June 13th Earls Court, London

The theme for this concert was the double album "The Wall". The concert was very much a feast for the ears and the eyes, with the combination of visual effects and music providing an excellent evening's entertainment, particularly in its technical expertise.

At the start, the stage was set with a partially built wall across the front. Once the introduction was complete there was a loud bang with several flashes and the band started with equal impact. The music of the first half consisted of the tracks from the first album of 'The Wall', except for a few additional sound sequences.

On stage there were two drummers, two guitarists, two bass guitarists, two keyboard players and four backing vocalists, including Roger Waters (bass guitar), Richard Wright (keyboards), Nick Mason (drums) and Dave Gilmour (lead guitar).

Interesting visual effects were constantly being used and the lighting employed light banks above, behind and in front of the band. There were also two fully mobile hydraulic lighting platforms on stage which were lit underneath and had spotlights operated manually on top. As for visuals, the opening sequence included a rather large model aeroplane flying across the ceiling and crashing into the wall, and a large puppet representing the Schoolmaster went for a walk across the front of the stage! To complement the music at points in the first half some excellent animations were projected onto a large screen behind the band. During this half the wall on the stage was gradually added to, obscuring the band, until, just on the interval, the last brick was fitted precisely into the wall.

For the second half most of the action took place in front of the wall, where the band had since moved all their instruments. This half included some very good solo pieces, one of which takes place in a lounge scene set into the wall, with an armchair, coffee table and TV showing a war film, the sound track of which was heard over the PA. There was one heavy rock number that made use of a very large batten of lights controlled by a sound to light system. Once again, this was complemented with images from three movie projectors using the wall as a screen with pictures and animations including the well known sequences as seen on BBC TVs 'Top of the Pops'. The appearance of a huge pig from behind the wall was spectacular to say the least as it proceeded to dance about above the audience. In the finale, the wall was pushed down and the evening ended with the band walking on as strolling players with acoustic instruments including an accordion, guitars and an oboe. This last scene earned the band a standing ovation.

The sound quality was very good, with just a few first night 'rumbles' at the start. The PA was not too loud (even at 120kW for the bottom, flying and back stacks), and the multichannel system gave tremendous interest to the music, especially when the sound was swept from one PA stack to another. The dynamics achieved were strong and the inter relation of acoustic and electronic instruments portrayed the enormous range of emotion that Pink Floyd create in their music.

The effects gave plenty of variation, with echo, ADT and Leslie rotor sounds the most noticeable, as well as flanging and phasing. The keyboard players shared between them instruments that included an acoustic Grand Piano, a Yamaha CP80 Electric Grand, a Fender Rhodes Piano, a Wurlitzer Organ, a Solina String Synthesiser and a Prophet Synthesiser.

The control desk of the concert was also impressive with five mixing boards and rack upon rack of amplifiers, crossovers and control units. The mixing boards made use of the Midas mixer modules and the mixers were grouped for various applications. The control area (shown in the photograph) included a large lighting board and several tape decks which ranged from a cassette deck to large multi-track machines used for playback of the numerous sound sequences and live recording.

The concert was very impressive and it was well received by the huge audience. There was certainly never a dull moment and if your interest wandered you may easily have missed something.