DELICATE SOUND OF THUNDER

Great live album, disc 2 for me getting a bigger thumbs up. Pink Floyd were by now getting an even bigger reputation for mega live performances. The amount of money they invested in visuals, attention to details, special effects was mind boggling and Delicate Sound of Thunder lived up to it's repuation at the time of being a live gig from the ' Giants' of rock music ' One of these days' and ' Us and Them' the best pick of the bunch.If I recall it was also the first music used in the space shuttle for space musak! I could be wrong on this factoid though...Imagine looking at space in space with Shine on you Crazy Diamond playing...whew, enough said.

With this album Pink Floyd was trying to be a "real band" again, even if Rick Wright still wasn`t an official member then. Very good performances of old songs. The songs from "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" are played better live. This album showed that "The Pink Floyd Sound" was alive again, and in the road to better things since 1975.

PINK FLOYD is a live band. In the studio they are brilliant...most of the time. But when their music is played live, it kind of takes on a feeling all its own. And it is almost always superior, with each performance being unique in some way. For any who have seen FLOYD live, you know exactly what I am talking about.

"Delicate Sound of Thunder" is no different. The music is taken variously from the Nassau Coliseum, NY concerts over a five night period; August 18-22, 1988 to be exact. The 2 disc set is a live testament to the "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" tour and is quite good. FLOYD is like the legendary phoenix of old, reborn from the ashes to mesmerize a new generation of fans. Yet even with all the extra musicians on stage, Nick Mason and Rick Wright's confidence was probably a little low and they had to have felt a bit rusty, since they hadn't effectively played live together as a group since 1981. For the record, Dave Gilmour shows no rust.

After an inspired version of 'Shine On...' the first disc offers a healthy dose of the new "AMLOR" music. All of which sounds pretty decent live, the exception being the poor 'The Dogs of War' (as always).

The second disc is even better than the first. It boasts all classic FLOYD tracks from the 1970's played live for a new generation. But no surprises here really, all the usual FLOYD staples float to the surface: 'Money', 'Another Brick', 'Run Like Hell', 'Time', 'Numb', 'WYWH', 'Us & Them' etc

The sole reason this FLOYD offering receives only a 3 star rating, is because there are (much) better official Live FLOYD releases, such as: "Ummagumma (the Live album)", "P*U*L*S*E", "Is There Anybody Out There: The Wall Live 1980-81" and the "Live at Pompeii" DVD. "DSOT" is not essential FLOYD music, but it is enjoyable. So if you come across it, pick it up! But don't go looking for it...

I've never truly enjoyed later live material by Pink Floyd, this one is no exception. A very dull and uninspired live compilation recorded during the "Lapse of Reason" tour, with only a few decent stand-outs. Technically solid but generally lacking fire. Listened to it first time a few years ago and haven't since, I might have missed something since then but currently it only merits a "Collectors/Fans Only" status from me. You will surely enjoy it if you like the AMLOR album.

Not even close to PULSE, this live double-album still manages to be good, since we have excellent renditions on "One Of These Days" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". However, some of the songs of AMLOR are played a bit badly here, and that's the reason i always neglected their studio versions until i discovered them better. "Money" sounds a bit annoying, with those "uh uhs" back vocals through the song, and this "Another Brick In The Wall II" version is really weak. The other performances aren't bad, but i'd rather see this in a video than just listening to it, because in PULSE and in some ROIOS those songs are played lightyears better.

The Delicate Sound Of Thunder is a solid, yet unisnspiring release. After hearing the fantastic .P.U.L.S.E., this just doesn't measure up. The album features material from the then recent Momentray Lapse of Reason as well as Floyd standards. Problem is, classics like Shine On and Money fall far short of the studio and P.U.L.S.E. rendtions. New tracks like Dogs of War are mediocre at best.

While the album isn't horrible, it fails to portray Floyd as the live juggernaut that it is. Buy P.U.L.S.E. instead and you'l get amazing versions of Comfortably Numb, Shine On, and Money.

