Pink Floyd at Pompeii, a must-see for musicphiles and Floyd cinephiles

My first time was the winter of 2010. It was snowing outside, and I was on the computer, trying to write something funny, listening to music on YouTube while it did its algorithm thing. Pink Floyd at Pompeii came on. I was typing something and wasn’t paying attention to what was on the screen for the first couple of minutes. The music I recognized as Pink Floyd, but the recording was a live one that I hadn’t heard before. Once I switched over to the visuals of Pink Floyd at Pompei,i I was hooked for life and it became a staple of our viewing once a month for the past 15 years.

When you hear that something that you really enjoy is being remastered after more than 50 years you think that it’s a money grab. Everyone has heard an album that’s been ‘remastered’ for the first time in XYZ years and “sounds better than ever”, except it doesn’t. It might sound better on that sound system that costs a mortgage payment, but on my pedestrian, status quo system, it sounds the same. I received my immunity from the glory days of my listening youth years ago. My money is better spent putting it into the gas tank or dollar-cost averaging our Roth IRA.

And while that is true for most releases, Pink Floyd at Pompeii-MCMLXXII is worth the hype, as a cinematic experience, and as an audio release. It’s so unique that Pink Floyd at Pompeii-MCMLXII is worth looking at from the perspective of a film, a Pink Floyd documentary, and a Pink Floyd recording, which was previously unavailable until now.

It was filmed in the ruins of the Roman Amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy. This was the first live concert ever to take place at Pompeii. Granted, there might have been some Roman hippies a couple of hundred years ago playing their lutes and singing to Shakespeare, but it wasn’t filmed or documented by Steven Wilson, so it didn’t happen.

When my son and I were watching the re-mastered version, he asked “why wasn’t there an audience there?”I made up something on the fly, but the truth is I don’t know. I presume it’s because then it would be just another concert film. This is an intimate look at a fan-favorite band, who was about the become one of the most popular bands in the history of music. In Pompeii, they’re performing a handful of their earlier favorites, like Echoes Part 1, Careful With That Axe Eugene, A Saucerful of Secrets, One of These Days, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and Echoes Part 2. This is the trippy, psychedelic Floyd that some fans don’t like, but I would posit that they don’t like it simply because they haven’t heard it enough.

Case in point, Echoes Part 1 and 2 are timeless, and David Gilmour’s live recording of it on Live In Gdansk is the stuff of legend. Once you hear that version, you can never disassociate the two from one another. I can certainly see how the more experimental aspects of Pompeii, like the dog barking and Roger Water’s high-octave yell, when paired with the exploding lava, makes people turn the volume down like Pavlov’s dog.  But then, they turn it back up when the beauty of the silence kicks in again. Sometimes it takes the noise to make you realize the beauty. An experiment is needed to demonstrate to you what’s pretty, you just didn’t realize it. It also could be a tortured wail that doesn’t agree with you.

The sound in Pompeii is laser sharp. You’ve heard it before over your computer speakers, you know what coming. This is different. You swear that you can see the drum sticks hit the cymbals, even when you’re just listening to this new re-master. I found myself closing my eyes on numerous occasions because I know the songs so well that I wanted just to hear them, and not be influenced by the visuals.

The visuals. It was originally filmed in 1971. The original negative was in the Pink Floyd archives (wouldn’t you love to see that area?) and then restored frame-by-frame, adding colors and details that you never knew were there. The green truck in the opening couple of minutes has detail! The blue bag that makes an appearance as the band is running across a field can now be seen behind the stacks of speakers! David Gilmour’s zipper is the most silver color in the world! Nick Mason’s drums are laden with duct tape (?) and an amazingly playful Grateful Dead series of stripes and a bear in the middle. If you’re still on the fence then consider that Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree helped master the audio for Pink Floyd in Pompeii.

If you’re a Pink Floyd fan you will lose yourself in the details. If you have the chance you need to see Pink Floyd at Pompeii in IMAX. Their screen is bigger than yours and their sound system, regardless of how cool yours is, will give these songs the audio canvas they deserve.