The Australian Pink Floyd Experience

My workmates were going to The Australian Pink Floyd Experience in Glasgow, tickets were booked months ago. How could I say no? Having seen the The Pink Floyd Experience (the NZ guys) twice in Wellington, but never having seen Pink Floyd themselves, I was keen to go.


The show was amazing! First they played The Wall end to end, with an intermission at the end of side one. Then they encored with One Of These Days, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Wish You Were Here, The Great Gig in the Sky, Brain Damage & Eclipse.

The SECC venue is a big tin box, and acoustically not the best, but it was OK. To begin with it seemed too loud, and there was some distortion to upset my picky self, and I thought we were in for a rough ride. The sound technicians obviously sorted that out quickly though because the remainder of the show sounded pretty good, nice and loud but clear too, and fantastically strong bass that I could feel go right through me!

Musically, they were as good as expected. No complaints. They had the full lineup of musicians and vocalists, including the essential saxophone and three female backups as well as drums, guitars etc. They played very faithfully to the original recordings, with a few carefully planned improvisations. My favourite touches were that they played the movie version of Empty Spaces which was fantastic and one of the highlights for me, with the big bass doing nicely. They also had a female vocalist sing portions of Mother, as is done in Roger Waters' In the Flesh DVD. It's a nice touch to that song that I enjoy. The singers also did well in The Great Gig in the Sky.

The visual aspects of the show were amazing. The usual light effects, and laser lights, combined with a giant projected screen to ensure we were never left wanting.


They borrowed heavily from the animation in the movie of The Wall, plus the round visuals used in the likes of Pulse. All were re-animated in CGI, to look "just like" the original but yet weren't the original. The quality of this was very professional, and so good they must have had permission to reuse the original material the way they did. So it was almost like watching the movie, but with a live stage show to boot. Good stuff!


Many of the visuals had kangeroos in them - the hammers had kangeroos for heads, Mother had a picture of the Sydney Opera House on the wall in her house, and so on. Too many kangeroos. OK so you guys are Australian. We get it. Yes we get it! No more kangeroos please.





Eventually they had a blow up pig, which was pretty cool, like the ones in Pulse.


It came on earlier on, I don't remember when, but came out again for One Of These Days. But wait what's this? Tie your kangaroo down sport!


This was a much bigger show than the last time I saw the NZ Pink Floyd Experience, which was at the Michael Fowler Centre about 6 or 7 years ago. So I can't compare as no doubt their act has grown too. But for me, this was the best live Floyd I've seen yet. I'm not sure the Aussies were superior musically, but the visuals made for the complete package. And there was something special for me about getting to to the Glasgow SECC to see it (that novelty factor).

All in all, a great show, went for about 3 hours. I would go again. And I recommend any other Pink Floyd fan to do the same if they ever play in your town.

We were fortunate to get the last train out of Glasgow, which departed at 11:30pm, getting us home to bed in Edinburgh about 1am. This was a stroke of luck, had we missed that train the buses ran later, and take an extra 1/2 hour to get to Edinburgh.