Are There Teens Escape Pink Floyd? It seems like a must-have at the beginning of a music lover’s life, because with The Dark Side of the Moon selling 7000 copies a week, even today this legendary group has never stopped recruiting followers.
Posted at 9:15am
I didn’t escape it either. When I was 15, I destroyed the tapes of Wish You Were Here, The Dark Side of the Moon, and The Wall on my Walkman. This group opened up the musical horizons of so many young people going through puberty that it’s a cliché. I listened to Pink Floyd until I became nauseous in my early twenties, and just as I was beginning to drift away from it, my little brother, who is six years younger than me, dove deep into the same rite of passage. His intense, repeated listening almost drove me away from Pink Floyd forever, but he switched to rapping right after, giving the whole family a break.
That’s why I invited my brother to the press conference for the exhibition Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains, which has just started at Arsenal Contemporary Art. We have so many memories together in this group that the occasion was too good. We saw their last show in 1994 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. He with his friends, I with our father.
It’s a must-see experience at least once in a lifetime, as Pink Floyd redefined big shows, enough to inspire a tongue-in-cheek song in Mononc’ Serge, Le bad trip du siècle, poking fun at fans who rushed into the stadium like lemmings. Man, there were Lasers… They played three nights in 1994 and sold 175,000 tickets!
My father and I had never seen a show in the company of 65,000 people, so for the first few minutes, sitting very high in the stands, we were a little hyperventilated – I almost walked out. But the magic caught up with us.
Thousands of lighters were lit (this was before iPhones) and we set out on a beautiful journey despite the place’s incredibly poor acoustics. I still remember my dad’s stunned face. He stood up several times and murmured “Tabarnaks” in admiration, and I probably watched my dad as much as the show because his amazement was a show in itself. For my part, I’ve never been able to forget that moment when I fell into a trance with the crowd on the guitar solo of Hey You – I felt like I was part of a cult.
After the show, my dad had bought my brother a t-shirt and we had to find him in the midst of 65,000 people wafting over magic mushrooms and his 15-year-old’s musical expertise. I suggested he get out of there as soon as possible before our dad came back from the bathroom and noticed. But Dad wasn’t stupid, he guessed it and didn’t say anything. Youth must happen and Pink Floyd must live…
“Based on what you took away, do you at least remember the show? I asked my brother as we walked through the exhibition. Yes, one of the most beautiful moments of his youth, he tells me. Thousands of young people had rushed the STCUM buses to go to Mount Royal to realize the dream of the show, thus recreating the events of the previous generation who said in 1994 Pink Floyd wasn’t what it used to be.
To this day my brother still likes to fall asleep to the music of Echoes…
The Pink Floyd: Your Mortal Remains exhibition, which toured London, Italy, Germany, Spain and the United States before landing in Montreal, is truly a groupie treat. Featuring more than 350 artifacts – from letters from Syd Barrett to electric guitars and keyboards to puppets and inflatable figures from The Wall – we measure a group’s artistic development, sometimes up and down because of the well-known conflicts between its members, which is revolutionizing became the history of music by mixing theatre, opera, animation, jazz, psychedelic, electronic and progressive rock, among others.
The impact of Pink Floyd would not be the same without the contribution of artistic director Aubrey “Po” Powell, who defined the group’s visual universe and for whom the exhibition fits very well. We met host and ex-RBO Richard Z. Sirois, who looked like a kid in a candy store and was grinning from ear to ear. He had traveled 10 hours for this press conference attended by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason who was signing one of his albums.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Nick Mason, founding member and drummer of Pink Floyd
Furthermore, the moving image I will remember from this exhibition is that of Nick Mason, like a simple 78-year-old visitor, wandering around a room alone, gazing at the evidence of his flamboyant past.
My father would be his age today if he were still alive. We didn’t expect to run into Nick Mason during our visit and he kindly agreed to pose for a photo with my brother.
It will be another memory in our family album on Pink Floyd.
Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains at Arsenal Contemporary Art until December 31, 2022