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Waking up on July 6th, 1994 with my brain still buzzing from my first Phish show* I grabbed a coffee or three, packed some bags and hit the road headed towards Toronto for my first experience with Pink Floyd. Of course I didn’t make great time and by the time I found free street parking within striking distance of Exhibition Stadium it was getting close to show time.
Luckily the concert had been postponed for a half-hour so the international fireworks competition that was going on at the time at the CNE wouldn’t overpower the beginning of the Floyd show. Somewhat frazzled I rushed to lock up the van and started jogging towards the show with huge colourful explosions going off overhead. And inhead, if truth be told. It was, after all, a Pink Floyd concert.
Boom, boom, boom! With each burst I was afforded enough light to see that tons of other people were also running to get to the stadium, and as I reached the gate with the fireworks (and everything) at their peak it dawned on me that I was living inside the concert/battlefield scene from the beginning of The Wall, with manic fans rushing through the gates of an arena for Pink’s show juxtaposed against their peers enduring the horrors of battle in WWII. The fireworks provided both audio bombshells and fleeting shadows that turned soldiers into music fans and back into soldiers again. I think I started questioning my own motives. It was all so very surreal.
By the time my ticket was scanned the Pink Floyd show had indeed started. I found myself running to get to my floor seat during Learning To Fly and in my unrestrained haste I almost tripped over a taped wire running to the soundboard, perfectly in time with the band as they made a quick break into the four-note theme that outlines The Wall. This proved to be the closing scene in my adventure within the movie as I found my seat, caught my breath, and settled in for an incredible, mind-melting concert.
They played everything and more, lots of great material from Dark Side Of The Moon and all the hits I wanted to hear: Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Money, and especially Comfortably Numb.
(When I was sixteen I was first introduced to Pink Floyd via Comfortably Numb. I listened to it over and over and over again for days until my roommate finally got fed up. “The rest of the album is pretty good too you know.”)
The sound was incredible, which was doubly incredible in Exhibition Stadium, a venue notorious for bad sound. This was all Floyd’s doing though, as they had speaker bays strategically placed throughout the stands providing octophonic surround-sound (at least) with blurps and effects emitting from all around. This might not have been so great if my seats were near any of these speaker bays. When I went to the bathroom late in the show I passed underneath a hanging truss of wattage that was blaring all the radio static from Wish You Were Here such that you could barely hear anything else.
In a clear nod to my race into the show Pink Floyd ended the evening with Run Like Hell. I assure you I did not heed their advice, opting to walk back to my van nice and easy, after a brief stop at the merch table for my souvenir t-shirt.
Funny that I saw Phish and Pink Floyd for the first time on back-to-back nights – their albums always sit next to each other in my alphabetized collection. I sure am glad I saw Phish first. I think I’d always find it a bit unnerving if I had seen them in the wrong order.
*Ottawa Congress Centre 07/05/94
Todd Man Out 