The London Drum Show have a very special guest opening the 2011 event - none other than Nick Mason. He'll be handling this task at 12 noon, on Saturday October 15th. Subsequently, he will appear on the Drummer Magazine stand for signings. The event takes place at Olympia's Conference Centre, and tickets for the event can either be purchased on the door for £17.50, or in advance online, at a much cheaper £12.50.

Tickets give you entry to the show and all performances within the event - more details of which can be found at LondonDrumShow.com. Nick attended the London Drum Show last year and is back this year for more. Our thanks to Arend Wentink for the information.

Regular BD contributor Bruce Tippen caught up with Nick Mason yesterday (Sunday) at the annual Goodwood Revival Festival in Sussex, England. Bruce tells us: "Nick was the thrilled owner of the Ferrari 250 GTO that had out-performed most of the competition to gain a second place in the much coveted Royal Automobile Club TT Celebration, a one hour two driver race for closed cockpit GT cars in the spirit of the RAC TT races from 1960 to 1964.

"Nick was happily doing book signings for Passion For Speed and was engaging in conversations about forthcoming Pink Floyd releases later this month. I was able to tell him that there is much enthusiam for the release of these products, genuine excitement from fans, and he is himself very excited about the future release of the early material. We spoke about BBC sessions and soundtrack material from More and La Vallee, both worthy considerations for such releases.

"Nick posed for photographs and returned for the final race of the weekend featuring his Maserati Tipo Birdcage."

The well respected US audiophile publication Stereophile Magazine has a fascinating three page feature surrounding the upcoming Pink Floyd remaster release programme, in its highly anticipated October 2011 issue. Sought after in itself for its Recommended Components feature, the October edition of the magazine each year is a consistent quick seller.

In the magazine, in US stores now, and selected outlets worldwide as an import, feature writer Robert Baird chats to Nick Mason. Nick: "For a long time, we felt that actually there were enough out there, and that one was trying to milk the thing. My feeling now is that if you don’t release things, they'll be bootlegged anyway, and the people who are interested, really are interested. I'm over that thing of thinking we're milking everything. Now it's like, let's just release everything and let the people who are interested have it, listen to it, obsess. The argument tended to be about whether to release virtually everything that we've got, which is pretty well what we've done."

One of the many highlights of the DSOTM Immersion set is the recording of the 1974 Wembley show. They explain some of the background to this, why it sounds so good, and a surprising detail about Nick's drums. 'Though the concert was originally a BBC radio broadcast, the tape Andy Jackson worked from for the release came from a separate feed run to the Island Mobile recording unit parked outside the stadium. Jackson says that while the original multitrack tapes, overseen by the band's then studio engineer, Brian Humphries, were in fine physical condition, some heavy lifting was required. One kickdrum track was entirely unusable and had to be recreated from samples. He suspects the microphone on that drum had been pointed the wrong way.'

They also quiz Nick on how many Floyd live shows might be in the vaults. "We didn't [record live shows]. Not nearly enough. It's a great shame, really. We should have, absolutely should have. We never really discussed it. Again, it's a different world now..."

Our thanks to Lars Moestrup and Joseph Attalla for their help in this story.

Earlier this month we told you about the UK's BBC Radio 2 who have scheduled a range of Pink Floyd programming for their Autumn season.

Musicweek have been looking at what's coming up, and note that Pink Floyd pioneered certain modern business models. According to Steve Levine, the man behind the programme on producers, the band's management paid for studio time with Joe Boyd (who discovered Pink Floyd at the UFO Club) producing. "They were originally going to sign for Polydor and the management said, 'If we pay for studio time and we own masters we will make the decision of what to do'," said Levine. After the independent production of that single the band signed with EMI. He also noted that Floyd had "free use" of Abbey Road studios because they negotiated a slightly smaller percentage deal with EMI, in exchange for EMI paying for studio time. "That was very unusual for the time. These are very interesting models."

Levine and Allinson interviewed Gilmour at Astoria. The producer said: "The forthcoming focus on Pink Floyd will be one of our most revealing programmes yet. Gilmour talked at length about how the guitar sound is important in the band's music and how the various overdubs and unique production sounds and techniques make up the totality of a song – as well as stories about individual tracks".

Radio 2 and 6 Music controller Bob Shennan said: "This is one of the opportunities for us to do something I am really keen for Radio 2 to do – take an iconic artist or band, particularly one you don't get to hear that often on the radio, or certainly outside of the BBC, and really celebrate them, give them more depth. Rather than doing one-off documentaries we are trying to get really intelligent analysis as well as a celebration of the artists". He also revealed that talks were currently ongoing about bringing some of the Pink Floyd programming to sister station 6 Music.

Read more on this story over at Musicweek.com. Our thanks to Mark Jennings for the info.