All of us here at Brain Damage offer our very best wishes to Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, who celebrates the very special occasion of his birthday today, January 27th. Hope you are having a great day, Nick!
The cornerstone of the band, he had his first drum kit at the tender age of 13. A member of Pink Floyd since the earliest iterations, he is the only one to have appeared on every one of their albums. Thanks to his late father Bill, he has been a "petrol head" from a young boy, and cars have been - and remain - one of his major passions in life. His most recent book, Passion for Speed, is worth checking out, as is the DVD of the same name focusing on his Ferrari Enzo car (with Nick heavily involved). Of course, for those who haven't read it, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd is an absolute essential read, and available in a variety of editions: hardback, softback (paperback) and audiobook, read by Nick himself...
Nick has contributed to a number of magazines on motoring issues over the years (including a fascinating monthly column in Octane Magazine), and quite recently became president of the Guild of Motoring Writers. He is a trustee of the Beaulieu National Motor Museum, and a life member
and Guardian of the BRDC (British Racing Drivers Club). He has been involved in motor racing since the early 1970s and has entered Le Mans five times.
Obviously more recently there has been the release of The Endless River, which has had Nick back on the drums in David Gilmour's south coast studio, augmenting the existing recordings with some new drumwork.
Many happy returns, Nick! To finish, here's a video - released yesterday - of Nick taking his LaFerrari for a spin...
This morning, full details of David Gilmour's concert in Poland on June 25th, 2016, have been released, including the link to tickets, which have just gone on sale coinciding with the official announcement.
In a change to where the concert was originally said to be sited, it is being held in Plac Wolności (Freedom Square) in Wrocław, and promises to be a very special event. The concert will form part of the city's celebrations as European Capital of Culture 2016.
It will be the first show on David's Rattle That Lock tour to include a 30-piece orchestra conducted by long term Gilmour collaborator Zbigniew Preisner and will also include a special guest appearance by Polish pianist Leszek Mozdzer. The special one-off event, located on Freedom Square in front of the National Forum of Music, will be filmed by Aubrey 'Po' Powell and broadcast live on Polish TV. Nearer to the day of the show, we will hopefully have more details of that for those who cannot attend the concert in person.
Tickets are available now from ebilet.pl, priced from PLN 120 - 195.
For the Democracy Now website, Roger Waters - accompanied by cellist Alexander Rohatyn - has just performed the classic protest song We Shall Overcome, and the video of it is available to watch now:
Austrian TV station ServusTV, a free-to-air channel receivable in all of Europe via satellite (Astra 19,2) is airing a repeat of a programme aired last year. Dolezal Backstage, which features Pink Floyd, Mick Jagger, Falco and others, airs on Thursday 28th January at 20:15-21:15 (GMT +01:00), and on Saturday 30th January at 00:20-01:20 (GMT +01:00).
Rudi Dolezal is a famous Austrian filmmaker, specialized in music videos for big rock groups: The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Miles Davis, Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, Falco and Frank Zappa and many more. His own programme on ServusTV in Austria, called Dolezal Backstage, has the presenter talking about, and showing, his exclusive backstage stories. The show is often funny, curious and sometimes very odd.
This is the fourth episode of the series, where he talks about his biggest defeat (Pink Floyd) and other stories about other artists. This defeat was a film shoot for an interview with David Gilmour, which took place during 1979 in London. There were elaborate preparations - many months before. It was a fantastic interview - three and a half hours long. Amongst other things, he talked about the whole history of Floyd, about the album The Wall, and about the shooting for the video clip with the children from the Islington school in London.
All went well and David went back home. Seemingly, everything was perfect! Then, one day later, Rudi got a phone call from the BBC's film laboratory in London, who had accidentally damaged all of the film that has been shot! But David was kind enough to return for another attempt, but the second interview was not as good as the original. 10 years later Dolezal got a second chance and this time everything went well.
Our thanks to Michael for the information about this show, and the screenshot from the broadcast last year.
With the recent announcement of the Symphonic version of Wish You Were Here, we were emailed by BD visitor Christopher Soto from Costa Rica. Christopher helped out with a show staged by the Orquesta Filarmónica de Costa Rica (Philharmonic Orchestra) back in 2014, and from that performance is the following video. With a blend of traditional orchestration, and rock instrumentation and vocal, it is an interesting blend. See what you think...
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All of us here at Brain Damage offer our very best wishes to Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, who celebrates the very special occasion of his birthday today, January 27th. Hope you are having a great day, Nick!