The first live effort of the post-Waters era so far. Looking back into their discography, it is the second one after Ummagumma in ... 1969 ! Bearing in mind that "Live In Pompei" does not include any audience and that "The Wall - Live" was only released in 2000 (but performed in 1980 / 1981).

Everything that the Floyd undertakes in those days is enormous. To give you an idea, they had to hire fifteen persons to physically bring eight hunderd (800) hospital beds on a beach to shoot the cover only ! (reminds me the "Animals" story).

This tour was supporting "A Momentary Mapse" of course. On the first CD, the only non "Momentary" is the opener "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". This version is not the best one I know but is good. It will be superseded on "Pulse". Then we have five tracks from their last studio album (considering that "Yet Another Movie" + "Round and Around" are only one track. But except "Sorrow"and "On The Turning Away" nothing is really vital here.

Second CD covers four albums : only one number each for "Meddle" and "WYWH". Two from "DSOTM" of which "Money" which is their only hit from that album but is not my fave but. It is apparently for lots of fans. The album closes with three of the best numbers from "The Wall".

The sound is of course very good, and the show was gorgeous (have a look at the video /DVD).

During this tour, in their concert in West Berlin, there were several arrests as the crowd was shouting for the wall to be destroyed.

The tour was due to last for eleven weeks, but since tickets were selling like crazy, it lasted for more than 22 months !

The Floyd will be the first band to play at the Castle of Versailles. But, still the best is to come : a live concert in Venice. The band was playing opposite to St. Mark's Square : 200,000 thousand people watched the concert and more than 100 million viewers saw it on the television! The concert was almost cancelled two days before the official date. The superintendent of monuments declared that the vibration could damage the buildings. The Floyd played at reduced volume to avoid any trouble.

The battle with Roger was rageous though.

"You see, this is part of what's been going on for years. Roger's very good at belittling people, and I think over the years he managed to convince Rick completely that he was useless and more or less convinced Nick of the same thing. And they both did not play a major part on that record. But we put a touring band together, and by halfway through the first leg of the tour, Nick was starting to believe in himself again. And by the time we did the live album at the end of the first year, they were both playing absolutely great, and the drumming on the live album is all straight Nick. And Rick's playing is great."

"We'd spent a lot of money fighting him (Roger). We had to have a team of lawyers in every city ready and briefed in case it was suddenly in front of a judge and we had to get someone there in twenty minutes. It never happened, but we had to be prepared for it".

Both quotes are from David.

I will rate this live effort with three stars.

The Delicate Sound of Thunder was officially the band's first live album, if you disregard one of the discs of the Ummagumma release. How a band that was notable for their live performances took more than 20 years to finally release something is beyond me. Of course, there were literally hundreds of bootlegs available, all of them with slightly acceptable to downright awful recordings. So it was exciting to finally get a really well done recording of Pink Floyd live, albeit missing much of the 1970s material we'd all love to hear. Unfortunately almost all of disc 1 consists of A Momentary Lapse of Reason material. I guess you can't blame them for that since this was from the tour for that album.

The selection on disc 2 is much more enjoyable as it has most of the fans' concert favorites. However, not everything they performed on this tour made it onto this album, from my prior knowledge of a 3-LP bootleg and actually attending one of their concerts in 1988. The most notable track worth mentioning would have been Echoes, which they performed as the opener during the first arm of the tour in 1987. And they performed the whole song! I suppose record executives would have frowned upon having that on a live album and making a 3-record set, which by the 1980s was extremely rare. Another track missing is One Slip, which was on the video of this concert.

The recording is great. The selection could have been better. Since their second live album, Pulse (released in 1995) is much better than this, I would recommend starting with that. Otherwise, this is a worthwhile purchase for Pink Floyd fans. Good, but not essential. Well deserving of three stars (3.5 would be better).

Not bad at all, but neither the best.

Delicate Sound of Thunder was the first video taken from a concert that Pink Floyd released after Roger Waters left the band, also, the first one featuring songs from the first "Gilmour- era" album called "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" released in 1987 and that gave a different direction to Floyd's music; but here, I will not talk about that album, some may like it (like me), some may not.

So in 1988 this VHS saw the light and was received with great expectations because, as I said earlier, it marked a different era for the band, outside those huge scenarios (like The Wall), and supporting their (at the time) newest album.

