Brit Floyd Celebrates 40th Anniversary Of The Wall With Spectacular Show

This November marks the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It’s hard to believe. I got that double-LP album when it first came out and own it to this day – on vinyl, of course! My great guitar teacher at the time was impressed that a 13-year-old would listen to this stuff. The lyrics were certainly less cheerful than the early Beatles tunes he was teaching me about holding hands and she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, apart from classical guitar. Admittedly, I cared more about the music than the words back then.

My initial attraction to The Wall was Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2), which received lots of radio play in Germany. Though I realized the context on the album was different, lines like “We don’t need no education” and “Hey teachers, leave those kids alone” somehow appealed to a pretty quiet and well behaved young teenager!😀 I seem to recall a little party in our class room at school where we had a boom box. As our English teacher entered the room, Another Brick In The Wall was playing, and we were cheerfully grooving along.  He couldn’t help but briefly grin before turning serious again.

Nowadays, I feel there are better tunes on The Wall than Another Brick In The Wall. I also prefer other Pink Floyd albums like Meddle, Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals. Still, I continue to like Floyd’s 11th studio record released on November 30, 1979.

Brit Floyd got on my radar screen about two and a half months ago when a friend who had them seem was raving about the band, especially their lapsteel guitarist. Shortly thereafter, I learned about their current tour dedicated to The Wall, so I checked them out on YouTube. After starting to watch this fantastic clip capturing an entire 2018 gig at Red Rocks, it didn’t take long to buy a ticket to see these guys, who do an incredible job that should make the surviving members of Pink Floyd proud. Last night was show time at Sands Bethlehem Event Center in Bethlehem, Pa. And boy, what a spectacle it was!

Brit Floyd (from left): Upper row: Damian Darlington, Rob Stringer, Ian Cattell & Edo Scordo; middle row: Arran Ahmum, Thomas Ashbrook & Ola Bienkowska; and lower row: Angela Servantes, Roberta Freeman, Emily Jollands & Jacquie Williams

The genius behind Brit Floyd is musical director Damian Darlington, who also provides vocals and plays guitar and lapsteel. Prior to forming the band in Liverpool, England in 2011, he had played for 17 years with long-running Aussie tribute The Australian Pink Floyd Show. If my math is correct, this means the man has played the music of Pink Floyd for at least 25 years. And this doesn’t include Darlington’s earlier music journey, which according to his bio on the Brit Floyd website started when he got into playing the guitar seriously as a 13-year-old. That was about the same age I started taking guitar lessons. Darlington turned out to be more talented!😆

Brit Floyd’s other members have impressive credentials as well. I would go too far to mention them in this post. All their bios are on the band’s website as well. Apart from Darlington, listed members are pictured above and include: Rob Stringer (keyboards, vocals), Ian Cattell (bass, vocals Chapman Stick, trumpet), Edo Scordo (guitar, vocals), Arran Ahmum (drums),  Thomas Ashbrook (keyboards, vocals), as well as backing vocalists Ola Bienkowska, Angela Cervantes, Roberta Freeman, Emily Jollands and Jacquie Williams. Last night, they had three backing vocalists, including Ella Chi, who is not in the above picture. Jacquie Williams was there as well. I’m not sure who the third vocalist was. Yes, it does take an army of top-notch artists and a breathtaking stage production to capture the mighty live experience of Pink Floyd!

Which so much amazing music, it’s really hard to select clips and even where to begin, so let’s start with the opening of the show: In The Flesh? and The Thin Ice., the first two tunes on side 1 of The Wall. Like almost all material on this album, the two tracks were written by Roger Waters. Brit Floyd sprinkled most tunes of the record in sections throughout the show, including the entire side 1.

Apart from The Wall, Brit Floyd played plenty of additional Pink Floyd music, drawing on most of their studio albums starting with Meddle from October 1971. Here’s one of the highlights from last night’s show: The Great Gig In The Sky featuring Ella Chi on vocals, who absolutely killed it! Appearing on The Dark Side Of The Moon, released in March 1973, the lyrics were written by Waters, while the music is credited to Floyd keyboarder Richard Wright and Clare Torry, who will be forever part of modern rock music history for her amazing vocal performance on the tune.

Next up: Fearless, off the Meddle album. This tune was co-written by Waters and David Gilmour. Meddle may best be known for the One Of These Days, which Brit Floyd performed as well last night, shaking the wall of the place, and the epic Echoes, which they perhaps understandably did not play, given the track’s extended length. But I’ve really come to dig Fearless over the years, which is why I decided to record it instead of One Of These Days.

While compared to their ’60s and ’70s albums I’m less fond of Pink Floyd’s music following The Wall, I wanted to capture at least one tune from that era: Keeping Talking from The Divison Bell. Released in March 1994, it was Floyd’s final album with Wright, who passed away in September 2008 at the age of 65. The tune is credited to Gilmour, Wright and Gilmour’s then-fiancee Polly Samson, a novelist who co-wrote many of the lyrics. During the 1994 tour that supported The Division Bell they got married. This is also the last track from the first of two regular sets Brit Floyd played. Set two started after a 20-minute intermission.

Following are two tracks on the second set, which kicked off with a couple of tunes from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason from September 1987, Floyd’s first studio effort after Roger Waters had departed, followed by another section of songs from side 2 of The Wall. But since no Pink Floyd tribute show would be complete without music from Wish You Were, I’d like to highlight a track from that record. Floyd’s ninth studio album from September 1975 was my introduction to the band in the ’70s, and it remains one of my favorites to this day. Brit Floyd performed a fantastic rendition of Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V) and the title track. I may be a music nut, but the thought of holding up my phone for 13-plus minutes proved to be too much of a deterrent, so I went with Wish You Were Here, co-written by Waters and Gilmour.😆

For the last tune in this post, I’d like to return to The Wall with my favorite track, which originally appeared on side 3 of the double LP: Comfortably Numb, one of only two songs on the album, showing a co-writing credit for Gilmour. By the time the band recorded The Wall, it pretty much had become a Roger Waters project. In fact, tensions between him and the other members were increasing and culminated in a showdown between Wright and Waters who fired him during the recording sessions. But Wright was kept as a salaried session musician and eventually left Pink Floyd in 1981, following the tour that supported The Wall. He returned during the post-Waters era, initially as a session player in 1987 for the recording of A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. He became a full-time member again in 1994 for the studio sessions for The Division Bell. Comfortably Numb is probably best known for its guitar solo, which remains one of the most epic in rock. Darlington and Brit Floyd’s other guitarist Edo Scordo did a beautiful job with it. Check it out!

The second set was followed by an encore that spanned most of the tracks from side 4 of The Wall. Altogether the show lasted for a solid three hours including the above noted intermission. By now you’ve probably figured out that Brit Floyd is one hell of a tribute band. In fact, I would argue that if you’re a Pink Floyd fan, they are probably the next best act you can see nowadays. The good news is there are plenty of remaining opportunities this year.😎

Brit Floyd’s current North American leg, which kicked off in Pittsburgh, Pa. on March 22 on the heels of 15 shows in the U.K., includes 70 dates across the U.S. and some in Canada, extending all the way until the end of July. Some of these shows include New York (Apr 1), Toronto (Apr 5), Detroit (Apr 13), Milwaukee (Apr 20), Baltimore (May 2), Philadelphia (May 7), Denver (Jun 6), Phoenix (Jun 28), San Francisco (Jul 9), Salt Lake City (Jul 17) and the final U.S. show in Hampton, N.H. (Jul 31). This will be followed by 30 dates in Europe, starting late September and including Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg. The full schedule is here.

Sources: Wikipedia, Brit Floyd website, YouTube