Monday, 10 October 2016

Pink Floyd: Surviving TV Clips/Film Footage 1965-2014



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For a while there Pink Floyd seemed a rare band that was actually there to make people listen rather than watch. In fact, of all the AAA bands, it seemed as if the Floyd had raised the height of playing passionately involved music whilst simultaneously looking deeply bored into an art-form. Even in their 1970s heyday the Pink quintet were one of the few bands who could go about their day un-accosted, most casual fans - even those who'd seen them in concert - completely clueless about what the mysterious Floyd actually looked like. So you might think that a collection of Floyd clips would be the most boring few hours you could ever spend your time - there are however several good reasons why you'd be quite wrong. Syd Barrett, for the first six months of the band's career, is the ultimate frontman: more charismatic than Bowie, more intense than Jim Morrison, cooler than, well, anyone without even trying - all Syd has to do is stare into space and the camera loves him. This will back fire badly across late 1967 and 1968 when it becomes clear that Syd is not all there and if you watch these clips in order you can see the rapid deterioration in the 'lights in his eyes', but for a longer run of clips than you might suspect, Syd Barrett is perhaps the greatest rock star in the history of music. Though David Gilmour was hired partly from his heart-throb looks and partly because he could do a pretty fair impression of Syd's guitar playing, as well as his close links to the band in their early days, he never even tried to take the same role - indeed he's hidden for most of his early appearances with the band where they try to cover up the fact that their lead singer/guitarist/writer is absent. However what the later Floyd did do was learn how to distract people trying to look at them with a series of marvellous imageries, using specially shot films broadcast at their gigs to go along with their music or hiring directors to add their own creative vision to videos that came to feature the band themselves less and less (to be fair, this is kind of what the early Floyd did anyway with their lava lamps and oil light shows). Starting with their distinctive Hipgnosis-designed album covers, Pink Floyd came to be seen as one of the most strikingly imaginative and visual of bands - despite doing less personally in front of the cameras from 1968 onwards than probably any other leading band. As the band became more famous they dropped TV appearances as quickly as possible, meaning that this months' TV clips are very 'top heavy' - Syd's still in the band for the first fourteen of the forty-one clips for instance, despite only being with the group for one full album. However the later music videos specially commissioned by the band led by either Roger or Dave are some of the best known in our entire series, much loved and oft-repeated (though sadly some more than others).

As with all the other TV-related tomfoolery in this TV clips series (this is - gulp - the twenty-first of these articles now!) we've tried to assimilate, curate, demarcate and delineate all of the surviving Floyd footage and lay them out in as close to chronological order as we can manage without a true Floyd TV reference book and/or a time machine. As usual, a few caveats: I'd love to think this list is complete but it only takes some passionate fan with a load of tapes from some obscure European country the click of a mouse button to put some footage on Youtube that will prove me wrong. To be honest I'd love nothing more than to be proved that this list isn't complete, because that means there's more Floyd out there for me to enjoy! There's also the sad fact that so many tapes of our dearly beloved bands were wiped back in the day when space was at a premium and rock was still thought to be a passing fad unworthy of being saved. I've made it a policy in these articles to only review material I've seen with my very own eyes somewhere along the line - and which you can too if you're patient enough to dig all these clips out. We've also cut down the list by restricting it to the actual band career rather than the solo stuff - although unlike some articles where this has made for quite a cull, there are barely any solo performances anyway (David Gilmour has appeared on Jools Holland a few times and Nick Mason occasionally pops up at F1 races to talk about cars - the one exception, featuring both Nick and Dave, is included on the list just for the hell of it). We've also cut the performances seen complete on DVD and already reviewed in our DVD section (which means 'Live At Pompeii' 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' and 'Pulse' in this instance). Some of these clips - sadly not many at the time of writing - are available officially and we'll be telling you where to find them at the allotted time. A handful more can be seen in the excellent 'Pink Floyd Miscellany' compilation put together for the BBC and occasionally (again not often enough given how frequently some shows come round again) on BBC4 repeats. For everything else you'll have to stick to Youtube I'm afraid - but that's ok because to save you searching we've put our own, even longer Floyd Miscellany together via our patent-pending pig-flying wall-wielding Alan's Album Archives' Psychedelic Breakfasted Fletcher Memorial Home For Peculiar Videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/AlansArchives . Simply scroll through and have a look for 'AAA Playlist #21: Pink Floyd' and you'll be away - unless of course you've already found the secret hidden message tucked away at the top of this article (for website users only I'm afraid) which will allow you to play all these clips at the press of a button. How can we be free? By watching TV. With a gorilla, if the cover of Roger's 'Amused To Death' is anything to go by.

Right that's that out the way - Lights! Roll the sound effects! Action!...

1.    Home Video: Syd's First Trip (1966)
Was this really Syd's first trip? It seems rather, well, late into Syd's life given that as a hip and happening trendy young thing long before the Floyd came along and with a curious mind you'd have expected Syd to have taken LSD long before this. However that's what legend has always told us and having your first big 'trip' was already enough of a major milestone in people's lives back in 1966 that one of Syd's friends decided to film it for posterity. That friend was Nigel Lesmoir Gordon who filmed a group of six of them partaking in the drug, including Nigel's then-girlfriend later-wife Jenny in the yellow dress (who takes the camera over briefly to film Nigel on the balcony). It seems odd in retrospect that Syd teamed up with old school mates for this first experience, rather than the 'Architectural Abdabs' who had been going at least a year and probably nearer two and already contained the other three members of the future Floyd. What we get is a rather worried looking short-haired Syd who in an eerie sign of things to come seems to turn inward rather than outward like many drug takers and looks distinctly uncomfortable with the new doors suddenly opening up in his head. We can't see or hear what he's thinking of course - this was originally a silent film, although that hasn't stopped some later Youtube users having a go (most versions come with a Syd-soundalike playing the creepiest banjo version of 'Daisy Daisy' you'll ever hear, slowed to a painful crawl, which is a trip in itself). But you can sense that the first drug trip (if this was indeed the first) is not the picnic the group of friends are quite expecting it to be, though it does at least show Syd communing with nature (the most memorable image is Syd holding up a mushroom between each finger and holding them up to his eyes; wrong drug as it happens but a striking image nevertheless).

