THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON LIVE AT WEMBLEY 1974

Pink Floyd's live appearance at Wembley in 1974 is an absolutely epochal performance from the band. Naturally, they performed the entirety of The Dark Side of the Moon, which by the point had been so extensively road-tested that they'd had it down to a fine art and worked in a number of variations from the studio release which makes this performance an intriguing alternative spin on the album.

In addition, the encore was a fabulous performance of Echoes - and before Dark Side they rolled out performances of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Raving and Drooling, and You've Gotta Be Crazy, the latter two songs eventually making it onto Animals with somewhat tweaked lyrics as Sheep and Dogs, which really showcase how the core of their next two studio albums were, musically speaking, essentially already worked out even at this point in time.

Unfortunately, there's a big problem with this live release of the show... it doesn't include the full performance! Only the Dark Side of the Moon is included here; the other tracks have seen official releases, but if you want to get legitimate copies you'll need to go trawling through various expensive boxed sets from the band. This is not only highly irritating, but also kind of self-defeating on the part of the band - if they'd put out more full shows as standalone releases they'd surely be able to put a dent in the swathe of deeply inferior bootleg recordings circulating of their material. As it stands, the sound of the Wembley concert is exceptionally good - it's just a shame that it's such a pain to actually assemble the whole thing in the best possible quallity. Five star performance, five star concert setlist as a whole, but this can only ever be a four star release at most because of the terrible decision not to just release the whole concert as a unit.