Ten minutes of previously unseen footage of Pink Floyd performing live on the North American leg of their In The Flesh tour has been uploaded to YouTube.
The 10-minute clip, which features sections of Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Money, was filmed at the Anaheim Stadium, in Anaheim, CA, on May 7, 1977, was uploaded by the Pink Floyd Research Group, a set of fans who restore and archive bootleg media.
"This footage is absolutely unbelievable, and nobody can deny it," say the Group. "Not only is this the first real good footage of them performing Wish You Were Here in 1977, but it also captures amazing footage of pt. 6; great shots of all six onstage members (including [guitarist] Snowy White and [saxophonist] Dick Parry); Amazing footage of David doing the slide solo in pts. 6-9; the transitions between parts; the full pt. 7 vocal section; a very nice glimpse into the original screen-films for pts. 6-9 and Money; Dick Parry's entire sax solo in Money; and some utterly amazing closeups of Gilmour singing and playing Money. The list goes on."
While the release of the footage has been greeted with great excitement by fans, Rolling Stone's 1977 review of the Anaheim show doesn't match their enthusiasm.
"The predictable Money encore, with its panoply of fireworks and a blockbuster of a Gilmour guitar solo, seemed a fitting conclusion to the Floyd circus," the magazine reported. "Interestingly, while their music has become more humanistically cynical and melodious, their concerts grow more and more perfunctory and aloof, amounting to little more than a bombastic insult.
"Unlike their records, Pink Floyd’s shows never really display the organic confidence - or artistry - of one of the most innovative rock ensembles of the last decade. It’s more of a precocious affair, a forum for acrimony and disdain, as troubling as it is magnificent. That their audiences never rise to question the contradiction, but rather to beg for more, only underscores their power as illusionists."
The In The Flesh tour finished two months after the Anaheim show in Montreal, where Roger Waters famously spat at an unruly fan, an incident that directly inspired the band's next album, 1979's The Wall.
"I felt this extreme feeling of alienation from these hundreds of thousands of people, all swilling beer and hooting and shouting,” Waters explained. “I suddenly had a visual image of an arena with a wall built across it and a band performing behind this wall.
“I remember thinking: ‘This is a great idea.’ So I started to talk to the other guys in the band, and of course, everybody thought I was completely insane.”