Sadly un-filmed but reportedly also happening that day was Syd staring at two pieces of fruit everyone brought with him - when asked what they were Barrett replied 'Venus and Jupiter' and commented on the different worlds he could now see around him (that's why there's fruit hidden away in the corner of the 'Barrett/Madcap Laughs' compilation in case you're wondering) as well as the day's grand finale - everyone leaping about naked in a bathtub and chanting 'no rules!' over and over for an hour. What does exist of this film - lasting all of five minutes - was released as a pricey semi-bootleg named 'Sty'd First Trip' in 2005 where it thrilled Floyd fans and confused non-Floyd ones to equal extents (it is after all just footage of a group of fans climbing hills, staring at leaves and starting a fire - probably not a good thing to do when on acid, but nobody had experience enough of the drug to know that back then). Not quite as weird or as important as you might expect perhaps, but strangely compelling like most things to do with Syd. Lesmoir Gordon stayed in touch with Syd and even got some nice silent home movie footage of the Floyd signing their contract outside Abbey Road, absent from the DVD but tacked on the end since by several helpful Floyd bootleggers. The clips keep being pulled down from Youtube by the way, probably on the orders of the Floyd themselves, but there are so many versions out there you can probably find one if you type in 'Syd's first trip' even if the one chosen by us is missing.


2.    Tonite Let's All Make Love In London (Film 1966)
Back in 1967 the 'Swinging London' scene was considered important enough a subject matter to be turned into a film. In the context of trends and fashions that's like doing a film now about the 'Swinging Empty Manufactured Pop Scene' staring Justin Bieber and One Direction, yet at the time it felt like something big was arriving. In many ways it was: Pink Floyd are as yet still a few weeks away from being signed to EMI but have already built up a strong following thanks to their psychedelic light shows and oil lamps at clubs like the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream and The Roundhouse (though this gig was taped ast the lesser known Alexandria Palace) where the emphasis was on the audience as much as the band, emphasising dancing and drugs over pop star adulation (which suited the Floyd to a tee). In its way this early footage feels very like an 80s rave: everyone's having a slightly different tripping experience unique to the, but within the safety of a crowd of people all being shepherded into roughly the same experience thanks to the flashing lights and Syd's squealing guitar. This is perhaps the definitive version of the song, although you need to see the full uncut performance to appreciate that, not just the three measly minutes in the film, snaking and back-0tracking far more than the album version. It's a great chance to see how the band interact with each other and to see the Floyd as just one of many up-and-coming bands with a similar-yet-different sound (some of whom made it, some of whom didn't).

A soundtrack album containing the full unedited 16 minute 'Overdrive' plus an exclusive song 'Nick's Boogie' (sadly cut from the film) was released in 1990, with an expanded CD release a few years later. Luckily for those of you without much patience, the Floyd's performance can be heard over the opening titles and is taken from the spacier middle section of the song. The rest of the film is mainly tripping hippies trying to articulate new sensations they've just discovered rather badly, but there is a fair bit of other great footage too including a cracking version of one of the greatest songs The Animals ever did ('When I was Young'), footage of Chris Farlowe recording 'Out Of Time' under the watchful eyes of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger being ambiguous over the concept of revolution and whether it might be a good thing to overthrow society (no wonder they tried to lock him up the following year - I'd love to think the police department sat around watching this film looking for ideas for drug busts!) and managers Andrew Loog Oldham (Stones) and Robert Wace (The Kinks) stand around looking posh and, in the last case, crooning 'The Changing Of The Guard' less ironically than you might imagine. All available on DVD, but as a sign of how much the Floyd have become associated with this film it's been re-titled 'Pink Floyd: London 1966-67' with very little mention of the fact it's actually a more general biog. Avoid the single disc version if you can and get the deluxe two-disc set, which features some great unedited footage of the Floyd performing the two songs used on the soundtrack CD  (with Syd and Roger eyeball to eyeball) and which is far more interesting than clips of Michael Caine banging on about being young and hip. There are some brief but great interviews with the band back in 1967 too on the crest of their first wave of popularity. Not essential, but it's great to see the band in their natural habitat, however fleetingly.

3.    Scene Special ('Interstellar Overdrive' UK TV January 1967)
For my money the second best version of 'Interstellar' out there, with the band cutting out some of the more meandering sections to fit it into a five minutes running time for the camera crews and played with an urgency even the studio take doesn't possess. Syd's already refusing to play what's associated with the song and leaves most of the 'beat' to Roger, screaming away at the top of the frets until suddenly pouncing on the riff and pummelling it into smithereens while everyone else tries to guess his briefest of cues and hold on tight. It's an exhilarating ride that deserves to be better known, even if in common with most of these early shots the band play in the shadows and underneath their light show so there's more to hear than see still. The Floyd are performing at the UFO Club and were filmed for yet another British documentary about youth culture, this one entitled 'It's So Far Out It's In' and broadcast on ITV/Granada in January 1967, still seven months before the version of 'Interstellar' heard on 'Piper At The Gates Of dawn'.

4.    Arnold Layne (Music Video 1967)
There were actually two promos shot for the Floyd's debut single, neither of which were widely seen - at least at the time. The more famous of the two features the Floyd quite bravely ignoring the song and any attempts to mime as every act of the day did and instead prank around Monkee-style with a mannequin. Playing on the fact that nobody outside the London club scene would have ever seen the band at all back then, the Floyd are already having fun with the idea of identity - in long shots it looks like there are five members of the band and the dummy 'joins in' with all the pranks: wearing masks, playing 'footsy' and sitting in the band's rather posh looking car, while Syd frequently pretends to be the 'dummy' before whipping the head off and smiling impishly at the camera. There's one memorable sequence where the dummy loses his legs, another where Roger - perhaps as a clue to what will happen later - takes his  temporary band member to pieces and the surrealist AAA footage since 'I Am The Walrus' when the dummy is pressed up to the camera while behind him the band all do starjumps with masks on. Though shot for Top Of The Pops  the clip was never shown - officially because the single was already dropping out the charts by the time they received it, but given that TOTP sometimes stretched the rules for new bands who'd gone to the trouble of making videos back then it seems likely they were slightly scared off by the surreal humour too, which would have looked like nothing else shown on TOTP that year. Though not usually linked with nostalgia, Roger used the clip as his 'warm up' act for his 'In The Flesh?' tour around the millennium, the first chance many of his fans had had to see it - there was barely a dry eye in the house the first night after everyone realised what it was. Oddly for a song about an underwear thief, there are no underpants in this sequence.

