Pink Floyd - Pulse

All your favorites and amazing video and audio. I couldn't stop watching. Their sound hasn't aged a bit. Excellent, excellent, excellent!

When I purchased this DVD I had high hopes. I thought the concert was great especially the lasers, special effects, and screen films. The biggest highlight for me though was when they performed "The Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety.

However I felt some of the bonus material was unnecessary such as the footage from their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which I thought was bland. I also didn't care for Billy Corgan's speech. I also didn't like the footage from "Bootlegging The Bootleggers". It was terrible!

Despite these setbacks the rest of the DVD was incredible. Even without the extras this still would have been a great DVD. Wish Roger was there.

I'm not going to go into all the details, others have already done that. I'll just say that this is simply the best concert dvd that I have ever bought. I never got a chance to see PF live so this is the next best thing for me. I know Waters isn't here, but his replacement is a fine bass player and sings his parts well enough. To me, Gilmour was the voice and the sound (guitar genious) of Floyd anyway. Don't hesitate to buy this one !!!

Pink Floyd's historic reunion tour in 1994(minus Roger Waters)is captured with a show that includes The Dark Side of the Moon album performed in it's entirety along with classic cuts from their whole catalog of albums. Pulse is everything a concert should be with songs that provoke deep thought and music to subduce any mood in the mesmeric form only Pink Floyd can accomplish, and all enhanced by backing vocalists, psychedelic images, and amazing light displays. Pink Floyd's Pulse is a show above all others. Magnificent. Electrifying. Tranquilizing. Spectacular.

I was born in 1964, so was not of concert going age during the Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, or even Animals Tours. However, I worshipped Pink Floyd, and would play their albums until the grooves were worn to nothing. Like most teens growing up in the 1970s, Dark Side was my all time favorites, and was especially enjoyed with headphone while, um, let's just say enjoying certain libations not approved by Nancy Reagan.

By the time I got to see Pink Floyd live, it was after Roger Waters had left, and a nasty lawsuit between him and the remaining members was over, leaving Gilmour and the others with the right to continue under the same name. The excitement of going to the show was somewhat less than it would have been had the group been unchanged. I was always one of those who thought that Roger was Pink Floyd....and I could not have been more wrong. The "Momentary Lapse" album was outstanding, as was the concert at Tampa Stadium in the mid 1980s.

While Roger's contribution to the group can not be overstated (He wrote almost all of their stuff, including all of Dark Side), he is simply, and unfortunately, not needed at all for the PERFORMANCE of their music. Almost all of the vocals on Dark Side come from one of the greatest guitarists of all time, David Gilmour (save Brain Damage, which actually sounds just as good with Gilmour singing). If their were a trial on whether Pink Floyd can perform without Roger at the same level, then this DVD, PULSE, would be Exhinbit 1. In fact, it would be the whole trial, and the case would be closed. Pulse was performed in London in 1994, and David, Nick, and Richard are at the very top of their game. Sure, by now David is in his 50s, and may not have quite the voice he did in his 20s, but you would never know it.

The production of this concert is "insane good." One of my favorite parts of the DVD is the end of side one, when they perform "One of These Days," featuring David Gilmour haunting riff on the lap slide guitar. This pre-Dark Side song, which was released as the first track on Meddle, would be seemingly difficult to play in concert with all the multitracking they did in studio production, but the concert version is even better.

Side Two of this DVD is worth the purchase price alone. I mean, "Dark Side" played in concert, all the way through, without interruption? WOW. Pink Floyd was always famous for it's props and light shows, and this concert does not disappoint. Again, the Director of Photography, Editors, and Production Team do just an incredible job of capturing what is going on during this performance. The only draw back during Dark Side is no one can match Claire Torrey's vocals on Great Gig, but the back-up singers do an admirable job trying to fill her shoes. That may be the only song that can never be truly reproduced in concert (and to think that she came into the studio in 1972 during mixing of Dark Side pulling what amounts to a one hour "session" shift for $50, crying towards the end of her shift, upset at the "bad job" she had done).

The Curtain Call songs on Pulse were perfectly chosen. The Band comes back on stage to play a set starting with Wish You Were Here, written at the time in the 70s as a song for Syd Barrett, the original leader of the band who was replaced in the 1960s due to severe mental illness. One is left to wonder if this was now included as a message to Roger (or, was the acrimony still too fresh from the bitter lawsuit, and perhaps me just wanting to believe they could want to re-unite at some level). Wish you were Here is then followed by two great songs from The Wall, Comfortably Numb and Run.

This is 5-Stars, and it is not even close. I wish I could give it 10 stars. As I started, "I almost feel bad for Roger." I have seen Roger Waters no less than four times in concert, and while he is great, it is his shows, albums and performances that have greatly suffered from his departure. Sure, he is the genius who wrote almost all the post 1970 stuff for Pink Floyd, including Dark Side and The Wall, but, frankly, his talent is not needed at all to perform these masterpieces. I mean, I love Roger, but by the time he writes "The Final Cut" the band was being dragged down by his obsessive predisposition towards dark war-time music. "Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" can only be enjoyed by someone like me, who is a true fanatic, but the album is pretty lame and sounds more or less like an extension to The Final Cut. While Roger was writing Pros and Cons in yet another attempt to illustrate his angst at a-hole war time leaders, David, Nick and Richard were getting on with their lives, and coming out with "Momentary Lapse"....pulling off what many thought impossible without Waters: A Quality Pink Floyd Album true to their heritage.

By the way, you can tell that this concert is recorded in the 1990s, because during "Brain Damage," when the song starts "The Lunatic is on the Grass", the overhead movie shows George Bush, SR standing outside on the grass. If the concert were more modern, say, 2005, then one has to believe the entire movie would not have been of Sr, but rather........... well, you decide.