The Floyd Effect - image by Peter Alan Gill On Sunday 27th December I went to a fantastic gig at Club 85 in Hitchin with my sister and best pal, Mike. Regular readers will know that I tend to write about the gigs I go to and that typically they will end up reading about bands that play heavy metal or punk music. For this outing though the musical genre was very different. The band was The Floyd Effect, a Pink Floyd tribute band.
Before I get into the review, a quick digression if I may. Over the last two to three decades, I have been to hundreds of gigs and whilst I have seen the vast majority of my favourite bands live (and some lots of times), one or two acts evaded me. My biggest gig related regrets are that I never saw Queen (though I made it to the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert) and, you probably guessed it, Pink Floyd (PF) – in reality there weren’t too many opportunities post 1987.
Given Rick Wright’s death, the likelihood of Pink Floyd ever performing another concert is negligible, and that’s probably an over optimistic assessment.
Now I don’t normally bother much with tribute bands because experience has proved that most of the time they are a bit sad/naff; and why would you bother when you can see the real thing? Before 27/12/15, the only tribute band I had seen that was genuinely worth raving about was “Bjorn Again”.
But with the surviving members of PF doing their own things, the only way to experience anything live and vaguely Floydian is to take a punt on a tribute act (and there are number of them).
Before buying the tickets, I did some research and couldn’t find a bad word written about The Floyd Effect – tickets were duly purchased via Farley’s in Hitchin.
On the night itself, Club 85 was packed; I had never seen it so busy and it came as no surprise to me to hear that the event was a sell-out.
The audience was largely made up of grey hairs, or those rapidly approaching middle age status. My little party of forty somethings was at the younger end of the attendee age spectrum and that was reassuring. My thought process being that many of these guys and girls would have had much more opportunity than me to see PF live and, if those that had experienced the real deal were present, that would equate to a significant endorsement.
The band took to the stage at 8:30pm, five key fellas supported periodically by two female backing singers and a male saxophonist. The chaps, all middle aged or thereabouts (appropriate for the audience), looked relatively normal, well aside from the dodgy Christmas head wear.
From the get go it was clear that the band was tight and all the musicians were very capable. When the lead vocalist (also the lead guitarist) got to sing, for me, it was like Dave Gilmour was on the microphone – seriously he was that good.
The set list follows:
Set One:
Worthy of note from the above is that “Dark Side of the Moon” refers to the entire album, all nine songs and 43 minutes! It was introduced in a cool way too, the keyboard player said “we have played a few things from The Wall, Meddle, Wish You Were Here, now we are going to play Dark Side of the Moon…
…all of it.”
Once you appreciate that last point, you might begin to realise that the gig went on for quite a while. In fact I walked out of Club 85 at around 12:15, the band had performed for more than three hours with just a 15 minute interval.
During “The Great Gig in the Sky” (from Dark Side of the Moon) – the wailing parts were performed by the backing singers and they did such a good job that the whole place erupted with applause when the track was done.
In terms of a light show, and in keeping with PF, The Floyd Effect made use of lights and video throughout the gig.
Towards the end of the set, the band announced its last track, played it and then left the stage. But even after three hours, there was an encore.
I/we had a brilliant night out; when the three of us left the gig, we all expressed our determination to see the band again. You too can track down a gig via www.thefloydeffect.com or via Facebook.
As far as I am concerned The Floyd Effect has rewritten my rule book on tribute acts – the band is as worth seeing as any “original” outfit, in fact it’s far better than many. For £15 a ticket, the experience was superb value for money.
There were a handful of occasions when I shut my eyes and just let the music wash over me. In these moments, I swear I could have been listening to Gilmour, Waters, Wright & Mason - in a linguistic twist, The Floyd Effect was effectively Pink Floyd. And I don’t think I can recommend this band more than that.
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Before I get into the review, a quick digression if I may. Over the last two to three decades, I have been to hundreds of gigs and whilst I have seen the vast majority of my favourite bands live (and some lots of times), one or two acts evaded me. My biggest gig related regrets are that I never saw Queen (though I made it to the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert) and, you probably guessed it, Pink Floyd (PF) – in reality there weren’t too many opportunities post 1987.
Given Rick Wright’s death, the likelihood of Pink Floyd ever performing another concert is negligible, and that’s probably an over optimistic assessment.
Now I don’t normally bother much with tribute bands because experience has proved that most of the time they are a bit sad/naff; and why would you bother when you can see the real thing? Before 27/12/15, the only tribute band I had seen that was genuinely worth raving about was “Bjorn Again”.
But with the surviving members of PF doing their own things, the only way to experience anything live and vaguely Floydian is to take a punt on a tribute act (and there are number of them).
Before buying the tickets, I did some research and couldn’t find a bad word written about The Floyd Effect – tickets were duly purchased via Farley’s in Hitchin.
On the night itself, Club 85 was packed; I had never seen it so busy and it came as no surprise to me to hear that the event was a sell-out.
The audience was largely made up of grey hairs, or those rapidly approaching middle age status. My little party of forty somethings was at the younger end of the attendee age spectrum and that was reassuring. My thought process being that many of these guys and girls would have had much more opportunity than me to see PF live and, if those that had experienced the real deal were present, that would equate to a significant endorsement.
The band took to the stage at 8:30pm, five key fellas supported periodically by two female backing singers and a male saxophonist. The chaps, all middle aged or thereabouts (appropriate for the audience), looked relatively normal, well aside from the dodgy Christmas head wear.
From the get go it was clear that the band was tight and all the musicians were very capable. When the lead vocalist (also the lead guitarist) got to sing, for me, it was like Dave Gilmour was on the microphone – seriously he was that good.
The set list follows:
Set One:
- Shine On You Crazy Diamond
- Welcome To The Machine
- High Hopes
- Sorrow
- Dogs Of War
- Dogs
- In The Flesh
- Another Brick in the Wall pt2
- Careful With That Axe Eugene
- One Of These Days
- Echoes
- Dark Side Of The Moon
- Wish You Were Here
- Comfortably Numb
- Run Like Hell
Worthy of note from the above is that “Dark Side of the Moon” refers to the entire album, all nine songs and 43 minutes! It was introduced in a cool way too, the keyboard player said “we have played a few things from The Wall, Meddle, Wish You Were Here, now we are going to play Dark Side of the Moon…
…all of it.”
Once you appreciate that last point, you might begin to realise that the gig went on for quite a while. In fact I walked out of Club 85 at around 12:15, the band had performed for more than three hours with just a 15 minute interval.
During “The Great Gig in the Sky” (from Dark Side of the Moon) – the wailing parts were performed by the backing singers and they did such a good job that the whole place erupted with applause when the track was done.
In terms of a light show, and in keeping with PF, The Floyd Effect made use of lights and video throughout the gig.
Towards the end of the set, the band announced its last track, played it and then left the stage. But even after three hours, there was an encore.
I/we had a brilliant night out; when the three of us left the gig, we all expressed our determination to see the band again. You too can track down a gig via www.thefloydeffect.com or via Facebook.
As far as I am concerned The Floyd Effect has rewritten my rule book on tribute acts – the band is as worth seeing as any “original” outfit, in fact it’s far better than many. For £15 a ticket, the experience was superb value for money.
There were a handful of occasions when I shut my eyes and just let the music wash over me. In these moments, I swear I could have been listening to Gilmour, Waters, Wright & Mason - in a linguistic twist, The Floyd Effect was effectively Pink Floyd. And I don’t think I can recommend this band more than that.
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