The second clip, which we're calling '4B', features the band fooling around in some trees. Nick and Roger seem to be fighting for real at one point, while the caption creator gets carried away reminding us this video is 'Made In England' (yeah like two out of three pop clips made in 1967 weren't?!) The band don't exactly go out of their way to fit in with the song this time either, although they are seen miming 'Arnold Layne' whilst literally putting their heads together - though filmed here in black and white, the colour stills of this image shot will be a favourite with Floyd books for decades to come. The most striking moment comes when Syd has apparently 'shot' the rest of the band who are trying their best to lie still on what looks like typically English muddy ground before their leader whips round to point at the camera and demand 'why can't you see?!' Still no underwear in sight though. This promo was shot on Hampstead Heath - that's Highgate Church Syd is kneeling in front of next to a cloaked Roger at the very end of the film.

5.    Look Of The Week ('Pow R Toc H' 'Astronomy Domine' UK TV May 1967)

To a certain generation of people, Professor Hans Keller is a respected classical musical journalist who particularly loved treating classical composers to psycho-analytical study whose opinions - which couldn't be contradicted when he wrote about the dead - were held up as some of the greatest writings of their time. To a generation of sixties musicologists he's that jumped up posh git who sneered down his nose at Pink Floyd, subjected them to some ridiculous Freudian imagery and all but kick-started Syd's hatred of the pop way of life then and there. Really, it was just bad timing - 'Look Of The Week' was a variety series that switched guests and interviewers almost as dizzyingly as Pebble Mill or The One Show does today and somebody somewhere clearly thought 'hey two music acts - this should be good'. It isn't. The Floyd, energised by how well the debut album sessions are going, turn in a terrific and terrifically loud performance with a thirty second tease of 'Flaming' over the show's opening credits with plenty of madcap screams and later a thrillingly raw and outrageous 'Astronomy Domine'. Syd is on top of his game and performs an even better guitar part than the double-tracked one on the record, while I'm amazed there's anything left of Nick's drums, while the band navigate the song's tricky stop-start structure as if they've been playing it years (sadly this is the only surviving filmed performance of this great song with writer Syd still in the band). Keller, though is dismissive, asking why it has to be so loud and complaining that he grew up listening to String Quartets so it's not to his taste. Roger, already more comfortable at confrontation than Syd, weighs in that it doesn't have to be loud but they like it that way - and his generation didn't grow up listening to string quartets. Keller isn't having any of it: 'Not everyone of my generation grew up listening to string quartets so your comments aren't entirely reasonable'. Though Roger, characteristically, seems rejuvenated by the battle of wits (which he clearly wins, despite being some thirty years Keller's junior) the rest of the band are slightly cowed for a tentative 'Pow R Toc H' which comes across as almost apologetic. Keller, though, is clearly nuts: this is a great band giving a great performance and no one in their right mind would ever want to listen to a string quartet again after hearing the sheer power and skill of this performance.

6.    Top Of The Pops ('See Emily Play' UK TV July 1967)
The BBC, as many people know, do not have a full collection of old TV programmes and poor old TOTP seemed to get a particularly raw deal - programmes weren't kept complete as a matter of course until as late as 1978 (which is why the BBC3 repeats started that year in case you're wondering). While the Beeb have tried to recover as much of their old lost footage as they can since home video and the idea of repeats came along, until very recently they were only interested in full programmes rather than snippets. Thankfully a collector held on to odds and ends in a bank vault until inviting a music collector named Bill Harrison to go through them when the BBC relaxed their policy in 2009 and called for anything back, including a very rare appearance of the Floyd with Syd still compos rather than compost mentis. Alas only around two thirds of the clip survived the rages of time in a condition good enough to salvage, with picture 'rolls' throughout a lot of it, although the complete three minute clip exists on audio with a high pitched sounding Syd singing along to the usual record (slightly tweaked with echo for the manic instrumental bits).  The clip was shown at the 'Missing...Believed Wiped' show dedicated to rare clips but as yet has not been shown on TV. Which is a shame because what there is of this clip is great, even if Syd already looks deeply uncomfortable. Whether by accident or design Syd 'hides' behind Nick throughout, his drums brought centre stage for a change.

7.    ZBS Foundation (?) (US TV August 1967)
ZBS - 'Zero Bull Shit' if you were wondering - was another of those hippie companies that was more like a commune of like minded politically and socially aware teenagers breaking down the walls of society with the truth to counterbalance Nixon's propaganda. This was an audio company who went out interviewing the big counter-culture names of the day for their thoughts on trippier subjects than the pop music magazines were asking back then and back in the summer of 1967, a month before 'Piper' still, Syd was an obvious interesting character to chat to. Unfortunately this is Syd right on the turn - the interviewer, speaking later, remembers the 'lack of barriers' as he stared into Syd's eyes as he mumbles incoherently. To be fair, Syd isn't exactly asked coherent questions: the 15 minutes interview features Syd touching but not really talking about success, his paintings ('I see and hear very clearly different instructions and criticisms'), then-modern life ('There seem to be a lot of assumptions taking place') and hilariously the interviewer asks what Syd thinks about him ('In words?' is Syd's shocked answer, as if he was hoping to get away with doing it by semaphore, 'Umm wow...there's so much on so many different levels, it's very...strange to meet you'). Most moving passage the interviewer discusses feeling imprisoned by lie but assumes that pop star Syd won't feel that. 'Yeah, I do...' Syd whispers sadly in such a world weary way. The interview ends with Syd close to silence, taking  an age to turn out a half-formed sentence.

8.    The Scarecrow (Music Video 1967)
More fun with film, as Roger takes the lead for the first time in a promo curiously shot for an album track that doesn't appear to have been broadcast in Britain at the time (it was instead a pathe newsreel for showing round Europe - goodness only knows what they thought of us). Shot for the most part backwards, it features Roger going from having fallen down to leaping up in a scarecrow position and lots of general shots of fields. An outtake features Nick about to throw a clod of earth at the bass player, but sadly the camera cuts away before we see if he ever does or not!

9.    American Bandstand ('Apples and Oranges' US TV November 1967)
A few months on and things are very different for a band that's now hard at work trying to crack America. TV presenter Dick Clark seems oddly enthusiastic about a band few Americans had heard of back then, while the band have gone more flower power in terms of dress and facial hair. This is one of the band's last appearances with Syd, with the camera doing its best to cut away from him - even catching Rick unawares early on before he notices he's on camera and starts to 'vamp'! Syd doesn't seem all that far gone yet though - he's still miming all the words ok, even if he's blinking a lot and standing deathly still, out-staring the camera lens as best he can. Still, the Spice Girls looked weirder on all their appearances. Clark could have asked hundreds of pertinent questions but instead asks - what the band thinks of American food? (Roger on cheeseburgers: 'they sat quite well', which is about the most coherent answer the whole interview).