But well, besides the above mentioned VHS, this concert was also recorded and released as a CD, it is actually a two- CD live album. In the first one, or show's first half, you will find Shine on You Crazy Diamond as the opener song, an older and epic song to open the show will always please the crowd; but immediately after, the "Lapse of Reason" show begins; "Learning to Fly", "Yet Another Movie (with Round and Round)", "Sorrow", "The Dogs of War" and "On the Turning Away" were excellently performed by the band, but somehow, the sound was a bit dark, I mean, there was something missing that would make the listener (me) enjoy better the music.

The second CD, may please more the people because it contains songs from older albums like The Wall or Dark Side; opening with "One of These Days" and finishing with "Run Like Hell", it is a very good concert in my opinion, the drums and guitar solos are outstanding, even those sax solos, but it is normal that you may want to compare it with PULSE, if you do it, then this CD wont please you.

Not bad at all, 3 stars.

Enjoy it!

Now what do we have here? It looks like Pink, sounds like Floyd but it rocks like a bunch of old ladies in wheelchairs.

I am one of the few that really liked A Momentary Lapse of Reason though. I admit the album sounds overblown, that much of it falls back on old success formula's and that the absence of Waters left a brick-sized hole in the Pink Floyd experience. But somehow I always appreciated the songs very much and I felt an urge in Gilmour's playing to prove how essential he was to the Floyd sound, at least to that Floyd sound of Wish You Were Here where his involvement was more prominent.

There's none of those redeeming factors here. This is a man cashing in on his successes, blowing up the Floyd sound to unseen bombastic proportions and losing all edge this music once had. Much of the material comes from the maligned A Momentary Lapse of Reason album, and due to the lazy pace of the performance and the backing vocal kitsch, the songs really reveal how weak they are at the core. Stripped of that little bite they had on the studio album, only an empty carcass remains here.

The classic Floyd songs are OK-ish but everyone who has heard any random Floyd live album from 67-71 period will recognize that this is a routine and sterile show. Only the outrageous solo at the end of Comfortably Numb gives a glimpse why Gilmour is one of the best guitar players for me. His ability to get so much emotion out of so few sustained notes is a unique gift.

Not highly recommended to say the least, the rating should have told you that much.

Gilmour, Mason and Wright, live in 1989!

'Delicate Sound...' is one of those live albums that is best seen and not just heard. I saw this live at an early age before I was into Pink Floyd heavily because someone recommended their light show. I was dazzled by it at the time but of course it has been far surpassed by "P-U-L-S-E', we all know that, but this was it as far as the new Pink Floyd. It took this long to eventually get the CD of the concert for me, simply because I had heard it enough on the video and was not overly impressed by the music. The concert was recorded primarily at the Nassau Coliseum, New York in 1988, and, like the video, it suffers purely from the set list which is missing so many definitive songs.

On the positive side, the classics are here that any Floyd fan would revel in; on demand you can indulge in the majesty of 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond', the chilling, top heavy droning 'One of These Days', the infamous 'Time', the acoustic classic 'Wish You Were Here', the lulling meandering 'Us and Them', the time sig bassline and sax of 'Money', the raucous Wall blaster 'Run Like Hell' and the showstopping Gilmour lead breaker 'Comfortably Numb', one of his best guitar virtuoso performances. They are all played with well executed musicianship, as we have come to expect, and the singing is fine and dominated by Gilmour. The three beautiful female voices are heard powerfully on the iconic 'The Great Gig In the Sky', especially songstress/diva Rachel Fury who overpowers the others for sheer vocal prowess.

There are many newer tracks (at the time) from 'Momentary Lapse of Reason' such as a favourite, the melodic soaring 'Learning to Fly' and 'Sorrow' with its long guitar intro, among others. Though tracks such as 'One Slip' we can well do without. We also have songs that rarely turned up on set lists again such as 'Yet another movie', 'Round and round' and 'Sorrow'. The concert ends with treats from 'The Wall' and 'DSOTM' but a lot of the sound is very commercial without Waters' input. I must admit I loved the versions here of 'One of These Days', and 'Shine On' and 'Money' are very lengthy versions.

