NICK MASON’S SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS – BRIGHTON DOME CONCERT HALL 26.4.22
This performance at the Brighton Dome from Pink Floyd’s drummer with his other band ‘Saucerful Of Secrets’ was originally scheduled to be played in April 2020, but had to be rescheduled twice, but as they say, third time lucky and boy.. were we lucky and what a fantastic performance from the band we had..
Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets have announced their largest UK and Ireland tour to date, featuring the line-up of Nick Mason, Gary Kemp, Guy Pratt, Lee Harris and Dom Beken. They play songs from Pink Floyd’s very early catalogue up to the 1972 album ‘Obscured By Clouds’.
The performance tonight was broken into two sets of approximately one hour each.
They opened their set with ‘One Of These Days’ from the ‘Meddle’ album, and after a few songs Nick addressed the (just about sold out) audience and said that Pink Floyd first played in Brighton way back in the early seventies at the start of their career, but he was then corrected to say that it was actually in fact in the late sixties!!..He also mentioned that ‘Arnold Layne’ had been banned from the BBC playlist due to its lyrics back in the day.. The band also gave a nice ‘nod’ to both Syd Barrett and Richard Wright during the evening, who both are sadly now not with us today, but both contributed to make the Pink Floyd sound what it is.
The majority of the lead vocals were sung by Gary Kemp..yes ..The Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet..and Nick also quipped that when they started the band Gary came for the audition and thought he would be playing with Roger Waters (rather than Nick) whilst Nick thought he was to be auditioning Tony Hadley for lead vocals!!..Needless to say I don’t think either were too upset about the auditioning and Gary has made a super vocalist for this band. They finished their first set comprising of twelve songs with ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’ from the ‘Saucerful Of Secrets’ album.
After the intermission of about thirty minutes, the band started their second set with ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and finished off this, slightly shorter, set with ‘Echoes’.
The band then said their thank you’s and left the stage for a short time before returning for an encore of ‘Lucifer Sam’ and ‘A Saucerful Of Secrets’ before giving us the ‘one more song’, which was the comedical song ‘Bike’…which has the great lines of “I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a house, I don’t know why I call him Gerald, He’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse …”
Wow…what a great night’s entertainment and yes well worth the two years wait for this event to happen.. But hopefully it won’t be that long a time to wait until they are back in Brighton again..
Setlist:
Set 1:
1: ‘One Of these Days’
2: ‘Arnold Layne’
3: ‘Fearless’
4: ‘Obscured By Clouds’
5: ‘When You’re In’
6: ‘Candy And A Currant Bun’
7: ‘Vegetable Man’
8: ‘If’
9: ‘Atom Heart Mother’
10: ‘If (reprise)’
11: ‘Remember A Day’
12: ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’
Set 2:
13: ‘Interstellar Overdrive’
14: ‘Astronomy Domine’
15: ‘The Nile Song’
16: ‘Burning Bridges’
17: ‘Childhood’s End’
18: ‘See Emily Play’
19: ‘Echoes’
Encore:
20: ‘Lucifer Sam’
21: ‘A Saucerful Of Secrets’
22: ‘Bike’
Looks like Nick’s memory is rusty. In fact Pink Floyd played 9 gigs in Brighton during the 1960s – starting with the Top Rank on 19.10.66 (they played there twice and the Dome four times). There was also one on the West Pier, K4 Disco. 15.04.67, one at the University, 11.02.67, and supposedly one at Thelme House 11.05.68, a place I haven’t been able to identify (Firle Place? )
Thanks for your comments Paul.
Didn’t Pink Floyd premier ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ too at the Dome in 1972 ?
Great night out, by the way.’Echoes’ to my mind is their best work prior to DSOTHM. A real magnum opus on the night.Fantastic light show too ranking just about the best I’ve ever seen.Superb musicianship too from all the lads !
Thanks for your comments Jon.
What a fantastic night. DSOTM was my intro to PF and growing up with so much choice I never really investigated the back catalogue aside from Obscured. So what a treat it has been to grow my appreciation of the early years and ultimately attend the gig. Truly an awesome event.
Thank you for your comment Cliff.