10. Tomorrow's World (UK TV January 1968)
You don't get to see Pink Floyd in this clip sadly, just hear them, but it's an interesting snippet all the same from a TV world that had already realised that the Floyd sound was a good match for TV soundtracks. This long running technology series ran between 1965 and 2003 and this week is dedicated to the Floyd's light techniques. A quick run down of how the band got started (the Floyd were good friends with their art teacher, who hit upon the idea of projecting oil slides onto a big screen) is accompanied by the band playing a slightly stodgy run through Otis Redding backing band Booker T and the MGs' 'Green Onions', with a slightly space-age edge. Most interesting for the shots of Leonard's house - shared at one time by various members of the band and for being one of the last performances by the band with Syd, although we don't get to see him.

11. The Committee (Film 1968)
A very weird soundtrack for a very weird film, this bizarre 1968 art movie shot against the tide of fashion in moody monochrome passes even most of the big Floyd collectors by. The plot, as much as there is one, concerns a ghostly hitch-hiker (there are definite pros and cons by the way - did Roger have this in mind later on?) and is concerned with identity as the main character remembers nothing later on (they should have got The Who to do the soundtrack instead!)  It sounds like the noisy parts of a Floyd jam that hasn't quite found their way back into song yet (my guess is that it's really a particularly freaky middle section of 'Interstellar Overdrive' again) and I think is best described as 'bonkers'. Most of the Floyd's 'work' can be heard at the beginning, such as it is. As far as I can tell, that's still Syd playing not David.

12. The Sound Of Change (TV Soundtrack May 1968)
Another po-faced documentary on social change, accompanied by a moody Floyd improvisation that's heavy on Rick's gospel keyboards and 'Echoes' style lashings of guitar. Shots of hippies getting beaten up by policeman are intercut with moody shots of the band in close up and in colour. However the guitarist is hard to see. It sounds like Syd, hence its inclusion here, but could equally be David doing an impression of his old friend: the fact that the camera shies away could point to either hiding Syd acting 'weird' again or a typical TV over-reaction to a changed band line-up.

13. San Francisco: Film aka Underground Scene aka The UFO Club ('Interstellar Overdrive' US TV January 1968)
Another very arty and trippy film this time by director Anthony Stern (the Floyd really brought out the pretentious in film directors didn't they?), this is a slightly meandering and keyboard-heavy version of 'Interstellar' performed on Syd's last tour with the band. Officially titled 'San Francisco: Film', it's an early project of the BFI who wanted to record what other cultures were up to in the 1960s - its unknown why they didn't just wait for the band to get back to Britain. Surreal and impressionistic, it's more like a bunch of slides jumbled together in a box than an actual 'film' and is guaranteed to both bring on sea-sickness and make you want to slap the cameraman with a wet fish. Still, it's good to see Syd at least partly with it one last time and to hear how 'Interstellar' has evolved across the last year before finally being mothballed after Syd left/got kicked out the band.
14. Jugband Blues (TV 1968)
What seems to be Syd's last appearance, recorded for a UK 'sales' arm named ';LOndon Calling' and sold around Europe), is a truly sad goodbye. The finished version of his farewell Floyd song as released on 'A Saucerful Of Secrets' is a typically play with mirrors, half-authentic, half cheeky and halfway between loaded nonsense and mischief. This performance, though, is just utterly sad: a long haired Syd looks deeply uncomfortable and sings at face value lines like 'I'm most obliged to you  for making it clear that I'm not here'. Rick mimes trumpet and Roger tuba where the brass section would normally be, while the Salvation Army is replaced by a swirly organ part that's even creepier while the programme director gets arty. The band largely play in silhouette, as if in mourning already. The song ends with that famous reprise where Syd starts uncomprehendingly into the camera, barely miming to the words 'what exactly is a dream and what exactly is a joke?' Song over, he quickly turns away as quickly from the cameras as he can get, out last moving footage of Syd effectively seeing him turn his back on us forever. Powerful and moving, it's a better performance of 'Jugaband Blues' than the record and presumably the band must have re-cut the song especially for the TV show as its very different to the record, even if Syd is obviously miming (or not miming at times!)
15. Apples and Oranges (RBT, Belgian TV 1968)
The rest of the Floyd, meanwhile, are faced with the unfortunate task of being asked to mime their latest singles for use on European TV with their lead singer no longer in the band. A dementedly smiling Roger sings this one and clearly treats the whole thing as one big joke, over-doing the 'pop star' bit as if in response to what Syd has been asked for years to do! It would have been nice if he'd bothered to learn all the words, although to be fair this is a hard song to mime, Syd's sense of timing being all over the shop. Our first shots of new boy David Gilmour, meanwhile, feature him looking either at his shoes or his guitar with an intense look of concentration on his face despite the fact he's clearly in a child's ball pool!

16. See Emily Play (Music Video 1968)
This clip, quite possibly made for broadcast on Belgian TV again, is one of those peculiarly mid-60s low budget films which feature the band without props clowning around in what appears to be the TV studio car park. Rick goes round the band and attempts to make them start 'playing' their imaginary instruments, although only Nick gives a convincing miming of his drums being there. Note the power that Rick puts into his mock-punch to Roger! This time the band get round the missing Syd problem by having Rick mime the lead, but looking off camera, as if he really is just singing the 'harmony' part. The manic solo, meanwhile, features the band playing cricket despite not having any of the right props for that pastime either; Nick is the one to 'catch' the high flying imaginary ball! The clip then ends with the band doing a spot of Morris Dancing before running off, A Hard Day's Night style, back to the four corners of the field. Truly odd.

18. Paintbox (Music Video 1968)
Another possible promo for Belgian TV, this is another low budget work that features an early example of Gilmour standing on top of a 'wall' to play his solo! Rick sings this one anyway so the lack of Syd is easier to cover and the band have got their instruments back. Notice how, unlike the other immediate post-Syd promos, its Roger whose stuck at the back and barely seen and Rick standing at the forefront. Things might have been very different in Floyd history had this song sold more copies!

19. Point Me At The Sky (Music Video 1968)
A cute forgotten video for a cute overlooked single, this is basically home movie style footage of Rick and David being asked to do something interesting for the cameras and laughing when they can't think of anything, intercut with location footage of David Gilmour in flying goggles and stock footage of planes. Perhaps not getting the message, the promo ends with a clip of Rock waving goodbye with a hanky...to a train!

