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Pink Floyd 1968WOW - it's now the 27th YEAR of Brain Damage, your Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, Richard Wright and Roger Waters news resource!

Marking the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd's iconic 1975 album, a range of Wish You Were Here 50 celebratory editions: deluxe box set, blu-ray, 3LP set, 2CD set and coloured vinyl single LPs came out at the end of last year. Full details here. The LA 1975 concert, recorded by Mike Millard and remastered by Steven Wilson, came out as a standalone item on 4LP for Record Store Day, and 2CD across most of the world.

The stunningly restored and remixed Pink Floyd At Pompeii MCMLXXII on Blu-ray, 2CD, 2LP, DVD, and digital was also released in 2025 - and is NOT to be missed. As is the 4K UltraHD edition out now!

Also last year, celebrating the concerts to coincide with David Gilmour's album, Luck and Strange, cinema/IMAX screenings, and a book, 2Blu-ray, 3DVD, 4LP, 2CD and deluxe box set options were also released and are getting very high praise.

The Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets 2024 Set The Controls tour revealed a band in even better form than the 2022/23 shows which managed to exceed everyone's hopes and expectations! Our sincerest hopes are that they continue, but in the meantime, there's their RSD release, and the earlier live recording from London's Roundhouse on Blu-ray, DVD/2CD, and 2LP which is really excellent.

Of course, Roger Waters read three extracts from his memoirs in October 2023 at the London Palladium, so it might not be too much longer before that is published...he's also working on his new album based around The Bar - we'll let you know as soon as we get all the info! Before all that though is the release of Roger Waters This Is Not A Drill Live In Prague on 4LP vinyl, Blu-ray, DVD, 2CD and digital which is out now.

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David Gilmour et al - Smoke On The Water interview Print E-mail
Written by Matt   
Monday, 09 December 2013

In 1989, following the Armenian earthquake, the biggest names in rock (including David Gilmour) united to re-record Smoke On The Water under the banner of Rock Aid Armenia. As part of the record promotion, Rock Aid Armenia and the BBC did a live broadcast to the USSR. Millions of people tuned in to hear Ian Gillan, David Gilmour and Bruce Dickinson being interviewed about their role in the Rock Aid Armenia project.

The footage of that BBC broadcast was thought to be long lost, but has recently turned up, and can be seen here:

According to the BBC, over 20 million people tuned in from the USSR. As you'll, the footage includes David explaining why he hadn't asked Ian Gillan to join Pink Floyd "we couldn't afford him", and is asked why Roger Waters left Pink Floyd...

The original 1989 Rock Aid Armenia version of Smoke on the Water was remixed in 2010 and released via iTunes and CD/DVD. The aim was to raise funds to build the music school that had not been properly rebuilt after the 1989 earthquake (it was 25 years ago this month that the quake took place).

Jon Dee, the organiser, told us this weekend that he was "glad to say that a few months ago we finally finished the fundraising and building works and opened the new music school in Gyumri in the earthquake zone - it's big enough to teach 200 kids. The new school looks great (we built it totally from scratch). And every cent that we raised went straight to the school rebuilding programme - not a cent was spent on admin.

"Ian Gillan and Tony Iommi also helped us with the fundraising - they visited the temporary school with me that we knocked down and replaced. Ian also turned up to open the school with me, the President of Armenia and Ara Tadevosyan (my charity partner in Armenia who co-organised the rebuilding with me)."

The promo video and the 2010 remix are still available on iTunes and all money raised from the downloads of this will go towards the new school to pay for instruments and any ongoing repairs. Please visit RockAidArmenia.com for much more about this worthy project, including studio outtakes and photos.

 
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