Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was at the Giants Stadium show that took place 2 months before the Nassau Coliseum shows that this release was recorded from. The set list, stage setup and personnel at both shows were the same, so watching this is like reliving history for me. It was also my first Pink Floyd show - we'd all been waiting for 8 years! It was exciting, and a night I'll never forget. I had the VHS release at one point but I no longer have a working VCR, and who wants to watch stuff in VHS quality nowadays anyway? I've been waiting for a Blu-Ray release, without having to buy the "The Later Years" set that includes a ton of stuff I already own. As an actual attendee of this tour, I can tell you that this disc captures the band exactly as they were at the time - the Gilmour years started off a lot glossier and more technically adept than the messiness of both "The Wall" and "The Final Cut" (which they didn't even tour for, as Gilmour couldn't stand to be in the same room as Waters by then). Gilmour and Waters were competing at the time for the loyalty of Floyd fans - as they pretty much have ever since - but in 1988, Gilmour's Pink Floyd had just released an album that sounded at least sort of like mid-70's Floyd (just with less personal lyrics), while Waters had just released a weird 80's pop solo album ("Radio KAOS") that sounded nothing like the band had ever done. So Gilmour was winning, and even though you can now look back and see the genesis of the New Age-y sound that Gilmour's Pink Floyd would eventually embrace before even he realized he probably should just release stuff under his own name, in 1988 this just seemed like a perfectly normal progression for the band. A little more generic, and a lot more mullets, but hey, it was the 80's. It's actually kind of surprising to watch now and see how much inspiration Gilmour and the rest of the band took from their own 1970's shows. The stage setup, for example, is almost ripped right out of the "Dark Side of the Moon" tour - and the band used this same setup, with the circular screen ringed with lights behind them - almost from then on. The flying pig from "Animals" is used during "One of These Days" - which is a little weird, but ok, fanservice! (I thought it was weird even at the time, since they didn't play a single song from that album.) There was a lot the band did to try to establish themselves as the "real" Pink Floyd, including opening with "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", which is now presented in full (for some reason it was not on the VHS release!). Almost the entire "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" album was played on this tour - including several tracks NOT included on the Blu-Ray (or earlier VHS) release! - but otherwise, there are a ton of iconic Floyd tracks here, all but one of which was written by some combination of Gilmour, Wright, Mason and Waters. So clearly, Waters did not own the band - their best period was highly collaborative, and the set list reflects that. But let's talk about that, because there are several important songs missing even from the new Blu-Ray release. This was true on VHS too, but "Welcome to the Machine" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" were both played at these shows and are not on the disc (as were a few other songs from "A Momentary Lapse of Reason"). I'm guessing there's some rights issue with these, but it's a little maddening. Gilmour did co-write both of these, but maybe there's a home media clause in the contract or something. On the plus side, in addition to "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" now being presented in full, "The Great Gig in the Sky" is now shown in full color, from the Nassau Coliseum shows like the rest of the disc. This was a highlight of the show! So I'm very happy to see it shown properly here. I remember being absolutely astonished at the band's rendition of "Comfortably Numb", and I felt the same watching this disc the first time tonight. For one, this was the first time they ever played it with Guy Pratt, Rick Wright et. al singing Waters' parts, and I actually prefer that! But I'm pretty sure this is also the longest ending solo that they've ever played before or since - the solo on "Pulse" is definitely about 2 minutes shorter. Gilmour improvised this solo at every show, as he still kinda does whenever he plays this song, and while in my memory the Giants Stadium solo was a little better, this one is at least just as long. It's also, as far as I know, the tour where they debuted the giant butterfly disco ball, so that was pretty awesome to see in person (no internet in those days to know what was coming in advance!), as it is on disc. I do have one other nitpick with the remaster of the video footage, and that's the contrast. It's very low. You can even see this if you look at the comparisons the band themselves posted to YouTube between the VHS and Blu-Ray release. Anyone who's been to any concert knows that spotlights are bright! And I was there on this tour and can attest to that at these specific shows. And despite the generally crappy VHS quality, that's one thing the VHS release got right. There is a lot of contrast between highlights and dark areas, and anyone under a spotlight is lit *bright*. On the new Blu-Ray, it's like somebody decided to equalize the brightness of the entire stage. So now the dark areas are brighter and the spotlights are dimmer. That gives everything kind of a flat, dull look. This is not the way this tour really looked! The BD is clearly, CLEARLY higher resolution than VHS and otherwise looks great, but it does definitely look flat and dull, which these shows definitely were not! My somewhat hopeful thought is that this was actually mastered for 4K/HDR and then downconverted for 1080p Blu-Ray, which is still SDR and with a reduced color gamut. That's probably wishful thinking, and even so, they should have re-balanced the contrast for regular HD in that case. But maybe there will eventually be a 4K release with properly bright highlights and dark areas. I'm hoping. Lastly, you may have noticed that I keep writing "these shows" - that's because the footage on the disc was filmed over 5 nights. I don't remember if this issue was there on the VHS release, but on the new edit it's often pretty obvious that audio is coming from one show while video is coming from another. For example, they'll show Gilmour playing a solo from one angle and his hands will be in one position, then cut to another angle and they're suddenly doing something else... something that would make sense, but that just doesn't match the audio that's actually playing, or the previous shot. Or, they'll show an extreme closeup of Rachel Fury's face from one side, then cut to a medium shot from the other side and there's no camera shooting the closeup you just saw. It's just weird. It can occasionally make it feel less like an actual concert and more like a film that somebody's consciously put together... which of course is what it is, but I feel like there's supposed to be an illusion that it isn't. That illusion is broken sometimes by the editing. Anyway, I'm glad I have it because it was a tour that I went to and there are some unique things about it. And I'm glad they released it as a standalone disc. It's definitely worth buying; there are some songs on here that you're not going to get in better quality than this, at least until a standalone "Pulse" BD release, and in some cases ever. It's also a really good historical document of the first Pink Floyd tour post-Roger Waters.