20. Bouton Rouge ('Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' 'Astronomy Domine' 'Let There Be More Light' 'Flaming' French TV 1968)

A rather odd and rarely seen performance that starts off with a pretentious French audience discussing music and Pink Floyd invited to perform almost as an afterthought. Roger, his hair at its peak length, looks rather like a caveman hunched over his microphone for a moody performance of 'Set The Controls' most notable for Rick's louder organ part than the record and the band doing their best to avoid rippling feedback near the end of the song. 'Astronomy', meanwhile, is a hint of how the band sounded trying to replicate Syd's parts without him there, similar in feel to the following year's performance on 'Ummagumma' (ie less intense and longer than the original). 'Light', meanwhile, is slightly chaotic, as if the band haven't quite started in sync but it's a song designed to work on the live stage and has an extra intensity away from the studio. A quick burst of 'Flaming' rounds out the show with Roger doing a good impression of Syd's vocal cries and David his guitar.

21. ('Astronomy Domine' 'Corporal Clegg' 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' Belgian TV 1968)

Meanwhile, over in Belgium, the band are simply miming to their old records with a performance that's more in keeping with what every other band was doing in the era, complete with cutaway shots to pretty girls in the audience. It's unusual to see the band do 'Clegg' - this is the only 'performance' of the song the band ever did and as such the first time David can be seen miming to his own vocals.

22. A Day In The Life Of San Francisco ('Interstellar Overdrive' Film 1968)

Proof that the Gilmour-era Floyd couldn't always get the feel of the Barrett era comes with this manic, quirky version of Syd's old signature tune which to be honest is rather embarrassing compared to the days of old. Gilmour has the sound, but he doesn't have Syd's 'texture', being too inhibited to 'let it all out'. The rest of the band have started messing with the arrangement to cover this dilemma: Nick plays double time, while Rick's organ comes into the mix much more and takes the song to a much cosier, warmer place. Part of a larger documentary covering the entire San Francisco scene of 1968, the Floyd extract is the only part that ever gets seen (I doubt you'd have heard of many of the other bands) - thankfully for once the performance is left in complete instead of being cut up and butchered like so many times before.

23. All My Loving ('Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' UK TV November 1968)
Tony Palmer's 'All My Loving' documentary turns up a lot in these articles - it was the 'pilot' for the first ever rock music TV documentary 'All You Need Is Love' and comes right near the end of the film in the 'psychedelic freakout' montage. Though much of the documentary is taken from stock footage, the Floyd seem to have performed this especially and it quite often turned up in other programmes such as 'Sounds Of The Sixties'. It's a great live version of Roger's key song of 1968, starting off slow and quiet and growing into a noisy feedback-filled guttural war cry by the end, quite different to the calm slow fade of the original. The editors of the original programme even segue it into a war siren, hinting that the 1960s music is a psychological re-action to World War Two. Though deeply wrong on many levels for most bands of the 1960s, its amazingly prescient given the pain Roger felt after losing his socialist conscientious objector father in the Anzio campaign of 1944 and is a theme that will crop up many, many times across his writing.

24. Discorama ('Paintbox' 'French TV 1968)
One last throwback to the pop days occurs with Rick's charming single which features the Floyd in a TV studio miming behind an overlaid backdrop of their light show (sob - it's the last time this familiar prop from the old days is used, unless more footage was lost sometime after this). This is a mimed performance so not a lot to report, except to note how happy Roger seems to be, miming for all he's worth on the bass riffs on a song he later said to have loathed.

25. Moonlandings (UK TV July 1969)
By 1969 Pink Floyd had been lumbered with the term 'space age rock', something they did their best to rid themselves of in the years to come. To be honest only three songs ('Astronomy Domine' 'Interstellar Overdrive' and 'Set The Controls...') had ever referred to space so the tag was a curious one, but it was useful in its own way - such as when the Floyd were commissioned to provide 'atmosphere' during the BBC coverage of the Apollo moon landings (though sadly on the lighyt not the 'dark' side of the moon!) Though technically speaking the Floyd came on late at night when almost everybody had gone to bed, in terms of pure programme figures that means this programme, which ran most of the day and night, is the most seen AAA clip ever, seen by most of Britain at one stage or another. The Floyd section appears during a ten minute 'highlights' section backing footage that back then had only ever been seen once, live, but was already going down in history: strangely not the 'one small step' speech (which the editors didn't think important enough to show again), but the 'strolling on the moon one day...' song  and shots of the astronauts playing golf. The Floyd song isn't an old faithful composition but an entirely new creation bravely improvised while the show went out live. The song is kind of like a happier, more playful 'Careful With That Axe Eugene' crossed with a slowed down rendition of the manic opening to 'Let There Be More Light', but also sounds quite unlike anything else the Floyd ever did, with slow beautiful Rick organ lines and an urgent Roger bass riff, with nothing much from Gilmour. The song was never given as name at the time (The Floyd are credited at the end for music, rather than any specific composition) - its bootleggers who have, quite sensibly, come to referring it as 'Moonlandings' or, less sensibly, 'Moonhead'. Dark side of the moon landings?...

26. Biding My Time (Music Video 1969)
Why did Pink Floyd bother shooting a music video for a song they never bothered to release? I haven't a clue but it's a bit of a strange one, appearing to be played live if Roger's vocals are anything to go by, although I doubt the 'sudden switch' to brass instruments was live somehow! This one of the first times we've seen Roger singing live and the start of his increasing power within the band, although it's an early example of Gilmour's 'crunchy' guitar finally given full reign that catches the ear.

27. KQED ('Atom Heart Mother' 'Careful With That Axe Eugene' 'Cymbaline' 'Green Is The Colour' 'Grantchester Meadows' 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' Belgian TV 1970)
By far the longest TV appearance Pink Floyd made - and as far as I know the only time they got their own show - this is a rare but welcome chance to see the Floyd actually giving a concert rather than a toned-down performance for tea-time telly viewing. The band are oddly raw, actually, compared to other concerts of the time we know from bootlegs and seem to have an issue with the sound of the gig. It's still a nice gig, though, with Gilmour in great voice and the band are in a warm and lazy rather than a fierce and fiery mood. 'Eugene' is playful, Roger singing rather than whispering 'come on, come on and be careful with that axe Eugene' while Gilmour goes all Chuck Berry. There's a great shot where Roger looks as if he's going to eat the microphone whole, so far is he shoving it down his throat. 'Green Is The Colour' sounds particularly lovely, without the archness or tin whistles of the 'More' soundtrack version. 'Grantchester' features the only tape of the day playing the bird song and a video of a forest played behind the band (their first in-concert projection?) David sings this one solo at first, without Roger bouncing vocals and guitar parts off him and sings a much lazier, prettier version more like his beloved CSN albums. Roger then takes the song to a darker place when he sings the second verse solo while both men play guitar. Finally, 'Set The Controls' features the only major contribution of the night by Rick, whose already being somewhat overlooked, with a longer moodier organ opening before Roger mumbles so badly into his mike you can't really hear him. 'Atom Heart' is the one clip I've never seen, but was apparently performed the same day. All in all, a great show that's perhaps the only one the band did full-on facing the camera and by their standards everyone gets very carried away, looking far more hot and sweaty by the end than usual.

