Comfortably blurred – the Aussie Pink Floyd Show at the MEN last night

There are times when even being comfortably middle-aged has its benefits – and one was getting the chance to relive a small slice of long ago watching the Australian Pink Floyd Show at the MEN Arena, Manchester last night.

I’m still not sure whether it’s become cool again to admit to loving Prog Rock, but for me the Aussie Floyd took me back to a fairly sweaty night at Stafford’s Bingley Hall around 1977. They even had a pig. It may even have been THE pig that nearly oinked me on the head back then. Last night, it was pretty well tethered.

The same can’t be said of the band, who soared.

The Aussie Pink Floyd Show may be a tribute, but it’s definitely not karaoke, in the same way that an orchestra playing a classical piece isn’t karaoke. This is a collection of fine musicians playing fabulous music brilliantly. And, what’s more, letting the music speak for itself. Everything’s understated except the quality of the performance.

And it is done a little tongue in cheek, from the first half’s video introductions to the set list, selected by a cartoon Kangaroo from its collection of old Floyd vinyl, to the Aussie-themed radio interference at the start of ‘Wish You Were Here’.

There was due deference, too, to those departed: Syd Barrett and Rick Wright and to the Floyd legacy the Aussie version celebrates.

The first half set list included excerpts from Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were and Animals with the second taking in The Division Bell, Learning to Fly from A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Careful With That Axe Eugene, which is apparently a recent addition. The climax was, naturally, Comfortably Numb, sandwiched between two audiovisually pyrotechnic renditions of Run Like Hell.

The band are touring in the UK until July, taking in the NIA in Birmingham on May 9 and turning up to headline the first night of the May Bank Holiday Weekend Festival under a big top at the West Midland Showground in Shrewsbury on May 28.

More about the band here and their fans here. Details of the Shrewsbury event are here.