The combined wishes of all of us on the Brain Damage team, along no doubt with many of you reading this, go to Roger Waters, who celebrates his 74th birthday today.
Roger was born in Great Bookham, Surrey, in 1943, moving to Cambridge when he was two years old. It was there that he met, and became childhood friends with, a number of key people in the story of Pink Floyd. We hope you have a great day, Roger. Many happy returns!
Of course, Roger has been extremely busy over the last few years, having successfully taken Dark Side Of The Moon on tour in 2006, through to 2008. On completing that, he immediately started work on a new version of The Wall - which finally opened in September 2010. That tour was spectacularly successful, wrapping up in Paris for show number 217 in September 2013. Recordings of that tour turned into the film, shown in cinemas and released on DVD/Blu-ray and as part of a mammoth, Super Deluxe Edition.
More recently, he kicked off his Us + Them world tour, which so far has been performed a number of times in North America - Newark, NJ, is tomorrow night, as the tour resumes after a short summer break - and dates have now been announced for a number of shows in Australia and New Zealand. He's also released his latest solo album, Is This The Life We Really Want? as well as overseeing the release of the late Nick Sedgwick's book about the band, and in particular, the 1974 tour of The Dark Side of the Moon...
Just announced - the Roger Waters Us + Them tour is coming to Australia and New Zealand in early 2018. For tickets and more information, please visit rogerwaters.com; individual show pages for each night are now live on this site, so just click the links below - they are the places to come for information, pictures, reviews and suchlike for each show.
As an aside, the tour poster has caused a little flurry of excitement over the list of albums that songs will be selected from. I think it is safe to say there won't be anything from the soundtrack album of More, and it should be read as "...and others"!
On Saturday, May 13th, a landmark event in the world of Pink Floyd took place. At London’s historic Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains opened to the public, bringing the world of the band to fan and casual observer alike. As with any such exhibition, the creators had to ensure they were not just preaching to the converted, but providing an absorbing, illuminating and compelling experience to all audiences. Covering 50 years or so of a band with the richness of Pink Floyd’s music, staging and design was never going to be easy, so the opening of TMR, finally, has come at the end of what seems quite a development process.
We know a number of you have already attended the exhibition, and more are planning to go - or go again! The organisers have today revealed that with over 300,000 visitors since the opening in May, it is on track to be the biggest music exhibition at the V&A, ever! Due to the unprecedented visitor numbers, including members of Pink Floyd, as well as Madonna, U2, Guns ‘n’ Roses, and others, The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains will be extended by two weeks and will now close on October 15th, 2017.
Tickets for the extended period of the exhibition are on sale now. Tickets (subject to booking fees) are priced at £20 (Monday-Friday), £24 (Saturday-Sunday), and concessions, including family tickets at reduced prices, are available. V&A Members go free. Advance booking is very strongly advised. Tickets can be purchased fromTicketmaster, Seetickets, direct from the V&A at vam.ac.uk/pinkfloyd, by calling 0800 912 6961 (booking fee applies), or in person at the V&A itself. More information on the event can be found at http://www.pinkfloydexhibition.com/.
As most of you will be fully aware, next month is dominated with the release of David Gilmour Live at Pompeii - first, in the worldwide cinema screenings (on September 13th), then at the end of the month comes the release of the same name on a variety of formats. September 29th sees the arrival of the recordings on 2CD, Blu-ray, 2DVD, a 4LP boxset, a Blu-ray and CD deluxe edition boxset, and via HD digital downloads. Other gems too are present on the deluxe boxset, including the acclaimed BBC documentary Wider Horizons.
As a refresher, the Deluxe CD/Blu-ray boxset includes a photo booklet, Pompeii Guide, 4 x postcards & poster. The CDs within are as per the standard 2CD release, as is the first Blu-ray in the box. This edition though has a bonus Blu-ray which features 65 minutes of music, and 132 minutes of documentaries. This includes South America December 2015, and Wroclaw, Poland June 2016, documentaries looking at each leg of the tour, and an inclusion in the set of the acclaimed 72 minute BBC documentary 'David Gilmour: Wider Horizons'.
Ordering details for all the various formats are shown here; using these links to order David Gilmour Live at Pompeii (or indeed anything from Amazon) makes a small but vital contribution towards the ongoing running costs of Brain Damage, and it is hugely appreciated!
When writer Nick Sedgwick sadly passed away in 2011, Roger Waters stated his wish at that time to publish a Pink Floyd manuscript that Nick had written.
Roger said: "One of my oldest friends, Nick Sedgwick, died this week of brain cancer. I shall miss him a lot. I share this sad news with you all for a good reason. He leaves behind a manuscript, In The Pink (not a hunting memoir). His memoir traces the unfolding of events in 1974 and 1975 concerning both me and Pink Floyd. In the summer of 1974 Nick accompanied me, and my then wife Judy, to Greece. We spent the whole summer there and Nick witnessed the beginnings of the end of that marriage.
"That autumn he travelled with Pink Floyd all round England on The Dark Side Of The Moon Tour. He carried a cassette recorder on which he recorded many conversations and documented the progress of the tour. In the spring of 1975 he came to America with the band and includes his recollections of that time also. When Nick finished the work in 1975 there was some resistance in the band to its publication, not surprising really as none of us comes out of it very well, it's a bit warts and all, so it never saw the light of day."
Featuring historic recollections and never before seen photos, with handwritten annotations and drawings by Roger over the text, In The Pink (not a hunting memoir) was recently published by Roger. It was Nick's wish before his passing that the book be made available to all those interested in that bit of Pink Floyd history. All proceeds will go to Nick's family.
Whilst there are some mistakes in the text, the book gives a flavour of this period of the Floyd's lives, with Roger making additional comments throughout. The first copies quietly appeared in the Victoria & Albert Museum shop, amongst the many Pink Floyd items at the end of the exhibition, but now it has wider availability, and you can order direct from the V&A online store, as well as the Roger Waters online store. Roger is also selling the book at the merchandise stands on his current Us + Them tour.
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The combined wishes of all of us on the Brain Damage team, along no doubt with many of you reading this, go to Roger Waters, who celebrates his 74th birthday today.
