• AllMyVinyl #65
• Band: Pink Floyd
• Album Title: Delicate Sound of Thunder
• Release Date: 10 Nov 2014
• Date purchased: 24 Sep 2020
• Location purchased: Amazon
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 3
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

I’d been a Pink Floyd fan for awhile, but I got into them right as they were imploding – the last “proper” tour they did was Animals in 1977, about 5 years before I started going to concerts.  There were live shows for The Wall, but nowhere near me, and whatever still existed drove off the cliff with The Final Cut, which produced no live shows.  That brings us to 1987’s “A Momentary Lapse of Reason”, which produced the first proper tour by Floyd in a decade.  So of course I was going to go.  I saw Pink Floyd twice on that tour.  First on 19 Sep 1987 and again on 15 May 1988 – both in Philadelphia.  Yeah, they didn’t have Roger Waters, but I didn’t care, 3/4 of the lineup they were known for is fairly authentic, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.  The following year the band produced what is pretty standard – the live album culled from a big tour.  They did it again a few years later with Division Bell/Pulse – in fact a lot of bands do the same thing.  Fairly common.

The name of the live album is today’s entry in the vinyl series – “Delicate Sound of Thunder”.  I always loved that title – loved the juxtaposition of “delicate” and “thunder” in the same sentence.  It also had a funky art design – the original 1988 art had a guy covered in a suit of light bulbs.  I remember at the time wondering what the point of lightbulb man was.  The best I came up with is it spoke to Floyd’s light show?  Dunno, but I always associated light bulb man with this album.  Back in 1988 I was done with vinyl, so my original purchase of this album was on CD.  Back then, since it was a double CD, they had the old “fat jewel case” – remember those? I listened to this a lot – because at the time it came out I was living in Philly, and working in New Jersey, so I did a bunch of driving (amusingly Bon Jovi’s New Jersey album was out at the same time – when I was working in New Jersey).  I listened to this a ton, and despite that I have some thoughts about the songs.

Given this was a show (Well, not the on the album, but the tour) I attended, it held an attraction, but though all that I always felt the live recording was flat.  Whether that was due to my equipment at the time or what, but I always felt this live album lacked punch.  That there was something missing.  We’re not talking Jason Newsted on And Justice for all missing…. but still, I never got super into the specific recording here.  Once time passed, and the time of this being the “new” release was over, it kind of slid into the past, I rarely listened to this, as there were much better live albums by Floyd – even in this lineup, as the Pulse album from 1995 was much better than this was to my ears.

So, when it was announced in the late 2010’s that the album was being re-released, I was ambivalent.  Then I found out it was being remixed too, and that seemed promising.  In late 2020, the 2019 remix of Delicate Sound was put out on vinyl as a standalone item, so I snapped it up.  I’d seen a handful of comparison videos on youtube about the old vs new, and I jumped on it.

This vinyl release is a triple album – the original vinyl was just a double.  This included far more songs than the original vinyl did.  Th sticker that was on the outside of this package said there’s 9 songs that weren’t on the original 1988 vinyl – total of 23 songs.  With all that music, you’d need a triple vinyl for sure.   The artwork for the new release was kind of cool.  First off, lightbulb man remained – only now there were two of them, sitting on a bed from the cover of Momentary Lapse.  However, the main focus is Floyd’s famous round video screen, but what’s cool is the interior packaging.  There were three discs and a booklet.  All four of these items had their art constructed so that when you placed them in the outer package, you could have a choice of what you “saw” on the video screen on the box.  The three vinyl sleeves had pictures of Gilmour, Mason, & Wright respectively, and the booklet had the art that is the default on the package – the entire band.  I thought it was a cool design that you could “choose” which one was seen on your shelf.  When it was new I played with all four options, but ended up settling on Rick Wright now that he’s gone, and is the one I chose for the overall thumbnail for this article.

Overall the remix was a good one.  The “flat-ness” I felt of the original was gone.  To some extent, the audience is still mixed too low, but I can hear certain parts and instruments far better than I could on the original recording.  This was an example of a remix doing GOOD work – I can’t always say that.  In general, I don’t care for remixes, because they change too much just because they can, but in this case it improved things quite a lot.   It’s actually made me want to listen to this album again, and not just go with Pulse when I wanted to listen to some live later-era Floyd.

To that, here’s some remarks about the songs.  I probably am not writing a ton because there’s a lot of songs.  Since this is a live album, I’ll try and stick to just thoughts about these particular songs.

