100 Concerts / Concert #13

Headline Act: Pink Floyd

Touring Album: A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

Opening Act: none

Date: October 30, 1987

Venue: Tampa Stadium, Tampa, FL
Ticket price:  $20.00

Just 8 days after a disappointing concert from The Cars, I was eager to leave that memory in my rear-view mirror. It was time for a major palette cleansing. Along with 4 of my fraternity brothers, we packed into one small car and made the 2-hour road trip to Tampa Stadium to see the legendary Pink Floyd.  In a previous post I wrote about the disappointing Genesis show. Phil Collins just didn't have the presence to fill a football stadium. The Floyd didn't need a Freddie Mercury-type frontman to charm the crowd. Stocked with an historic catalog , their larger-than-life music was enough to mesmerize the masses.

As I detailed in my Roger Waters 1985 concert post, 1987 marked the first foray for Pink Floyd without their original member, chief songwriter and bassist (aka Pink). The band was now composed of guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason. Original keyboardist Rick Wright was now considered a hired hand, no longer an official member of the group. Gilmour was now filling the shoes of chief songwriter and lead singer and he did so quite well. Together with a host of session musicians, Floyd recorded "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" a solid, well-received album, featuring "Learning To Fly" and the beautiful "On The Turning Away". While "Lapse" doesn't compare with Floyd's legendary albums, it contains many of the spacy, beautiful, haunting sounds that defined the band's style in the post-Syd Barrett era. Waters, now a solo artist, was not complementary of his former mates' new music. He even fought them in the courts to prevent them from using the Pink Floyd name. Ultimately a deal was reached but the fences were never truly mended.Waters and Gilmour have made a handful of public appearances together in the years since, though they have continued to snipe at each other through the media.

GQ men? Rick Wright, David Gilmour, Nick Mason

Tampa Stadium aka "The Big Sombrero"

We arrived at Tampa Stadium (aka "The Big Sombrero") in the proper state of mind for our first Floyd experience, but then things got really confusing. As we entered the building, the lights went out and the music began to play. We heard the opening strains of the Syd Barrett-inspired "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)". How's that for an opener? We hustled our way on to the tarp-covered field where our seats were located. Weaving our way through "a sea of faces", we spotted our section, #106. Since the seats were temporary, the section numbers were painted on to large pieces of plywood. We settled into our seats but discovered we were not in the right place. As we tried to scout out our proper seats, we spied one mischievous concertgoer pick up one of the section signs and switch it with a sign for a different section, just to create confusion. Chaos! I mean like, down was up and up was down, man! We were through the looking glass! A momentary lapse of reason, that's what we experienced. As we wandered around for a few moments, dazed and confused, my eyes were glued to the large circular video screen behind the band.  We were listening to "Signs Of Life", the opening song from the new album, an atmospheric Floydian mood-setter. The video showed a man in a rowboat, paddling faster and faster across a calm lake. As the pace of the rowing increased, the camera made a sudden move below the water's surface to reveal a murky universe, teeming with activity. This was a suddenly mind-blowing visual, symbolic of the things we don't know and can't see. For every calm, rational moment there is an equal and opposite underlying, inevitable chaos. Yin and Yang. For a fleeting moment, I felt alone among 60,000 fans, frozen, transfixed by a video on a giant screen while the legendary Pink Floyd performed. This snapshot has been stuck in my head for 25 years.

We eventually found our flimsy plastic folding-chair seats and stood upon them for the remainder of the show, somehow keeping our balance. The Floyd played the bulk of the new album, accompanied by more high-budget videos and a top-notch light show. The crowd got off on the recognizable FM-radio staples from "The Dark Side Of The Moon" and "The Wall". I was thrilled to hear a hidden gem from their early career, "One Of These Days" (see video above). It's a spooky piece with a dark psychedelic feel, an instrumental that is interrupted by one creepy spoken-word line, "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces." The voice belongs to drummer Nick Mason, one of the only vocal contributions of his Floyd career. A couple of years later, it was one of the highlights of my radio career when I sneaked it on the air one Saturday night when I worked as a DJ for WSHE (more on that gig in future posts).

With all of the show's bells and whistles, the videos and lights and even their trademark "Animals"-inspired flying pig, it was ultimately their amazing catalog that allowed Pink Floyd 3.0 to deliver a memorable stadium show. During "Comfortably Numb", Gilmour's epic guitar solo pushed the crowd over the edge, into a frenzy of air guitars and musical bliss. Wish you were there.

Unofficial setlist: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V), Signs Of Life, Learning To Fly, Yet Another Movie, Round And Round, A New Machine (Part 1), Terminal Frost, A New Machine (Part 2), Sorrow, The Dogs Of War, On The Turning Away, One Of These Days, Time, On The Run, Wish You Were Here, Us And Them, Money, Another Brick In The Wall Part 2, Comfortably Numb (Encore) One Slip, Run Like Hell