WISH YOU WERE HERE ?

HAVING THOUGHT the impossible had already happened when flares once again became de rigeur on the trendy club scene, it was more than a little disconcerting to learn that the gods of the trance-ambient movement are citing Pink Floyd as their heroes.

Banco de Gaia’s Toby Marks, Bob Dog of the monthly Megadog bash at Rocket and the Orb’s Alex Paterson have all recently gone on the record confessing to their adoration of what was once one of the unhippest bands in the known universe. So has Brett Anderson, who puts his obsession with dogs and pigs down to the Animals album – but then we all know he’s a prat.

These are sad times in which we live. Those too young to remember the excruciating dullness of the post-glam pre-punk seventies and the twin scourges of prog-rock and the concept album, are rediscovering the serious, pompous, muso-shite we had been hoping was gone forever. It says a lot about the current state of the music scene, to say nothing of the eventually desexualising effect of attending too many E-crazed raves.

There are numerous young people of my acquaintance who, quite shamelessly, mention Dark Side Of The Moon in the same breath as Nine Inch Nails and, perhaps more obviously, The Orb. They also like Hawkwind and bits of Deep Purple. I put it down to living in the suburbs and smoking too much dope to interact with the real world to any extent. But it is worrying none the less. Where is their discernment, their sense of humour, their edge? Did Sid Vicious die in vain?

If it were Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, I would not be quite so concerned about the state of today’s youth. There, at least, Barrett’s madness offsets the methodical, orderly cleverness of the rest of the band, running wildly round their careful constructs like an unruly child in a psychedelic playground. But Dark Side? Pleeeease!

As Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker so rightly said in a recent edition of Time Out magazine: “Like acne, halitosis and excessive masturbation, Pink Floyd are one of those things that you hopefully grow out of once you’ve left adolescence . . . once you experience the tiniest taste of real life, the spell is broken.”

The problems with Floyd probably come down to the band members’ backgrounds as architects. The music is cerebral, not sexual; it is controlled and ordered, wholly lacking in spontaneity or aggression. Were it not for the frequently facile lyrics, it would be very grown-up music; clever and not without its challenges but basically pleasant, unlikely to disturb or generate discontent.

As concerts go, it has to be said that the Earls Court bash represented excellent value for money. Even had I actually forked out the £25 for my ticket, I could not have complained of being ripped off. The sound system was immaculate, beyond comparison: surround sound special effects, clear and deep, perfect sound definition the likes of which I have never before heard at a live ‘rock’ performance.

The visuals were truly stunning: luminous green lasers cutting patterns across the auditorium, spots in colours you’ve never seen before, pyrotechnics which made the audience gasp audibly; multi-screen visuals, videos, explosions and of course, giant pigs (apparently known as Sid and Roger) . . . absolutely breathtaking. The whole ran for two and a half hours, with a 15-minute break, ending with a huge, unexpected explosion.

As ever, the musicians themselves chose to remain all but invisible, resisting using the giant screens to display their own physical charms (whatever those may be). Maybe I’m just a crotchety old bag, but somehow the Floyd stance of Music Before Personality strikes me as unbearably pompous. They don’t want to distract you from The Experience, dilute the power of the music, with images of themselves. It doesn’t help when they describe themselves as ordinary, middle-class guys, either.

The only problem, of course, was the music. It started off well enough: ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ accompanied by a backdrop of planets whizzing past; flashing lights, tons of dried ice. Then tracks from the new album followed and I found myself yawning between the light show’s peaks of extravagance. Floyd, once the cutting edge of experimental music – so the history books tell me – have made no progress whatsoever, preferring instead to remain with a reliable formula, turning out quality product all in very much the same vein.

The audience reserves its unselfconscious adoration for the second half, where familiar numbers from The Wall, Dark Side Of The Moon, Animals and Wish You Were Here meet with thousands of lip-synching punters, aged from 10 to 70. This was an outing for all the family, an alternative to the circus or a fireworks display.

By now I am seriously kicking myself for not having taken the precaution of bringing with me a Walkman powerful enough to drown out the music with something more deserving of such an amazing light show. By ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ the lighters are out in force, entire rows are swaying in unison and I feel increasingly like an unwitting attendee at some induction course for a new age religion.

What if they realise I’m not one of them? Will they turn nasty? Probably not. They’re smiling at each other, exchanging comments with complete strangers in an extraordinary atmosphere of congeniality and one-ness. Very sixties. And very polite.

This is pure quality product. Like an Andrew Lloyd-Webber production, you know you’re going to get slick professionalism with no corners cut. And no nasty surprises. You will not be unsettled, your preconceptions will not be questioned, but so long as comfort and reassurance are all you seek, you will be very entertained; awed, even.

The smell of grass regularly wafts my way in this no smoking auditorium and at one point a tripped-out second-generation hippy starts dancing wildly towards the flames shooting up from the front of the stage, shouting “I can do it! I can do it!” The security staff affably bundle him off, to indulgent smiles from all around.

For the record, the audience comprises the unhippest bunch of people imaginable. As they milled into the auditorium, it looked for all the world like a suburban highstreet on a Saturday. A handful of crusties, two off-duty Goths, numerous greying, balding men with ponytails and leather blouson jackets. The rest of the (almost exclusively white) audience was dressed entirely in catalogue clothes.

There are those who consider themselves hip out there who, in the privacy of their own homes, still get furtive kicks out of listening to Floyd; not that they’d admit it in a million years. They either weren’t here or came heavily disguised in anoraks and desert boots. When Gilmour shuffles off this mortal coil, they’ll all come out of the woodwork, just like the Queen fans did when Freddie Mercury kicked it. I won’t be amongst them.

I had several Floyd albums in my early teens, I admit it openly here and now, but even then found the lyrics insulting in their preachy obviousness. By the time I’d played my first few chords on a cheap electric guitar, heard some Captain Beefheart, Japan, Alex Harvey, Velvet Underground and Eno, Floyd went out the window – or rather, to my mate Steph, who still doesn’t know any better.

For sheer showmanship, Floyd are up there with Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson and as such, it is absurd to try and divorce them from the spectacular effects they use, particularly as they were one of the first groups on the British underground scene to experiment with the use of visuals during musical performance.

But it does beg the question whether Floyd, bereft of the sheer breathtaking impact of a myriad effects, could hold their audience quite so rapt.