I’m sitting in Billy’s basement bedroom. I’m 16 and I wish I had a bedroom like this. Even though there’s no natural light save a once-a-day sliver through a tiny window by the ceiling and 10-year-old dust covers every surface, I envy it with all my heart. He’s got a lava lamp, a Frank Zappa poster, a peace sign candle, and opposite his bed, a bar. A bar! Doesn’t matter that the only thing in the bar is a family of spiders, a couple lost socks, and a dusty beer can collection his father passed on to him, it’s still a bar and I envy it.
There’s a couch in the basement, an old, ratty and wonderful couch, and a nicked up coffee table on which sits a smouldering 2-foot plastic bong. We’re both very stoned, very mellow, and very satisfied. Incense burns on the shelf and his mom isn’t due home for 3 hours. His old TV is playing Live at Pompeii for the fifth time that summer and Billy and I are in heaven.
Pink Floyd is pretty much God to us. Every extended note savvied from Gilmore’s guitar is like some righteous scripture to our ears. We drift on their clouds of sound, something only we can understand. No one knows Pink Floyd like we do. No one understands the whines and rolls and heartbeats of their songs like us. We are Pink Floyd’s quarterman and the ship of their music is piloted by no one but us.
Live at Pompeii is a masterpiece, the culmination of everything that made early Floyd great, before they went commercial. Much better than Dark Side. Sure Pompeii may not travel to the same galaxies as Atom Heart Mother, sure Ummagumma may be more, well, massive, but Live at Pompeii is a sound machine and is as tight as they’d ever sound – plus it’s a movie! Thus making for the best ice-cold bong hit music watching this side of The Song Remains the Same. Ridiculously long pans, stupidly psychedelic mirror effects, and hot bubbling lava. It’s got it all!
I’m 16, and I’m a little addicted to Pink Floyd. Billy too. We’re in this together. I dip my finger in the hot wax of the peace candle, pass it through the flame until the blossoms of pain echo through my body. I recoil my hand, lean my head back against the couch’s filthy arm and let the ribbons of electric guitar cradle me through to evening.
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, the complete concert as filmed in its ancient Roman Amphitheater, is below:
Track List:
1. “Intro Song”
2. “Echoes, Part 1”
3. “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”
4. “A Saucerful of Secrets”
5. “One of These Days”
6. “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”
7. “Mademoiselle Nobs”
8. “Echoes, Part 2”
The above video is the original theatrical release from 1972. In 1974 they re-released the movie adding some studio footage from the Dark Side of the Moon recording sessions. This video is the pure concert, from beginning to end, and remains to this day some of their finest work.
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