Overall, I would definitely recommend getting the DVD rather than this CD as its the same virtually and the DVD is better as a visual treat in this case. You can forgive the poor set list when you are being dazzled by lights and beautiful singers grooving it out on the songs. But on CD this is quite a lacklustre album; the visual feast is the key component that holds the interest on this particular set list, so be warned. I can still award this 2 stars for it's great moments.

The Obligatory Flash Of Laser

I saw two different shows on this tour, one in an arena, the other in a football stadium. And the sound was incredible good, even in the outdoor venue. What you don't get on this album is the swirling surround sound used throughout the show. But the sound is still quite nice on this CD set.

As for the songs themselves, the abridges version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond is fine. But then, the remainder of the first disk is only songs from "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason". While the album would make a very good David Gilmour album, the other members of what was left of Pink Floyd just don't really add much to the music.

Disk 2 fares better, as it is the first official live release of those favorite Floyd fundamentals. Mason and Wright seem to perk up when playing the classics. Most of the songs are played fairly straight, but Money's solo section is where there is the most variation, with a reggae passage, and even a *gasp* bass solo. Another Brick In The Wall II (not one of my favorite Floyd songs), is okay, but bassist Guy Pratt gets a bit annoying with his pop and slap licks.

So this isn't a terrible album, but I still wish they had released a live recording of the "Animals" tour.

I see that this live album is rated quite low, and I have to admit that 3 stars is probably the right rating, but how could I forget that this album is recorded during the Momentary Leapse of Reason tour which gave me the opportunity to see them live for the first time.

After the disbanding following The Final Cut I really had no hopes to see the Pink Floyd brand again. After TFC Waters released The Pros and Cons followed by Radio KAOS, Gilmour played on Mason+Fenn album and Wrigh tried an electro-dark adventure with Dave Harris. I thought Pink Floyd were dead and also the release of Momentary Leapse appeared mostly like a follow-up to Gilmour's About Face than like a Pink Floyd album.

But the live show was unforgettable. When they played in my city they cut Shine on you Crazy Diamond to more or less five minutes, and the first good thing of this live album is that the first half of the epic is played entirely.

About the rest, there aren't big differences from what I've seen live and the songs inside and this is a reason why I love this double live. It catches the essence of the show and this is the first quality that a live album must have.

In addition it features one of the best, IMO, version of the second solo of Comfortably Numb and probably the best live version of Run Like Hell. It's a pity that actually the lawsuit between Waters and the rest of the band was still at a peak so they didn't have the authorization to play Waters' songs, missing a big part of Dark Side Of The Moon, but this demonstrated that they had enough material, even without considering A Momentary Leapse Of Reason, to fill a gig.

It covers a period that starts from Meddle (One of These Days) and of course skips Animals and The Final Cut. This is the limit of this album: the Pink Floyd's story is only partially covered and also songs which could have been played without legal problems, like Fat Old Sun, are missing from the tracklist. This is why it's non-essential but it doesn't mean that it's not good.

After "The Final Cut", which was in fact the record of a songwriter (Waters), not a group, Pink Floyd melts and Waters does a legal battle, which loses, to prevent Gilmour, Wright and Mason from keeping the name Pink Floyd. And so, under the leadership of Gilmour, the group's discography continues with the return of Wright and the more than good album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" (1987), dominated by Gimour: composer and singer of all tracks (with the help of the lyricists Ezrin and Carin and McGough, and sometimes other co-authors of the music).

The album is a great success and PF in 1988 make a world tour immortalized by the double live "Delicate Sound of Thunder". In this record we see Pink Floyd machine at work in its full efficiency, with Gilmour, Mason and Wright returned in great shape and helped by some session man (Gary Wallis on percussion, Guy Pratt on the bass, John Carin on keyboards and vocals, Tim Renwick on guitars and vocals). The show, with psychedelic lights, holophonic sound and stage interventions worthy of a theater, is impressive and sees Gilmour as the absolute protagonist: his voice getting older has become even more fascinating, his guitar solos are overwhelming. Ultimately, Gilmour has become a true singer-songwriter, what in PF he has never been, having composed only a few tracks throughout the group's discography. The first record, after the initial "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", executed with precision , includes all songs taken from Momentary Lapse of Reason and the result is excellent: the new songs do not disfigure. They are perhaps more atmospheric than those of Waters but keep the grit and the menacing sound of the last Pink Floyd's albums.

