Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii [VHS]

The music of Pink Flowd - colourful, imaginative, surrealistic, and highly inventive - lends itself very well to visual representation. Shot in and around an ancient amphitheatre, among the ruins of old Pompeii, Pink Floyd treat the viewer to a stunning audio-visual experience. This session was skillfully recorded in the beautiful sun-splashed arena by day, and amidst the eerily-lit scene of volcanic destruction by night, and is a perfect transition from audio to video media. The set begins and ends with the massive composition "Echoes" from the album "Meddle." This 80 minute version features candid interviews filmed in 1972 during the recording of their classic album Dark Side Of The Moon and includes excerpts from several tracks from that album.

Conceived by the French director Adrian Maben as "an anti-Woodstock film," IPink Floyd: Live at Pompeii/I was shot in October 1971 in a vacant, 2,000-year-old amphitheater--a venue chosen to accentuate the grandeur and spaciousness of the band's IMeddle/I-era music. This disc contains a new, 90-minute director's cut as well as the original 60-minute concert film, whose production and effects feel inescapably dated. Maben's cut goes to great lengths to lend the film a more contemporary feel, but it's the earlier version that makes this disc such a gem, being more focused on the music and more wholistic in vision. The anamorphic, 16:9 director's cut interweaves the Pompeii performances with fascinating but distracting interviews and music snippets filmed later (mostly during the recording of IDark Side of the Moon/I). The movie was originally prepared in a 4:3 aspect ratio, however, and the widescreen version crops perfectly framed images like the nine-square mosaic of drummer Nick Mason in "One of These Days." The original offers plenty of closeups of fingers on frets and keys, with shots that are often luxuriously long in duration. And the picture quality from Pompeii is revelatory: outstandingly sharp and clear, rich in subtle grades of light and color.p p Generous extras include everything from original posters, reviews, bootleg album covers, and song lyrics to a 24-minute interview with Maben. But for all the director's talk of the glorious acoustics in Pompeii's amphitheater, there's little natural ambience to be heard. The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is clear, dry, and two-dimensional, though notably better than any previous video release. I--Michael Mikesell/I