When I was a young kid, my father took me to see a show called “Beatlemania” which was billed as “not The Beatles but an incredible simulation.” The simulation was close enough to make me a Beatles fan for life.
As I sat and watched, and listened to the Australian Pink Floyd Show I couldn’t help but think back to that first “tribute” band I saw many years earlier. While they may not look the part, the Australian Pink Floyd Show’s music sounded uncannily like Pink Floyd.
On some level that made me feel a little conflicted. For many years another Pink Floyd tribute band, The Machine was a mainstay of the Tuesdays in the Park series. What endeared me to The Machine was their ability to interpret Pink Floyd songs, not play them to perfection.
The Australian Pink Floyd Show “shined” more on the David Gilmour dominated material, they nailed the “Wish You Were Here” album, which they played in its entirety, and their encore of “Louder than Words” from Pink Floyd’s final studio album “The Endless River” was played to perfection as well.
Nevertheless, the evening’s best song was “The Great Gig in the Sky” featuring the band’s complement of female singers, who I wish I knew their names so I could give credit where credit is due. They stole the show and drew the largest cheers of the evening.
Visually, the show did not feature a flying pig, but there was a giant inflated animal that looked like a giant rabbit, which appeared onstage during “One of These Days.” The rest of the show featured various images projected on the screen behind the band, some related to Pink Floyd, others to Australia.
The Australian Pink Floyd Show bore the strongest resemblance in sound to the post Roger Waters stage lineup of the 1980s. That was the group Waters once derided as a “fair forgery” because of the massive collective of musicians it took to successfully create the sound of the classic lineup of Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright.
That being said, the 1980s touring unit struggled with the songs Roger Waters sang lead on, but the few numbers that the Australian Pink Floyd Show performed, they were able to handle the Waters vocals parts relatively well, and certainly better than the 1980s Pink Floyd touring group.
For fans of Floyd that were in attendance, they undoubtedly had to leave feeling pleased on many levels. While the set list did not delve deep into the Pink Floyd catalogue, by its nature, a tribute show should focus on playing the hits and playing them true to form, and that is exactly what the Australian Pink Floyd Show delivered.