Shine On –  This is the one song I have no memory of because when I saw them play this in 1987, this was not part of the setlist.  I saw them in Sep 1987 and I think my show was one of the first 10 or so (I’d have to look it up).  Point being they opened the show with Echoes – all 23 minutes of it.  I was shocked that was the first song they played – much less play it at all in 1987, but play it they did.  Was absolutely awesome as hell.  However, I presume a 23 min song was taking up too much of the setlist, so they replaced it with Shine On (the first part) about 5-10 shows after mine.  This live version works better for me than the studio one, there appears to be more atmosphere on this version.  No surprised, except that once the vocals stopped towards the end of the song, I thought the band had a better vibe for the remainder when they were just jamming. It was more enjoyable than the studio version for sure.

Signs of Life – This was honestly mostly watching the traditional Floyd video screen as this is an instrumental with some sound effects. I do remember the “bom – bom” effect that comes in right at 1:00 of the song. It was VERY bottom heavy in a way the studio version was not, and the video at that point went underwater from the rowing on a lake it was. That’s the only part I remember from the music part of this, because as I said you were mostly focused on the screen here.

Learning to Fly – The end has a beat that’s not in the original studio track I remember – they go off a little from the script there, which is nice – Not much, just a little flavor change at the end there. Doesn’t change the original, but adds something new.  I really do love this song, but I think this is one of those that I prefer the studio version for.  The live version feels “forced” if that makes any sense.  Although it does contain one of my favorite lines of lyric from any song..  “Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earthbound misfit, I”.

Yet Another Movie / Round and Around / A New Machine 1 / Terminal Frost / New Machine 2 – I’m lumping all these together, as well, Side 2 of Momentary Lapse isn’t nearly as good as Side 1 – except for the last one which I’ll get to. None of is bad at all. It’s just several songs in a row of “meh”, IMO. Having said that, Gilmour’s live guitar solo shines here on Movie, and I really did like Terminal Frost. It’s the only one I really want to write about at any length. That’s because Frost was an instrumental. With Floyd, they’re long known for instrumentals, so that’s not a surprise. But live – was something to behold. I remember reading at the time that Floyd customized parts of their laser show to the venue they were in. I saw this show at old JFK Stadium in Philly. If you don’t know the place, you might know its most famous concert there – Live Aid in 1985.  Anyway, here’s a picture of it – it’s got this U-Shape to it, but what Floyd did there was mount lasers around the upper part of the stadium – going all the way around.  They formed a laser “ceiling” if you will, and then they blew a ton of smoke through it, it had a SUPER awesome visual effect I’ll never forget when Terminal Frost was playing.  Wish that was recorded somewhere, I’d love see that again.  But I was blown away by the combination visual and the audio of that song which itself is just kind of there.  The visual completely elevated Frost.

Sorrow – Sorrow finishes out the first disc on the vinyl, and it’s the best thing on Side 2 of the album by far.  However, live it was epic too.  The start of the song is just Gilmour’s guitar, and for this, they turned out ALL the lights in the venue.  Gilmour brought out a mirrored guitar, and they had a single spotlight on his guitar which shined out into the audience – another badass effect.  Musically it was a great song, loved the track, but it’s always the visual that helps with this too, but unlike Frost, this works on its own as a song.  Gilmour’s guitar shines brightly in this song, and I’m not talking about the spotlight effect.

The Dogs of War – It’s been my experience that people tend to not like this song, and I never understood why.  I loved it from the start, loved this live version too.  It starts off with concert film of dogs running and they end up in a house with Gilmour mouthing the first line of lyric and then it goes to the full band in concert (not that you can tell that on the audio one version).  There was a cool effect live with red strobe lights – I just loved the beat – nice saxophone solo too.  Even sitting at my desk listening, I’m tapping my fingers on the table with the beat – yeah, I still like this song.

On The Turning Away – I remember well when this came out that Gilmour viewed this song as a 180% turn from the sad and depressing shit that Roger Waters wrote about in the last several albums before this.  Was meant to be a complete breath of fresh air.  The live version isn’t much different than the studio track, so I’ll leave this mostly uncommented on, but it is still a damn good track.  Loved this from the moment I first heard it, and I’m not the only one.  Tony Martin has said he’d come off stage at Black Sabbath concerts and listen to this song.  I always loved that.  On this version the bit where there’s no instruments and it’s just vocals seems a bit enhanced with the female backup singers singing with David … “Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare”…

One of These Days – … and we go back to early Floyd again with this classic track.  This doesn’t change much – as it’s played a lot, and is on several live albums.  I’ve seen Floyd do this live, I’ve seen Roger, David, and even Nick do this solo live too.  Always love seeing it pop up, but I’m always listening to see whether they put any focus on the Doctor Who theme that appears in the middle of the song (it’s here).  Was the first song I’d ever seen anyone play what I called the “sit down guitar” that David plays in the second half of this.  On this version, Gilmour’s guitar work seems more alive than usual in the second half of the song.

