London second night on March 18.
There are of course other, and undoubtedly better, live Pink Floyd recordings available. But these newly added concerts will provide an amazing insight to the band at that heady time. Sure they may be a bit rough and ready in true bootleg style, but that's part of the charm and will keep fans happy for a short while at least.