Sound Quality: B-
Performance: A-
Overall: 2/5 Storage
You heard me, ballet, based on the music of Pink Floyd. I said it, look it up. ;-) There are no video recordings of this event, snippets here and there which I have seen. There is a DVD floating around but it is a later version where the Floyd didn't actually play live but it will give you idea if you want to track it down. I also have a video of a Japanese version done in 2004.
This is a vinyl recording, and there are three bootlegs in total, one is the master tape for one of the others and the final one sounds like a recording. From what I read online the Floyd didn't play every single one of the shows that were performed and a tape was used, the other bootleg is recorded quality and could be what was used for those performances. I am not sure, they are different from the album versions but definitely sound recorded in a studio. I will not review this version, there is no need and other ones sound the same so there is only one review.
The main issue here is the cuts, the ends of 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' and 'Echoes' are cut off and it is not just a short section either. There is also some talking going on during the tracks, not much but it is a distraction and this is a shame because if it was complete it would have been a good performance, the sound quality that was there was good and I could live with the talking.
The video clips are more significant if you are interested, none of these bootlegs are worth seeking out unless you a collector. The studio recording are different versions as I have stated but nothing significant to really search for.
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Original Info...
Pink Floyd - A Night With Roland
Roland Petit Ballet Concerts
January 13, 1973
The Monkey TM-003
"Roland Petit Ballet", WDR3 broadcast, Paris, France
Tracks:
One Of These Days
Careful With That Axe Eugene
Obscured by Clouds
When You're In
Echoes
Source: Video/Radio?
CD Reference: A Night With Roland
LP Reference:
The Floyd performed a handful of concerts accompanying the Roland Petit Ballet
(22-26 nov 72, 13,14 jan and 3,4 feb 73 and 15 jan - 28 jan 73 (audio playback only).
The Ballet was performed in 3 sections, the first 2 were based on classical music,
the 3rd section was The Pink Floyd ballet. A ballet in 4 movements:
1. One Of These Days, 2. Careful With That Axe Eugene, 3- OBC/WYI, 4. Echoes
Only the short part of CWTAE is live.
Quality: Very Good
Comments:
MQ = M. Quigley.
MQ: Have you ever been invited to do anything with a symphony?
RW: Well, we've had our talks with people. But the economics of working with an orchestra are prohibitive.
DG: Like this thing we've got on the next album uses thirty musicians, which isn't a lot of musicians. But it cost us five thousand dollars a night to put it on.
RW: We're writing a ballet for Roland Petit which will be on Paris next June, and the sky's the limit for that. They're spending so much money on that that they'd be quite willing to pay for an orchestra. But it might take it out of our hands to a certain extent if the stuff had to all be written down, because we can't write it down ourselves, and there's always a communication gap involved between what you can sing or play on a piano and what gets written down as music. And then you never hear it until you've got the orchestra there at the first rehearsal, and you probably only get two rehearsals anyway, so by the time you hear it, it's too late to change it; whereas our stuff is all based on doing something and then throwing out and using something else.
MQ: So you'll probably be playing with the ballet yourselves...
RW: Yeah, it's going to be on for about ten days. Nureyev is dancing the male lead. On the program we're doing, we're doing one ballet and Xenakis is writing the other.
Newsweek International 11-22-1999: How to Jolt an Audience
Q: You do think about attracting young people to the ballet, right?
A: Roland Petit: "About 25 years ago, my daughter--she was 10 or so then--came to me and said, "You must listen to this record and do a ballet with it." It was Pink Floyd. I went to London and [they agreed] to do this ballet with me. They came onstage and played. But that music was complex; it was a work of art. It's not the same today. Now it's just noise. Today you can give young people anything and they'll ingest it. From time to time, we have very beautiful things, but most of it's like McDonald's. Indigestible."
