REVIEWS

For decades, the only live documents of Pink Floyd were the first half of 1969’s Ummagumma double LP and — if one attended a midnight movie — the Live at Pompeii film. As superb as both of those are, they showcased Pink Floyd and their music from the period before the monumental worldwide success of 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon.

By the late 1980s, the situation had been remedied with the release of Delicate Sound of Thunder. Originally a 2-CD set, that album was an audio souvenir of the post-Roger Waters lineup (led by guitarist David Gilmour) from its 1987-88 world tour in support of A Momentary Lapse of Reason. In 1995, Pulse was released; it was an audio document of what would turn out to be Pink Floyd’s final world tour, in support of The Division Bell. And in 2000, an archival release, Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81 presented a complete live reading of the band’s 1979 double LP.

Those three live sets — along with extensive live recordings included in the two mammoth archival sets The Early Years 1965-1972 and The Later Years — have gone a long way toward fulfilling demand for live recordings of Pink Floyd. In fact, one of the most notable performances from the late-period lineup was documented on the fifth disc in the 2019 release The Later Years. It presented a complete recording of Pink Floyd’s headlining spot at the Silver Clef Award Winners Concert held at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England in 1990. That music has now been released as a standalone set, separate from The Later Years box, and now on vinyl.

The Knebworth show was a one-off, not part of a tour, and marked the second (and final) time that vocalist Clare Torry appeared live with the band to present her wordless tour de force on “The Great Gig in and 1983’s — added keyboards to “Comfortably Numb” and Run Like Hell.”