tributehub

from blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/2008/11/a...tre_november_7_8.php

The Australian Pink Floyd Show is more than just a tribute band. Using laser lights, video screens and massive inflatables, TAPFS attempts to recreate the psychedelic Pink Floyd trip that much of the highly influential band's fan base is too young to have witnessed before. In advance of its two-night stint at the Fabulous Fox Theatre, keyboardist Jason Sawford spoke to Ryan Wasoba about the band's ambitious production of The Wall, the unfortunate passing of Richard Wright, and its trademark monstrous inflatable pink kangaroo. Tickets are $39.50 to $49.50, and the show starts at 8 p.m. both nights.

Ryan Wasoba: Word on the street is that you're going to be performing The Wall in its entirety. Is that the whole program?
Jason Sawford: No, no. We're doing the whole album and we're doing a few extra numbers from some other albums, sort of a short greatest-hits set.

I understand you're doing The Wall to celebrate the album's thirtieth anniversary.
That is one reason. I think the other reason is that we've done Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here and Animals; The Wall was the next logical step for us. We'd been talking about it for a long time and It's been about a year in the planning of it, so we decided to finally put it together.

Musically speaking, is The Wall harder to execute than some of Pink Floyd's other albums? It is a much longer record, first off.
Well, it has its own specific challenges. I mean, it's not necessarily more difficult musically than any other albums, but there's a lot to learn and a lot to do -- and trying to get it all together in the time we had was very challenging. It's a kind of semi-theatrical production, and we're trying to tell the story the way we do it with animation and the theater and the whole show, it's been quite tricky.

Last time you came to St. Louis, I believe you were doing Dark Side of the Moon.
That's correct.

Have you done Animals and Wish You Were Here in the States before?
We've done Wish You Were Here in the States. We've never done Animals but we've done it in the UK. I wonder how Animals would go in the States. We've always found people didn't know it so well, so we haven't done it as much as say, Dark Side of the Moon, but it's a great album and we do like doing it when we get the chance.

Is that one of the challenges of your job? I mean, you guys are bigger Pink Floyd fans than most, I assume. Is it frustrating that there are huge sections of the catalog that you probably can't do? Do you feel like you can only do a certain amount of the catalog that people know?
That's true, yeah. I mean, we are obviously Pink Floyd fans and there is a lot of stuff I'd love to play, but you can't go into a big arena and do A Saucerful of Secrets or something like that. I mean, it's quite strange music. It has a following, but people are more familiar with certain albums and that tends to govern a lot of what we play. And we try to do more interesting numbers when we can and we have done that from time to time.

So is it safe to say there are some albums you'll probably never end up doing?
Probably. We like to cover material from some of those albums anyway, but doing an entire album of say, Ummagumma, we're not very likely to do something like that. But we are likely to do something like The Final Cut, which is more accessible to people but still lesser known. But we're doing The Wall, which is perfect for now because we've never done it before.

Has the passing of [Pink Floyd keyboardist] Richard Wright made an impact on this tour at all?
Well, obviously it's something I'm very aware of as a keyboardist in a Pink Floyd tribute band, but the tour was planned over a year in advance and Richard Wright's passing happened so suddenly, we didn't have time to allow it to affect the tour. We have talked about doing some sort of tribute in the show, maybe playing "Wish You Were Here" in dedication or something, but at this point in time we're concentrating on doing The Wall.

So what's up with the big inflatable pink kangaroo?
Yes, we have used the pink kangaroo on previous tours we don

Thanks Ian for putting it here.

Ooh, The Final Cut live, that'll be nice!

That would be nice, but I'm not sure how it would go down with the majority of concert goers. TFC is one of my favourites, it's not musicaly great, but it's a nice little album. Unfortunately, it was probably one of the least popular and less listened to. During Animals and Echoes at Aussie Floyd gigs, I've heard and read comments from people saying stuff like "who's this song by?" and "is this Floyd" and so on. I'd expect similar if TFC was played, but in saying that, I hope it does some day.

Hey, these guys sound pretty good you know........

from www.siouxcityjournal.com:80/articles/200...86257504001835a3.txt

Australian Pink Floyd does 'The Wall' justice
By Jesse Claeys

If a group of musicians is going to make a living performing songs made famous by another band, it had better have outstanding music makers.

Good thing for the Australian Pink Floyd its nine members possess skills strong enough to fill theaters around the world.

Twenty years after forming, APF took on its self-proclaimed most ambitious feat to date -- recreating Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in it's entirety -- at a Sunday night concert at the Orpheum Theatre. The show was part of the group's 41-city tour of the United States, an annual fall American trek.

While past tours have attracted Floyd fans with APF's cover of "The Dark Side of the Moon," the 30th anniversary of the release of "The Wall" prompted these Aussies to give the classic concept album devoted to the theme of isolation a nod.

Justice is what APF did to the album.

For those who wonder how a cover band can attract enough fans to support worldwide tours, just imagine a band playing the songs of Pink Floyd with such note-for-note accuracy and with the ability to replicate the sound of the original band so closely that a CD and a concert become audibly interchangeable.

Throw in a stage show packed with elaborate lighting, props straight from Pink Floyd's concert stash, and animated film shorts straight from the 1982 movie version of "The Wall," and you've just created the world's ultimate cover, or "tribute" as the Aussies like to say, band in the world.

These musicians are so dedicated to recreating the album that the show's intermission was held at the same time a Floyd fan would have had to remove the first LP from his or her record player and switch to the second one.

With such precision it's easy to see why APF has developed a bit of a cult following here and abroad. Jason Sawford uses the keyboard to recreate Pink Floyd's layers of sound so solidly that he's easy to overlook. Paul Bonney worked a massive drum kit with ease and vocalist Ian Cattell did a spot-on job crooning Roger Walters-style (he even sort of looks like him). While Cattell made the most of his minutes in the spotlight, it may have been guitarist Damian Darlington's perfect David Gilmour that stole the show, especially after a rousing guitar solo on "Comfortably Numb" that brought a rather tepid crowd to its feet.

The set-list contained no surprises and it wasn't a surprise that the album's singles -- "Hey You," all the parts of "Another Brick in the Wall," "Mother," "Young Lust" and "Is There Anybody Out There?" -- drew the most applause.

While covering an entire album may seem a bit strange at first, it is ultimately the decision that makes APF more than just a cover band. It allows for an evening of paying homage, not a night of musicians playing thief to earn enough money to pay the bills.

Well spotted Ian.
      I'll bet that  the band are pleased with this article ?

Yes it reads very well.

The bit that made me laugh though - "the show's intermission was held at the same time a Floyd fan would have had to remove the first LP from his or her record player and switch to the second one"

Bugger me ! fancy that !