| Comments: | Drift Away-Blues on Disc 6 should be played with the '77
concert, at the end of Disc 4.
I'm not saying that your wrong, but I did puchase the Azimuth
Coordinator 6 CD set and it was not numbered. This was in
October 97. It was more than worth the money but I'd like to
know if it's "legit".
It appears that this set continues to sell in a very similar
package (by Front Row Center?) but is no longer a numbered
limited edition.
- DAve.
This set is comprised of the kick-off dates for the 1975 and
1980 (The Wall) tours, and also the final date of the
Animals/In the Flesh 1977 tour where Roger loses his
'composure' with the rowdy audience. The inaugural Wall show is
also of interest because of the fire which halted the show
early on. There are sound problems with this recording, most
notably an irritating electronic buzz during the latter part of
ABITW2 on CD5 and an equally distracting fast metronomic beat
during Comf'y Numb on CD6, although this fortunately disappears
as Dave cranks up his solo.
- THE HEDONIST
At long last, the much talked about Az. Coor. 6-CD set was
finally released sometime earlier this month by some friendly
folks at Comfortably Cool Productions (somewhere in the world).
Glancing thru this "box set", its obvious that this is not your
run-of-the-mill ROIO. The accompling book (65 pages, 20x20 cm)
is bloody fantastic with a bizarre morphing of the three LPs
imagery as the cover art. The book is chocked filled with
relevant photos matched to the different tours (unlike Miles!)
from each of the three live CD's time periods, some of which I
haven't seen before. Love the pic of Rog in a Milwaukee Brewers
T-shirt on p.9... musta taken it from the locker rooms on their
'75 stop-over here? The book is worthy of a separate release,
better than any of the recent offerings. Very nice narrative on
the recording and art production of the three LPs of the later
half of the 70's, and brief description of the diff. tours. The
only thing lacking is a more detailed description of the '75 &
'77 tours. The Wall show is described in detail for all of us
whom failed to secure prized ducats to the shows on either
coast.
There's 6 Cds here, packaged in plastic slip cases boxed
together in a cardboard box. The box is individually numbered,
so it looks like there's only a 1000 of this things floating
around. The price varies greatly between dealers. I think I
paid $150 for the set.... I lose track of the green at swaps
too easily these days. ;) Considering that double ROIO CDs go
for $50- $60, a 6 CD set with a awesome book is easily worth
this price. Sure this cuts deeply into the beer fund, but wot
the 'ell! The entire "box set" is packaged together in a pink
plastic bubble wrap. No clue why they did this?!
Onto the Cds: Disc 1&2 are the opener show of the '75 "World
Tour" live in Vancouver, Can, 8 Apr 75. The Floyd seem to have
a great love with the Seattle/Vancouver area because they've
played there every tour since '68, sometimes several stops in
both cities. The show happens to be the debut of HAC and the
"split" Shine On, with an unusual intro to R&D. The sound is
very clean, but has a slight hiss probably due to the
generations, and taper's mic feedback during Shine On 6-9.
Bloody fab show, easily the best of the Spring '75 tour shows,
and one that hasn't been released in complete form to date. So
nice to have the long version of DSOTM on disc. The OTR
sequence is amazing, almost sounds like Boeing lent a hand. And
there's Echoes, need I say more. The '75 versions of Echoes are
always a treat. SQ is Ex-.
Disc 3&4 are the infamous Montreal 6 Jul 77 show in complete
form. I always list this show in my top 5 fave shows. Seems
that a copy of the rare clean version has made its way to the
bakery. Oh well, I know we couldn't keep this gem hidden
forever. As such the case, most Echoesian have never heard this
ripping version of the show, and have suffered with the crappy
LP version for years. I know Dave and Rog have said that they
hated their performance that day, but they should hear the tape
first!! It's a toss up between the Oakland '77 and Montreal '77
shows for the best of the Animals tour. You gotta to be crazy
not to get this show! Take a listen to Dave's searing guitar
work on Pigs-3DO, while Roger lets loose some wild "pig talk".
Mindnumbing stuff. Gotta love the tirades that Roger lets fly
for the firecracker wackos. Definitely the highlight of the box
set. Now I can put away my tapes of the show before they wear
out. Not a soundboard, but the closest we'll ever get to one.
Yeah, PF taped all their '77 shows, never to see the light of
day, no doubt. SQ is Ex.
Discs 5&6 are the debut performance piece of the Wall from LA,
2 Feb 80. Definitely not the best vesrion of the Wall live, in
fact sounds more like a rehearsal! All sorts of problems
plagued our boys on this night from inadvertent fires to Dave's
mics. failing to off-key singing in spots by Roger. I bet Roger
was really pleased after this show... For all its warts, its
still an interesting show with the long extended ABIII jams
(slow brickers) and surprised crowd reactions to the stage
presentations. The crowd had little idea what to expect, and
their joy is felt, esp. at the final brick being inserted.