28. ORTF ('Improvisation' French TV 1970)

Now here's an interesting one. Pink Floyd improvise away over footage of snow-covered French hills on a track that sounds as if it started off life as 'Careful With That Axe Eugene' before making a u-turn, while the visuals make it look like a dry run for 'Live At Pompeii', albeit with snow rather than ash. Roger gets it on and bangs a gong, whilst Rick keeps the song together, his organ throbbing with each pulse as if the band are breathing life into the universe. Gilmour's guitar tries to pull the band back to 'Set The Controls' but the song's not going there, so Roger indulges in some 'Julia Dream' style screaming and Rick makes an ill-advised move to harpsichord and moves the song closer to 'Sisyphus'. The clip then ends with Roger and Dave 'talking' to each other down a bouncy and echoey pair of microphones, the words sadly inaudible. The song then finally falls into an early version of 'Embryo' - along with a BBC session version the closest this rarest of Floyd songs ever came to finding a release, although they don't get any further than the main riff. It's all a bit weird, even by Floyd standards, but a fascinating and rarely seen clip all the same. This is from the brief period when Nick had a full beard and it makes him look quite different if you're wondering whether they've replaced the drummer or not!

29. Holland Pop Festival aka Stamping Ground ('Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' 'A Saucerful Of Secrets' Dutch TV 1970)
A mini-concert in Rotterdam, this colourful ten minute sequence is high on atmosphere but not really one to watch if you want informative close ups of the band at work. Sadly only the noisy instrumental second half of 'Set The Controls' seems to have been broadcast and it's a longer, weirder finale than most broadcast versions, with Gilmour's guitar sounding as if its running backwards. 'Saucerful' is the more normal of the two versions - how often do we get to say that?! - and features an especially lengthy opening keyboard section. A shame David's off-key wordless wailing is so bad, though.

30. Hyde Park ('Embryo' 'Atom Heart Mother' July 1970)
I'm in two minds about whether this was taped professionally for broadcast or is simply a fan made tape. It looks very good with the film-maker clearly near the stage, but it sounds atrocious and I can't find any evidence it was ever shown on anything. It would make sense, though, if the summer's free concert in Hyde Park was filmed for posterity. This was actually the third of four, with band friends Roy Harper and Kevin Ayers in support. The band play a very rough and early embryonic version of 'Embryo' and a freeform 'Atom Heart Mother', which might well represent the worst performance of theirs ever captured on tape but is at least of historical interest given how rarely the two songs were performed.

31. Unknown ('Atom Heart Mother' Austrian TV 1971)
This looks like a bit of news-reel footage for me, with clips of reviews and concert posters and shots of the crowd spilling into the Austrian venue cutting in the second half to a clip of the Floyd in full flight. 'Atom Heart' is a hard song to pull off live and the band don't even come close, but there are some intriguing clips of the band at rehearsal where they don't seem to have noticed the camera and are, by their standards, 'relaxed'. Gilmour is restless, forever moving to get things while Roger, Rock and Nick lounge.

32. Unknown ('Atom Heart Mother' Japanese TV 1971)
Silent film of the band in August exists, apparently professionally shot and complete with backstage footage of the band's gear arriving (marked 'From London'). Some kind bootlegger has added some sound to it which syncs quite well even though it's not from the same show (apparently it's from Montreaux in November that year). For some reason the drummer gets re-named 'Nicki Mason', but apart from that it's a worthy bootleg project made with a lot of love and if I have to sit through a quarter hour version of this wretched song then this horn-less, fast paced aggressive version is the one to go for.

33. Unknown ('Careful With That Axe Eugene' Australian TV 1971)
Sadly only one song seems to have surfaced from a performance Pink Floyd gave in Sydney. It's a very windy day in Australia which adds a touch of drama to the performance, with a rather tighter and more disciplined performance of everyone's favourite axe-murdering flipside than the ones from a few years earlier.

34. One Of These Days (Music Video 1972)
One of these days I'm going to colour you. In little pieces, because otherwise it'll flipping take forever! Pink Floyd were getting bored of the promotional treadmill by the time they made 'Meddle', so instead hired Hipgnosis to put together a cartoon promoting the album's lead track 'One Of These Days' (knowing Floyd's sense of humour, it's a wonder they didn't ask for a cartoon for the 22 minute 'Echoes' instead). Hipgnosis, unused to such an arrangement, chicken out and go for repetition instead, basing their video around colourful dancers who keep going round and round with occasional cut ups that feature wonky spacey lines. More in keeping wi9th the song's sense of menace than dancing are the curious orange aliens who turn up near the end, intent unclear.


35. Obscured By Clouds (Recording Session 1972)
A rather rambling twenty minutes filmed in France where the Floyd were busy recording their second film soundtrack, but given the period (this is the last album before 'Dark Side Of The Moon') there's surprisingly little of interest going on, though Roger does mention the 'Moon' piece for the first time as a 'new' idea they're working on. The band look bored, not even giving the same level of interest they will in the 'Pompeii' film shot the same year and actually the more interesting comments come from Barbet Schroder. Filmed for French telly, the entire video is also translated in a very loud voice that makes the band very hard to hear. Though we see the band apparently rehearsing and we hear clips from the soundtrack album, we don't technically get to see the band record anything - instead this is one long interview and not one of the band's best. Poor Rick and Nick barely get to say a word.
36. A2 News (French TV 1977)
Alas the band did no interviews for either 'Moon' or 'Wish You Were Here' (take that a world that thinks you can only sell records by talking incessantly about nothing!) so instead we skip right over to 'Animals' and a quick minute shot of a relaxed looking Gilmour at a press conference and even speaking a bit of cod French. What we learn: he can speak French 'a little', the album's a bit 'different' to the last few and it's been 'five years' since 'Dark Side'. Les tres mal!

37. 'Animals' Front Cover 1977

More silent movie footage, shot at the band's request for their archives for posterity. The film of the giant inflatable pig became more interesting than expected when the pig breaks free from its moorings and - sadly unseen - scares various aeroplane pilots in the area too afraid to report what they think they've just seen to ground control. This is one of the last times the Floyd look like a 'band' and do a fair bit of smiling - at least until the pig escapes - while it's the pig who looks scary and aggressive close up. Perhaps he's just spotted David Cameron and his Bullingdon pals in the distance (oink oink!) The shots of the pig over Battersea - ultimately unused (they later photo-shopped the pig in instead) look amazing though and a helicopter shot gives a completely different perspective of this famous image.

