To save travel time, I chose to go to the Odeon in Kingston and duly paid £25 for my seat. There was some confusion on the day as it was moved to another screen, technical problems, and I ended up in the back row (K) of Screen 4, which was fine.
I am pretty sure that I bought Live at Pompeii at some point in some format now defunct , probably VHS, so I had not seen it for quite a few years and while I could remember some of the songs included I knew that there were gaps in my memory.
They opened with Echos which was an excellent start. A live version of Echos is on my iPhone and I play it several times a year. The sound quality was as good as expected and the video was as good as I should have expected which was good for its time but seriously behind today's standard. That did not matter though, I was there for the songs and they were great.
This was 1972 and Pink Floyd played a selection of their then most known songs including classics like Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Careful with That Axe, Eugene, and A Saucerful of Secrets. They also played Mademoiselle Nobs!
Despite being described as "live" with some post production work in the studio the songs sounded very much like their studio versions, which was again fine.
The film did little other that show the band and the only surprising thing about that was the amount of time spent on Nick Mason who impressed with his casual virtuosity. There were also a few scenes of the band in the studio talking which did not add much except that it gave us a glimpse in to the genesis of Dark Side of the Moon which would change their world for ever and have a big impact on lots of other people too.
As a film, Pink Floyd at Pompeii was not great and was rescued by the copious amounts of music which made it a good experience of any Pink Floyd fan, like me.
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