Yeah, I know others have wondered why this piece was chosen,
but the better Wall shows have already been released on CD. Why
duplicate them? The sound of these discs is a vast improvement
over the crap I have on tape. This is actually listenable!
Someone must of dug up a very low gen. of this baby or
remastered it. Now, I can count along with Roger (Stop, stop,
stop, .... stop the film!). The only annoying thing is the
audio buzz that pops into trk 6 (ABII). SQ is Vg+
So, overall I'd give the AzCoor a four piggies rating (out of
5). (I hope the piggie rating isn't copywritten yet?) My only
gripe is the odd plastic bubble wrap packaging. A nice hard
cover box would be in order here.
If you're a hardcore Floyd collector (and who isn't on
Echoes?), then I heartly recommend searching out this fine
treasure. It doesn't appear to be readily available in most
cookie stores. Definitely worth your Floyd
dollars/pounds/lira/kroners/D-marks.
- ANON
The sound quality is fantastic and the shows are definitely
well chosen. Partiuclarly nice is Dave's guitar work on Pigs
(Three Different Kinds) and on Shine On Parts VI-IX. Although
the box is flimsy and the bubble wrap kind of silly, the book
is a great read and full of interesting notes on the albums. If
the soundboard tapes could have been used for this set, this
would without doubt be the best set of live Pink Floyd ever
released.
- JASON
Well, I bought a copy of this set and was very impressed. While
the packaging isn't great (I'm going to the record store later
this week to buy jewel cases for the CD's) I do think this is
an awesome set. Vancouver 75 is a fantastic show, with
excellent versions of all songs played. The versions of Money,
Any Colour You Like and Echoes rank as easily amongst the best
ever. I particularly like the way Gilmour takes the first solo
after the second chorus on Echoes, then Dick Parry plays a sax
solo. I also like they way Dave, Rick and Dick sort of
interwined their instruments on the ending. An excellent show,
a bit hissy sounding, but hey, if that bothered me I probably
wouldn't be listening to and collectiong ROIO's! :-)
Montreal 77 is another winner! I don't care what anyone in the
band says, this is a great show! It's worth it just to hear
Roger yell "For fuck's sake!!!!" in the middle of Pigs On The
Wing pt.2, but then on top of it, the band really tears it up
and plays a fantastic show. Particular highlights include Pigs
(3 Different Ones) and Shine On pt.9 (love the guitar and piano
candenza at the end before the rest of the band rejoins). I do
have one issue about the Montreal show: is there anyway of
verifying that Drift Away Blues is from this show. See, the
story that circulates is that Dave didn't want to come back
onstage, so Snowy White was left as the solo guitarist onstage
for this blues jam. OK, fine, but it seems every picture or
video clip I've seen of him shows him either playing a Gibson
Les Paul (usually a gold top, but one photo in the booklet with
this set shows him playing a black LP Custom) a Carvin LP style
guitar or a Yamaha (the latter two I noted in a couple Thin
Lizzy videos). On Drift Away Blues, the guitarist is definitely
playing a Strat, you can hear it not only in the guitar tone,
but also in the use of the tremelo arm (good Les Pauls don't
have trem arms, and neither do the Carvin or Yamaha guitars
I've seen Snowy playing). Or to be more to the point, it
doesn't sound like Snowy on guitar! I do recognise the Hammond
organ tone used in some of the keyboard solos as Rick's, and
that does sound like Rog yelling out "DRIFT AWAY!!!", but is
this from the Montreal 77 show? I do have a possible theory:
Maybe, Snowy, not wanting people to realise that he wasn't
Dave, strapped on one of Dave's Strats, and tried to play in a
fashion that would sound like Dave, and that's what we are
hearing here. Now, we know that the Montreal show had a lot to
do with inspiring certain things that came to fruition in The
Wall, so maybe this is one of them (perhaps this was the germ
of the idea for the Surrogate Band????). Anyway, it's a great
jam, irregardless of what show or when it came from.
LA 80 is an interesting show. This is the first The Wall show
I've ever heard. I particularly like the version of ABITW2,
with it's extra solos (presumably the first guitar solo is
Dave, while the second is Snowy, but who's playing the organ
solo? Rick or Peter Woods?) and the extended conclusion of
ABITW3, starting off with a sort of overture/overview of
instrumental bits from earlier songs in the show, and then
growing into what sounds to me like Any Colour You Like during
which the band really jams it's hearts out until it's time for
Rog to step forward and sing Goodbye Cruel World and insert the
final brick (which the audience seems to enjoy seeing). And the
whole business of the fire is also interesting, from a
historical perspective. There are two drawbacks to this show,
though:
1. Roger's voice doesn't sound dramatic enough when doing the
Judge's part on The Trial. Presumably, they couldn't quite
recreate the effect that was used in the studio.