Side 2 of disc 2 is the trip back to Dark Side & Wish You Were Here.  This covers Time, On the Run, Great Gig in the Sky, Wish You Were Here, and Welcome to the Machine.  I’m lumping them together as most of these songs are what you’d expect them to be.  That doesn’ mean they’re bad like I did with Momentary lapse Side 2, but all of them are darned near close to what you’d expect when you listen to these songs done live.  This wasn’t the first time I’d seen David Gilmour live, I saw him live on the tour for his second solo album “About Face”, bit oddly none of these songs were played then, so they were all new to me, so I loved them.  Well, new LIVE in person, I mean.  One thing I remember well is the visual for the start of “Time”.  Nick Mason had these lit up colored drum sticks which made for a cool visual in that opening drum bit of the song before the full band kicks in.  I’ll also say Great Gig never QUITE sounds the same without Clare Torry on vocals.  There’s been some good imitators, but the original is still best there. Also Welcome to the Machine’s vocals sound off too.  Like the song, but has a not quite right sound to it.  They do seem extend out the jam part of Machine a bit at the end, though, which is always nice.

Side 5 kicks off with more Dark Side as it has “Us And them” & “Money” – Money is one that I feel kind of needs Roger to work right.   But Us and Them is a song that when I was younger I never cared for, but have come to appreciate more as I got older.  That one was written by Rick Wright, was his biggest contribution to the Dark Side album, IMO.  That Rick is here playing it on makes this work for me.  Money is actually a super low point for me on this album – I really do NOT like what they did with it.  Extended out the middle part with excessive female background vocals, and a slow part that’s honestly boring.  It’s by far my least ever rendition of the song.  Too long, too changed.  There’s also Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 – a song that I think suffers live a bit without Roger.  Still, I loved seeing it done live in front of me, but nearly 40 years removed from the concert (!) I find this version lacking a bit because this song is SO Roger.

The album finishes with the setlist’s main use of songs from The Wall – which were the peak of the show, IMO.  The album has “One Slip” in here, but I don’t remember One Slip being this far back in the setlist, I think it was just edited here.  My memory had this happing way earlier.  I do love the song though.  It’s a great track from Momemtary Lapse, but this live version has some funky keyboard stuff going on that wasn’t there on the studio track. I attribute that to it being the mid 80’s when it happened.  There’s a thing with lasers at the start that go along with the sound effects from the start of the song that well, peak with what at the time I thought was the biggest show of lasers I’d seen live – this same concert would quickly destroy that at the end of the show.   Comfortably Numb has what I consider the only brighter object at a concert than the cross over the stage for Sabbath’s Born Again tour.   For Comfortably, they had this disco ball float out on top of the audience, which itself was nothing new, they did the traditional things you did with a disco ball.  But they didn’t stop there, the disco ball opened up into a flower that was the bloody brightest thing I’d ever seen at a concert.  Was off the charts bright – lit up EVERYTHING in the venue – I wonder how far that could be seen from the venue.  There were actual residencies not terribly far from the venue, they were probably lit up too.  Comfortably also sounds off in parts as there’s no Roger singing – unavoidable, but for this I could easily overlook it.  Then we get to Run Like Hell, which was a huge energetic finish to the show.  The power of that doesn’t come off as well on the recording, but I was there – I remember how into that everyone was – plus the light show went into overdrive.  On the embedded videos on my blog page I have the official video Floyd released from this which shows most of what I’m talking about with the lights on Run Like Hell.  But it was much better in person.  The album version of the song was good (even without Roger), a great version.

That brings us to the end of the album – a triple vinyl with over two hours of music.  Most of it darned good – a few places Roger was missed, but overall, this was a vast improvement on the 1988 original.  This extends to the concert video that went with this, as that was visually cleaned up as well as the video was.  One of the better remixes of an album, IMO.  This concert in Philly in 87 has a strong place in my memory, and this 2019 remix makes me want to revisit that more than the 1988 original did.