38. Another Brick In The Wall Part Two (Music Video 1979)

Perhaps the most famous clip on this list, the Floyd - or Roger at any rate - had this Gerald Scarfe/Alan Parker promo made up to promote the forthcoming film and as a result of the song's success (six weeks at number one across 1979-1980) it was shown on TOTP a lot back in the day. Out of the Floyds only Roger appears in the video alongside a school choir of extras (not the same ones as on the single) intercut with random footage of pupils at school and animation from the film such as the teacher putting pupils through a mincing machine and those famous marching hammers. A generation of schoolchildren were terrified by it, but not half as much as their teachers were.

39. The Final Cut Video EP ('The Gunner's Dream' 'The Final Cut' 'Not Now John' 'The Fletcher Memorial Home' 1983)
'The Final Cut' is sometimes referred to as the 'mini-wall', based as it is on discarded songs and expanded ideas from that major work. This video EP is in effect a mini-sequel to 'The Wall' film, with four of the stronger album songs (though not,  sadly, the best song 'Paranoid Eyes') given visuals. But not by the band: Roger is again the only band member seen and then only shrouded in darkness on the opening song. Instead everyone is played by actors, with Alex McAvoy returning as the teacher seen here having a pretty miserable private life post-war and outside school. Roger appears on TV to interrupt the Teacher's attempts to relax with memories about the war several times across the video, with the images of the songs provided to the tutor, who often sees himself on TV through the magic of editing. While 'The Gunner's Dream' and 'Final Cut' are quite boring and 'Not Now John' - an all too literal take on the song's comments regarding British workers - are pretty average, 'Fletcher Memorial Home' is just stunning.  
The Teacher stumbles across a care home inhabited by Napoleon (and a pet giant snail), a comedy Hitler, a humourless Queen Victoria, a cigar-puffing Churchill, Reagan with a missile under his arm and most scary of all Margaret Thatcher in a place where all these evil tyrants get to be cruel to each other instead of letting their imaginations  loose on the rest of us. It seems quite a happy life, actually, full of croquet and puppets, which does a good job of taking the menace out of the world figures and making them look human and stupid instead ('Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?!') The Teacher takes out his old war revolver to shoot them all, but can't bring himself to when he sees what a pathetic bunch of low-lives they are. I'm sure that's a young David Cameron lurking in the bushes with his eyes on a pig. Despite or more accurately because of his domination on these songs, this is Roger's last appearance in this list until the 'Live 8' reunion.

40. Lie For A Lie (Nick Mason/Rick Fenn with David Gilmour Music Video 1985)
A little seen video of a little known song, credited to Nick and his 10cc pal Rick Fenn like all of the joint album 'Profiles' but making this list courtesy of featuring guest lead vocals from David Gilmour. Dave slouches on the floor next to Rick's keyboards while Nick faces them with his drumkit, miming to the song which is then interspersed with lots of random images including 'The Scream' ('profiles' you see!) and a curious shot with the sea and sand reversed (so the beach is at the top of the screen). Both Nick and Dave look distinctly unimpressed while listening to the playback but it's actually rather a good little song.

41. Money (Music Video 1986)
To fill in the gap between albums after Roger left the band, Gilmour was persuaded to put together a best-of compilation sarcastically named 'A Collection Of Great Dance Songs'. sadly contractual issues meant that 'Money' had to be re-recorded for inclusion and it sounded awful. Bizarrely the music video put forward to promote the album featured this song but the original version of it - which wasn't on the album - so goodness knows what fans made of it all. It's not really worth your while to be honest, just a generic shot of a millionaire's pads and wads of moolah without any Floyd connection past the music.

42. Learning To Fly (Music Video 1987)
The Floyd's big return barely features them either, being more concerned with an Indian chief and his young protégé who has um heap big ideas to fly. Most of the song takes place in a corn field for reasons only known to the director, cut with footage of a suddenly fat and baling Gilmour miming to the song backed by most of the mass of people who appear on the 'Momentary Lapse Of Reason' video. It's not one of the band's better ideas, both song and video and barely features Nick despite his starring role reading out preparations for take-off.

43. One Slip (Music Video 1987)
Here just for completists sake really, a slightly different video edit of the live 'One Slip' from the 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' was released to promote the live album. It's basically one long light show with occasional shots of the band although it speaks volumes that the backing singers get the most camera time. There are some shots of old aeroplanes and pilots in the instrumental break - goodness only knows why.

44. Live At Knebworth ('Shine On You Crazy Diamond' 'Sorrow' 'Wish You Were Here' 'The Great Gig In The Sky' 'Money' 'Comfortably Numb' 'Run Like Hell' UK Concert 1990)
Gilmour at his most schoolmasterly and posh tells the crowd 'we're a bit wet up here - no doubt you are down there too' to a fan base who've been loyally camping out for days in the hope of seeing the band. You'd think, after going through all that, the band might pull their socks up but this is a draggy performance that only really comes alive on 'Shine On' (making its first appearance surprisingly late in this list) and 'Run Like Hell' (ditto, played very very fast compared to everything else tonight). A wind-swept 'Wish You Were Here' and a bizarre 'Comfortably Numb' with Jon Carin and Guy Pratt sharing the vocals are painful to sit through.

45. Le Carrera La Panamerica (Film 1992)
Nick Mason likes his cars and had his own film company not doing much since the Floyd got back together and the Mason/Fenn partnership went on the back boiler. The two were inevitably going to collide one day and it happened here, with a documentary film about both Mason and Gilmour's entry into the revived Mexican road race. It was a dangerous event, abandoned for good reason after 1954 - Gilmour crashed heavily and left his navigator and Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke with a broken leg, sort of captured in the film, while Mason and his co-driver Valentine Lindsay came an impressive eighth. Many bits of music are sprinkled throughout the film, though only the opening and closing titles feature them for any length of time. These feature six new songs, mainly snippets, recorded by what was left of Pink Floyd in 1991 and marked their first recordings since 'Momentary Lapse' four years before. The most interesting of these is 'Pan America Shuffle', a quite convincing jazz. There was also a re-make of 'Run Like Hell' that lasted for less than a minute and four songs borrowed from 'Momentary' - 'Signs Of Life' 'Yet Another Movie' 'Sorrow' and 'One Slip'. Even as a racing fan myself, though, this 65 minute film is blooming slow and not exactly one I'd recommend.
46. Take It Back (Music Video 1994)
Moving on to 'Division Bell', the Floyd feature even less in these clips which are instead full of 'imagery' and 'clues' - though no fans have yet deciphered what on earth the band were going on about. many of the stills from this promo, especially the shots of a cloth rippling, appeared in the CD booklet. Much of the video is a travelogue, with shots of exotic locations, which isn't what came to mind when I heard the song but each to their own I suppose. Probably the most pointless clip in the list.
47. High Hopes (Music Video 1994)