2. Dave's second solo during Comfortably Numb is way too short
(but then I'm used to versions from 87-94!).
Oh and one last thing, the ticking sound during Comfortably
Numb, I suspect that's a click track, which apparently a sound
engineer accidentally switched into the PA audio path. The
click track was probably being used to keep the band in sync
with one another and with the film that was being used
(assuming that there was a film used for this song). Notice
that click coincides with the tempo of the song.
- ANON
After having a successful run with Great Dane Records, I felt a
deep satisfaction in retiring, leaving a legacy of highly
regarded Pink Floyd releases in my wake. I had accomplished
just about what I had set out to do concerning the great "Pink
Floyd Project," and with the Gat Treaty passing in 1996, the
world of legal RoIO's was silenced.
But my reputation had caught the eye of some enthusiastic
entrepreneur, who wanted to bake his own cookies and wanted to
enlist my services to coodinate certain projects. This person
was a smooth talker with big ideas. He wanted to produce
elaborate box sets which would include posters, stickers,
special collectable items, and would be uniquely presented. He
had me sold on the idea that this project would be done for
"the fans," and that his vision would not be compromised.
I didn't want to release any recordings that had been widely
circulated, and had some relavance to the performance or gig.
Vancouver 1975 was the first stop on the US tour and sounded
just as good as the better 1975 shows. It was the first time
"Shine On" was bridged with "Have a Cigar," and also the first
time the US had heard the new material.
The Montreal show is legendary for the "spitting" incident. It
was also the last stop on a grueling stadium tour, to which the
band claimed to have played horribly. On the contrary, this was
one of the Floyd's best performances faithfully captured by a
competent taper (which differs from the widely circulated
higher generation and poorer quality recording). "Pigs (3
Different One's)" also inspired his "Pig Talk" during the "In
The Flesh" segments of "The Wall" concerts. Absolutely the last
great Pink Floyd show!
"The Wall" show was harder to pick, and I listened to every
gig! I could have easily opted for the great sounding Nassau
Coliseum show that has been reissued to death, but instead
opted for a more important show...opening night. Although the
sound quality was far from up to par with the other 2 shows,
some inivated studio engineering pushed this recording into a
more listenable realm. The fire incident and the extended
"ABITW Part 3," are also unique to this performance. The only
sacrifice was that '"Drift Away Blues" could not fit on the
Montreal CD's and had to be put at the end of The Wall set.
With the liner notes prepared, photos ready, and recordings
remastered, this baby was ready to be put into the oven. But
probelms kept coming up and every time I asked what was going
on, I got some sob story about production problems. I got to
see a "proof" of the book, and honestly I wasn't too impressed.
I had supplied alot more interesting photos and artwork that
could have been used, and the few changes I wanted to make were
out of the question. My tapes were held onto for over 9 months
before they were finally remastered, and in all that time no
work was done on refining the book (which in fact didn't go
into production until much later on in the project).
Over a year later, and dozens of bogus promises, I received a
copy of the AzCo packaged in a cheezy bubble wrap. No hard
cover on the book, no reproduced original stickers or
postcards, poor silk screening on the disks, and just plain
unprofessional. My outrage prompted the manufacturer to
repackage it in a boxed format, but unfortunately the quality
of the box is thin and cheap.
Not only was I dissapointed with the product, but this
manufacturer took orders from people and spent the money
covering his bills and expensive overhead. Folks have been
waiting for months for either a refund or their product, while
this person's arrogant attitude seems to be, "they'll get it
when I have the money."
Although I think that the recordings alone are worth the price
you're bound to pay, you gotta admit that even with the flimsy
box, the book is a very nice bonus. In fact, the manufacturer
is sitting on about a few thousand books and boxes ready to
go...he just needs the CD's. You see, another ironic thing is
that all of the CD's were pressed and ready to go, they just
had to be paid for. And, with all the cash received from
pre-orders, that shouldn't have been a problem. But, because
the CD's weren't paid for, they are now being sold as
individual 2 CD sets of each concert with no frills. These CD's
are not rip-off's of the original AzCo. These are the actual
original disks that were never properly paid for.
So, if you can find one of the currently circulating copies, I
say go for it. It's well worth the cash, I just hoped it could
have looked alot nicer. And being so rare is another great
reason for hunting it down. And who knows, maybe the
manufacturer will get his shit together and throw out some more
copies to the public because in the meantime, Comfortably Cool
productions is being uncomforably uncool!
Well, I guess it's back to retirement...unless perhaps I get
some very encouraging comments contributed to this website.
Never say never
- ANON
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