Australian Pink Floyd Show tribute act to play Kyiv
The Australian Pink Floyd Show is coming to Kyiv with a stunning new live performance: “The Wall Tour 2008.” When I first heard about it, I thought, if it isn’t the real Pink Floyd, then I’ll probably give them a miss. But very soon I changed my mind. It turns out that real Pink Floyd fans around the world have already discovered this show, and found it to be much more than an average tribute act.
The Australian Pink Floyd Show was formed in 1988 in Adelaide, South Australia, but wasn’t known as this until relocating to the United Kingdom. Now the act is almost 20 years old, but the team still manages to draw considerable crowds. The band has gained a huge reputation all over the world, and even played at David Gilmour’s private birthday party in 1996 and in 1998 at the Glastonbury Festival, the biggest annual music fest in the UK. They are also the only Pink Floyd tribute band to have performed at the Royal Albert Hall, having been joined on stage by the choir from the Islington Green School for a cover of “Another Brick in the Wall” in 2001, and again sold out on the same location in 2007.
The band performed at several major European music festivals, including the Sweden Rock Festival, the Malta Jazz Festival, the Arrow Rock Festival, Rock Werchter and the Festival do Sudoeste. Their recent shows include not only music originally written by Pink Floyd, but also a psychedelic lightshow with video screens, amazing light and some surprises – a giant, inflatable pig and, later, a giant, inflatable kangaroo looming above the stage.
When not performing a specific album, the band plays songs from all periods of Pink Floyd’s oeuvre, including early material by Syd Barrett and longer songs such as “Dogs and Echoes.” They also play later material from the albums “The Wall,” “The Final Cut,” “Momentary Lapse of Reason” and “The Division Bell.” Recently, the group has begun to include theatrics in their performances like Ian Cattell sitting in an armchair watching television and singing “Nobody Home,” an allusion to the similar scene from the film “The Wall.” Memorable songs beloved by many are synced note for note with the light and video show, including “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” (from Pink Floyd’s second album, “A Sourceful of Secrets,” 1968), “One of These Days” (about eight minutes long), “Another Brick in the Wall” (complete with a fake helicopter and search light scanning the crowd). There is also some really great material from “The Wall,” including “Wish You Were Here,” an absolutely explosive version of “Comfortably Numb” (about 15 minutes long, with gigantic disco ball descending from the ceiling), and a ripping version of “Run Like Hell.” The Sunday Times once called them “The best tribute band in the world!” and Liverpool Echo magazine – “The living embodiment of a Floyd show. If you love the Floyd, you’ll love this.”
Palats Sportu (Palats Sportu metro). Sept. 3, 7 p.m.
Tickets are Hr 150 to Hr 2,000