'High Hopes' is better all round, with 'images' much more suited to the Floyd sense of grandeur, shot round the band's home of Cambridge which is fitting for a song filled with so many childhood memories. Several images stay with you: the guitars floating down a river carried by the current, the two jesters tied to each other climbing on each other's backs outside a stately home, the big orange lanterns let into the sky all at once, the white balloons running down a corridor and a giant teddy bear falling from a window. None of this in the lyrics by the way, but it all feels like it fits and suggests the director had actually bothered to listen to the song first.

48. Live 8 ('Breathe' 'Money' 'Wish You Were Here' 'Comfortably Numb' Concert 2005)
Some eleven years later Pink Floyd did the last thing anyone would expect them to and reunited for a one-off gig in front of their biggest ever global audience. Performing just four songs in a setlist cut down after both Roger and David insisted on leaving tracks out, it was a happy and joyous occasion after a rehearsal period reputedly of bad blood that most of the band refused to do again (though Roger pushed for a full tour). The Floyd always joked that they'd get back together if the occasion was 'really big' and Roger for one had been upset that 'Live Aid' happened at just the wrong point in the band's lives, when they were most at each other's throats in 1985 (he wrote the song 'The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)' for 'radio KAOS' after watching the show on TV and wishing he'd been a part of it). The Floyd and Live Aid, of course, have links through Bob Geldof who starred (well, drowned, snivelled and dressed up as a nazi for the most part) in the 'Wall' film of 1982 and it was Bob who kept nagging the band to reform (both Nick and Rick were willing, David and Roger said yes but warned that the other would definitely say 'no' anyway). Proving that petty arguments from thirty years ago were smaller than the issue of global poverty (the festival was organised around the G* summit on poverty that year which did far less to solve the issue across the next decade than the Floyd managed in twenty minutes), it was a worthy finale to the Floyd story, one last chance to reunite four of the five key members (no Syd of course - you hope he watched on TV though) before Rick's sad death a few years later, laying several ghosts to rest. The song choice was predictable but sensible, with 'Breathe' given extra weight by the passing years, 'Money' a resonant choice in the circumstances, 'Wish You Were Here' given a moving introduction from Roger who dedicated it to missing friends 'including Syd' apparently off the cuff and a powerful 'Comfortably Numb', which fans never ever thought they'd hear this way again after thirty years of Roger performing it without Dave and Dave without Roger. Rick and Nick got precious little to do and you could tell from body language that not every trespass down the years had been forgiven, but no matter. Pink Floyd not only got through it but thrived in the spotlight, turning in a tight concert that shamed that of almost every other act that night, most of them forty years younger and with more fans in the audience. A salutary lesson in never giving up just before the miracle, it's Pink Floyd at their humblest and most humane, doing their best to tear down one last great wall dividing our planet. The politicians across the globe should have been made to hear this and maybe we'd be somewhere different without a credit crunch at all in our timeline.
49. Marooned (Music Video 2014)
If this video seems out of place in this list, then that's because it's here  to promote the poor-selling 20th anniversary re-mix of 'The Division Bell' released in 2014, which got rather eclipsed by 'The Endless River' later in the year and didn't sound any different to me anyway. A curious mix of the travelogue style of 'Take It back' with the space footage of the 2000s director's cut of 'Live At Pompeii', it's another of those videos that doesn't even feature the band and doesn't really go with the soundtrack either (a desert island might have been better given the title).
50. Louder Than Words (Music Video 2014)


Talking of 'River', we end with that curio album's lead single and best track. The video starts off with a re-creation of the album cover of a gondola setting off into the blue beyond, which makes a lot more sense now having heard 'A Boat Lies Waiting' on Gilmour's solo album in 2015 'Rattle That Lock'. We also see David and Nick as they are 'now', adding parts to the 'Division Bell' sessions, alongside photos of the band hard at work on 'The Division Bell' on Dave's houseboat including long lingering shots of Rick (who died in 2009). Along the way Nick pulls a funny face, Dave sings with his eyes shut and the rower ends up marooned in a desert where he shines a torch hoping to communicate with the living - but the living aren't listening, harking back nicely to the 'Division Bell' theme of mis-communication.

That effectively, is that, although it's worth adding that for once in the AAA books the Floyd put together a whole run of adverts shown on TV which we've gathered together at the end of our list. A creepy one for the 1990 'Shine On' box set (the first time many Floyd albums were released on CD) features the idea of a 'new angle' and is shot from above with extras wearing masks on their heads while 'Shine On' plays (its one of Hipgnoisis' weirder ideas and that's really saying something!); There's also a woman laughing while eating a Dolce banana while 'The Great Gig In The Sky', which suggests that no one in the ad company realised what the song was about (unless their message really was 'eating too many bananas will kill you'?!); check out the final video in the list about a fridge covered in Floyd album covers which plays a Floyd track at random when opened and which is, in every sense of the word, 'cool'. Help an old reviewer out, buy enough copies of this book so I can buy one (please?!)

Right, that really is all for now. Join us for some more Floydian slips next week!

A Now Complete List Of Pink Floyd and Related Articles To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:




‘Wish You Were Here’ (1975) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-1975.html

‘Animals’ (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/pink-floyd-animals-1977.html

'The Wall' (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-76-pink-floyd-wall-1979.html

'The Final Cut' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/pink-floyd-final-cut-1983.html

'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' (1987) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/12/pink-floyd-momentary-lapse-of-reason.html

'Amused To Death' (Waters) (1992) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-96-roger-watters-amused-to-death.html


The Best Unreleased Pink Floyd Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-best-unreleased-pink-floyd-songs.html

Surviving TV Clips 1965-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-surviving-tv-clipsfilm.html

Non-Album Songs 1966-2000 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-non-album-songs-1966-2009.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part One 1965-1978 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Two 1980-1989 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums_31.html


Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Three 1990-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html

Landmark Concerts and Key Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/pink-floyd-landmark-concerts-and-key.html

Essay: Why Absence Makes The Sales Grow Stronger http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/pink-floyd-essay-why-absence-makes.html
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