There is much I disagree with about this article, but it was invaluable in highlighting some outstanding early/mid-period unofficial live recordings. I used to like the Wish You Were Here and Animals tours best, and while I still like them a lot, the Atom Heart Mother and Meddle tours have become my favorites. The interim from Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (dominated by doomed psychedelic genius Syd Barrett) to DSOM (after which Waters bone deep cynicism and bleak vistas increasingly took hold), especially LIVE, was marked by an emphasis on the consistently brilliant Gilmour/Wright improvisation and interplay. This was roughly '70-'71, a time during which they also imo worked on their best soundtrack (Obscured By Clouds) and concert film (Live At Pompeii) and finished up DSOM, an era or phase during which Gilmour and Wright were at the peak of their respective forms and both creatively on fire, often doing dramatically different variations of the same setlists from night to night.
Careful With That Axe: Pink Floyd Reappraised, By Taylor Parkes (2-4-09) excerpt below.
(excerpt excerpt - "Listening to
New Mown Grass, from San Diego in 1971, or
Smoking Blues, from the 1970 Montreux Festival,
Electric Factory from Philadelphia in the same year, or the roaring performance at the Paris Theatre for John Peel's radio show in 1971, a different picture forms: Pink Floyd were for a time an astonishing, wildly exploratory rock band, ringing with forgotten promise.")
http://thequietus.com/articles/01084-careful-with-that-axe-pink-floyd-reappraised
Excerpt
"But as it turns out, on stage between '68 and '72 - right up to
Dark Side, when the spontaneity was sucked from their act - they were
something else. Pink Floyd in concert were almost unrecognisable from Pink Floyd on record: massive, crude and hypnotic, all power and effect. The live disc of
Ummagumma hints at this, as does
Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii, the atmospheric (and in the case of the in-studio interviews which punctuate the tracks, unwittingly hilarious) film from 1971, in which the Floyd freak out inside a ruined amphitheatre, and roam the foothills of Vesuvius with beards and satchels, like hippie hitchhikers wandered off course. But to experience the full weight of mid-period Floyd – and to dismantle preconceptions of the band as stuck-up, showboating dinosaurs (or at least, replace these with other objections) – you have to seek out those superior live shows, now available free of charge via the internet. Once a moneymaking scheme for unscrupulous non-music-fans, the ancient recordings are now passed around like joints, with strict orders not to make a profit, dusted and remastered by the Floyd "fan community" (which does contain – surprise! - its share of audiophile geeks). Listening to
New Mown Grass, from San Diego in 1971, or
Smoking Blues, from the 1970 Montreux Festival,
Electric Factory from Philadelphia in the same year, or the roaring performance at the Paris Theatre for John Peel's radio show in 1971, a different picture forms: Pink Floyd were for a time an astonishing, wildly exploratory rock band, ringing with forgotten promise.
Seven or eight songs, each lasting ten minutes or more. The set list barely changed for years. Appallingly complacent, of course - except that these "songs" were just vehicles for the Floyd's chaotic, non-virtuoso improvisation, an edgy tumult far removed from a blues band's formal jams, or the technical sterility of The Grateful Dead. The most durable numbers were the simplest to play, offering the widest scope for experimentation: 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun', a dense, repetitive mantra, which could be vague and ethereal or rumble up to peaks of punishing intensity, or the title track from
A Saucerful Of Secrets, a sub-Stockhausen riot of battered cymbals and
musique concrete (plus a juvenile finale of embarrassing choral pomp). Best of all, the show-stopping screamathon that was 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene', an extraordinary blend of minimalism and excess which scrapes chunks off the Floyd's British contemporaries. Sometimes it sounds weightless and translucent, the tension understated; sometimes it's unbearably oppressive, the shattering central section looming from the first note. Almost entirely improvisatory, 'Axe' is loosely but subtly structured, able to bear its own colossal weight – they almost never played it badly."
Fat Old Sun (BBC Sessions AUDIO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttPNilF3v5A
Pink Blues (BBC Sessions '71 AUDIO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxsad0R1IyM
Pre-Some stupid with a flare gun, Smoke On The Water Montreux Casino 1970 (140 minutes AUDIO), this overlaps with the title Smoking Blues noted in the article above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc3Y-gGuNmc
Electric Factory, Philadelphia 1970 (AUDIO, kicked off the American leg of the AHM tour*), also noted in the article above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYYcAA8DxT8&list=PLF2N08EWE9-KlRBOw2qcWyK368qTF9C3a
Taft Auditorium, Cincinnati 1971 (115 minutes AUDIO, concludes the Meddle tour**), noteworthy as I think they retired Embryo and Cymbaline after this concert, and it was the longest Embryo ever, close to a half hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4h3Xpm2LTQ
* Atom Heart Mother Tour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_Heart_Mother_World_Tour
** Meddle Tour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meddle_Tour