14.1.73: Le Pink Floyd Ballet (French TV):
When Roland Petit re-staged his Pink Floyd ballet in Paris in January 1973, French TV filmed the whole thing -- Minus the band.
The 39-minute show, generally in good colour, features One Of These Days, Careful With That Axe, Eugene, Obscured By Clouds/When You're In and Echoes.
After their holidays, Pink Floyd plunged back into the maelstrom of activity on which they professed to thrive. Fifteen concerts in North America through September.
Nine days on the album in October, but three more dropped so that they could play a benefit for War On Want at Wembley Empire Pool on October 21 - Sounds' reviewer noted that, "They gave the packed stadium a faultless demonstration of what psychedelic music is all about... Dark Side Of The Moon is an eerie title for an equally eerie piece of music that takes e the listener through a host of different moods." No sweat with regard to completing the album, although October 27 turned out to be their last day at Abbey Road until January 18. Throughout that period, between short bursts of gigging in Europe, they gave much of their attention to a grandiose and ultimately preposa terous project proposed by Roland Petit, eminent avant-garde choreographer of Les Ballets de Marseilles.
"It started off with discussions about us doing the music for an epic ballet and movie of Marcel Proust's A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu," says Gilmour. "Again, we were interested because we thought of it as one of the possible ways to extend the scope of what we could do in the future." Naturally, Pink Floyd were expected to read the source material. Legend has it that Gilmour waved the white flag on Proust Mter 118 pages, while Waters asserts he did plough through Swann's Way Volume 2 before concluding, "Fuck this, I can't handle it, it goes too slowly for me." When this critical judgment was conveyed to Petit, he resourcefully suggested realignment to Scheherezade's One Thousand And One Nights - which still sounded like a long job.
"There were long dinners with Petit, Rudolph Nureyev and Roman Polanski which came to nothing," Gilmour recalls. More coarsely, Waters is prone to suggesting that it all ended in "much poovery" among the ballet types, but little progress on the planning front. Eventually, says Gilmour caustically, the grand design crumbled to "a bit of old ballet danced to a bit of old music". Nonetheless, Pink Floyd did their bit, rehearsing the company through a programme comprising One Of These Days, Careful With That Axe Eugene, Obscured By Clouds, When You're In and Echoes, then backing the dancers live in Marseilles, November 20-26, then again in Paris, two shows a day, on January 13-14, 1973, and February 3-4. Although Sounds' ballet correspondent pronounced himself impressed with the denouement to Echoes when the leading male dancer dragged the prima ballerina "right across the width of the stage with her in the splits position", the band emerged rather disabused of their aspirations in this particular field of high art.
"In the end," reckons Gilmour, "the reality of all these people prancing around in tights in front of us didn't feel like what we wanted to do long term." Just as well, really. They still had an album to finish - accomplished, if the most trainspotterly accounts are accurate, in 11 more days at Abbey Road between January 18 and February 1: a total of 38 days in the studio spread over seven months. A diffuse process, then, but Waters's concept held strong through all the diversions and digressions. Whenever they were at Abbey Road, the album would quickly fall back into focus again and their mutual support was never in doubt. "We were stuck in a small room for days on end and we did work very well together as a band," says Gilmour. "If we weren't playing, Roger and I would be at the mixing desk usually and grabbing the talk-back to say our piece; Rick and Nick sat in throughout and gave us their thoughts if they wanted to. They still do, even though it takes so much longer to record a Pink Floyd album now."
The Floyd performed a handful of concerts accompanying the Roland Petit Ballet
(22-26 nov 72, 13,14 jan and 3,4 feb 73 and 15 jan - 28 jan 73 (audio playback only).
The Ballet was performed in 3 sections, the first 2 were based on classical music,
the 3rd section was The Pink Floyd ballet. A ballet in 4 movements:
1. One Of These Days, 2. Careful With That Axe Eugene, 3- OBC/WYI, 4. Echoes
Only the short part of CWTAE is live.
Quality: Very Good
