While Joseph Calderazzo has been performing his Pink Floyd show ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ for the past 15 years for Sydney it was only this week that he brought the performance to Melbourne.
Performing the music of Pink Floyd in an intimate venue like Memo Music Hall is not a simple task. Pink Floyd left the pub scene a long time ago. The current original incarnation of Floyd live is the Roger Waters’ show. Those shows are put together by what seems like a small group of scientists reinventing live performance with every new tour.
For The Great Gig In the Sky Joseph was tasked with making the incredible credible and that he has certainly achieved. While his long-time vocalist Hugh Wilson also ventured down from Sydney, Joseph put together a crack time of Melbourne musicians and vocalists to bring Floyd to life on a Melbourne stage for the first time since Roger Waters presented the Us + Them shows of 2018.
Dave Leslie of Baby Animals must have gone to Gilmour University to study for the show. Opening with the 16 minutes epic ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, I could not fault one note of his guitar playing (and I was listening out for it).
Stars’ singer Mick Pealing shared lead vocals with Hugh Wilson. It didn’t turn out to be one being Gilmour and one being Waters. Both Pealing and Wilson shared of both Floyd lead singers vocals.
Tracy Kingman and Nikki Nicholls were the silent achievers in the show although Nikki turned out to be not so silent with her stunning screams in the Dark Side of the Moon side 1 closer ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’. The disturbed original vocal by Clare Torry would give any throat a workout but what was incredible was that Nikki had no voice just 48 hours earlier and at one point looked like she would have to pull out of the show. Instead, she gave a perfect replica of the original Dark Side experience sending shivers into the crowd.
Shows such as Joseph Calderazzo’s The Great Gig In The Sky will gain more and more importance as the years go on. Floyd are no more, Roger Waters is still active but now in his 70s, his touring schedule will start to slow down. David Gilmour has never toured Australia as a solo act and there is no word on Nick Mason bringing his ‘Saucerful of Secrets’ tour to Australia.
This is a bit like orchestras around the world performing the classical classics. No-one ever calls the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra a covers band when they perform Beethoven. As time goes “ticking away the moments that make up a dull day” and as Floyd gets “shorter of breath and one day closer to death” the live music experience from our contemporary rock classics will come via people like Joseph Calderazzo.
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