The best rock song is undoubtedly the martial "Dogs of War", worthy of "The Wall", while the melodic pearl is "On the Turning Away", that close the first disc. It is a masterpiece, embellished by the voice and the guitar solo by Gilmour. The lighter song is the single "Learning to Fly"; "Yet Another Movie" keeps the sound slow and heavily punctuated by PF, with guitars feedback effects . "Sorrow" is a guitaristic ballad (perhaps the least beautiful), The sound of the album is mammoth, you can feel that the group has aged and is weighed down with the various session men and singers but what it loses in agility, it gains in grandeur. it is a sound that puts awe, like that of a thunder.

The second disc sees Pink Floyd playing some of their old classics: "One of These Days" (from Meddle), "Time", "Money", "Us and Them" (from Dark Side of the Moon), "Wish You Were Here" (from the homonymous album), "Another Brick in The Wall Part II", "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell" (from The Wall). Gilmour tries to select songs where he participated as an author, but in two cases, Money and Another Brick in The Wall, he sings two pieces signed by Waters. Some tracks, like "Another Brick in the Wall Part II"and "Run Like Hell", are not very consistent, extrapolated from their context, instead others are very effective and are emotionally warmer, performed live, such as "One of These Days", "Wish You Were Here" and above all the absolute masterpiece "Comfortably Numb" that with extraordinary solo of Gilmour in closing will perhaps become the strong track of PF in concert. Years later, Waters and Gilmour will meet in concert and perform together this wonderful piece, emblem of their collaboration.

This abum had the function to introduce to Pink Floyd teenagers of the eighties like me, and it remains, even in the absence of Waters, a cult Lp, since the group had never previously released an album live. It is a great album, which documents live one of the groups who has made the history of rock even for its incomparable and unique stage performances.

Vote: 9. Rating: Five Stars.

With David Gilmour at the helm, Pink Floyd decided that there was still life after Roger Waters, following the temperamental musician's troubled departure after the completion of 1983's highly personal "The Final Cut". Four years later, the release of "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" placed the English band in the spotlight of the musical universe, embarking on an extensive promotional tour of almost two years with a massive audience that made no major objection to Waters' absence and that "Delicate Sound of Thunder" (1988), a recording taken from the Long Island performances of the same year and divided into two clearly differentiated parts, vividly testifies to.

The first part, after the introductory and portentous "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", is dedicated to the tracks from "A Momentary Lapse of Reason", which are related to the most grandiloquent Pink Floyd, conveying the sensation of greater robustness and vitality compared to the studio versions, and where the corrosive and super-distorted opening guitars of "Sorrow" with Gilmour in the lead role, the dramatic and stark "The Dogs of War" with the contribution of Scott Page on sax, and the beautiful ballad "On the Turning Away" with an emotional chorus and great final instrumentation stand out.

The second part is a selection of the band's unmissable songs, and although they are impeccably executed instrumentally, with great moments such as the tense and disturbing "One of These Days", the determined initial percussion of "Time" and its guitar solo, or the crystalline acoustic introduction of "Wish You Were Here", it seems more like a collection of hits without much articulation. Hence, the band's natural flow is perceived as choppy and even with some dull passages such as "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" or the central improvisation of "Money" that doesn't contribute much. The apotheosic "Comfortably Numb" and Gilmour's solos revitalise the final stretch fantastically and the escapist "Run Like Hell" gives an extra intense emotional charge to the closing of the album.

Backed by a full backing band and a female trio that lends a lot of harmony and consistency to the melodies, "Delicate Sound of Thunder" was, at the time, incredibly the first official 100% live record released by Pink Floyd (the very distant "Ummagumma" from 1969 only contained one live side).

3.5 stars