September 22nd 1987, Pink Floyd at CNE Stadium

In addition to seeing Roger Waters in 1987, I also had the opportunity to see Pink Floyd about a month later. David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright were on the road to support their first album as a trio, "A Momentary Lapse of Reason", and the tour included three sold out nights at CNE Stadium. This would have been their first tour to come to Toronto in years, probably since the seventies, so there were a lot of people who wanted to see them given the near-mythological status they had gained thanks to a steady rotation on local radio like Q107 and CHUM-FM. I was pretty excited about seeing the show having spent countless hours actively listening to "The Wall" and "Animals" on headphones, zoned out with the lights off in my bedroom. There was something so immersive about those albums, something cinematic and immense that really appealed.  

Ticket sales for the show were months ahead of the actual date, so the build up leading to the concert was huge, ages spent looking forward to finally seeing Pink Floyd live. As luck would have it the night of the show was raining, so an outdoor venue by the lake in late September may not have been the ideal place for a concert, but despite the weather Gilmour and company did an amazing job making it an impressive show. The first half of the night started with a nearly half hour long take on Echoes from "Meddle" followed by a run through the entirety of "A Momentary Lapse of Reason". After a short intermission, the second half focused on the classics, with "The Wall", "Dark Side of The Moon", and "Wish You Were Here" all represented. The sound was immaculate and as the music bounced around the stadium you very much got the same sense of immersion that came from listening to them on headphones. There was a plane that crashed into the stage during On the Run, there was an inflatable pig that floated around the stadium, and during Run Like Hell there was a very real chance of being blinded by a million laser lights that I'm quite sure could be seen from space. It was a really big production, an absolutely impeccable and flawless stadium show, and I'm hard pressed to imagine anybody in the audience thinking that it was anything less than incredible.

After playing three nights in September, Pink Floyd came back for another show on the second leg of the tour in May 1988 and I went to see them again, because, well, why wouldn't I? The show in May was almost identical in terms of production, except they opened with Shine on You Crazy Diamond instead of Echoes. To be honest, I've always kind of preferred Echoes, but maybe that's just me. It was still an incredible show, still just as impressive as the first time I saw them in September, but admittedly I may have enjoyed it a little more since it wasn't raining in May and the weather was a little warmer. Regardless of the weather on either date I'm lucky to have seen Pink Floyd back in the eighties, to have seen so many classic songs live. It was a completely different experience from listening to them in the dark with my headphones, and it was pretty awesome...