Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Pink Ones - Psychedelic Night

A relatively short lived group, The Pink Ones existed for only two days - the 26th and 27th of October 1981. However, despite the fleeting transience of their physical presence, their influence remains devastatingly widespread to this day, for in their innocent enthusiasm for paying homage to their musical heroes, The Pink Ones inadvertently invented that wretched scourge of today's live music scene, the "tribute band" (for which they apologise).

When invited to perform at a "psychedelic night" in north Wales, local post-punkers The Pinecones came up with the idea of recreating one of The Pink Floyd's legendary happenings at the UFO club in 1966/67. After deciding on a set and slightly adjusting both their line-up and their name accordingly, the group convened at the venue (The Glanrafon pub in Bangor) the night before the scheduled gig for a rehearsal. Due to an ill-judged experiment in psychedelicising their playing with hallucogenic assistance, the rehearsal went far from successfully, with members of the group more concerned with avoiding the large green and purple monsters who dwelt upstairs at the Glanrafon in those days than in remembering the songs.

Happily, the following day, with the enhancement of a hi-tech rainbow strobe set-up and various other "far-out" projection devices, and without the "enhancement" of hallucogenics, The Pink Ones presented an almost masterful performance, taking the capacity audience on a journey through time and space and other such dimensions, through the centres of their minds and out the other side.
Fortunately, the whole performance (save the encore - a reprise of Arnold Layne) was preserved for posterity and in fact a copy was even passed off on certain trading circles as a genuine Floyd artefact!

The songs from the gig featured here hopefully stand as tribute to their late, great author whose absence from the music world in 1981 made the formation of The Pink Ones necessary. Let's hope that his more recent absence from the world in general will inspire something more useful then tribute bands.

Pink Ones - Glanrafon Pub, 27th October 1981

Alan Holmes - lead vocals, lead guitar
Maeyc Hewitt - drums
Scott Saunders - organ, backing vocals
Martin Parry - bass
Maria Hycz - backing vocals, percussion
Syd Barrett - songwriting, telepathic inspiration

1 Astronomy Dominé (Barrett)
2 Lucifer Sam (Barrett)
3 The Scarecrow (Barrett)
4 See Emily Play (Barrett)
5 The Gnome (Barrett)
6 Matilda Mother (Barrett)
7 Bike (Barrett)
8 Arnold Layne (Barrett)
9 Interstellar Overdrive (Barrett/Gilmour/Waters/Wright)

get it here


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