Pink Floyd: Delicate Sound of Thunder

⁣Delicate Sound of Thunder is a concert film by Pink Floyd, filmed during their A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour from 19 August 1988 to 23 August 1988 at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, with some additional footage from 21–22 June 1988 at the Place d'Armes of the Château de Versailles, Versailles, France. It was initially released on VHS, Video CD and Laserdisc formats. The film was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards.
The film was reissued on DVD and Blu-ray in 2019 as part of The Later Years 1987–2019 box set. This version was fully re-edited, remastered and restored from the original 35 mm film, and featured the fully remixed audio from the 2019 CD album. On 20 November 2020, a standalone version of the 2019 edit of the film was released, along with a deluxe box set containing both the DVD and Blu-Ray discs, as well as the album on CD and a 40-page booklet.
Track listing
1 "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part I intro)"
2 "Signs of Life"
3 "Learning to Fly"
4 "Sorrow"
5 "The Dogs of War"
6 "On the Turning Away"
7 "One of These Days"
8 "Time"
9 "On the Run"
10 "The Great Gig in the Sky"
11 "Wish You Were Here"
12 "Us and Them"
13 "Money" NTSC USA version only
14 "Comfortably Numb"
15 "One Slip"
16 "Run Like Hell"
17 "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts II-V)" (audio only; end credits)
The band line-up:
David Gilmour - guitars, console steel guitar, vocals
Nick Mason - drums
Richard Wright – keyboards, piano, Hammond organ, vocals
with:
Tim Renwick – guitars, vocals
Jon Carin – keyboards, piano, programming, vocals
Scott Page – saxophones, oboe, guitar
Guy Pratt – bass, vocals
Gary Wallis – percussion, additional keyboards on "Comfortably Numb"
Machan Taylor – backing vocals, lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky (third verse)
Rachel Fury – backing vocals, lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky (first verse)
Durga McBroom – backing vocals, lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky (second verse)
The vinyl edition of Delicate Sound of Thunder features nine additional performances not included on the original double album. This 23-track count is the same as the new double-CD set. Additionally, the three-album set is packaged in a slip case, includes a 24-page booklet and the albums are housed in poly-lined sleeves in individual album jackets. The albums are pressed on 180-gram vinyl and the tracks were remixed from the original master tapes.
Pink Floyd’s performances were taken from five August 1988 shows at the Nassau Coliseum in New York, on the heels of the release of 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason – their first album after the departure of Roger Waters. The core group of David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright was joined by Jon Carin, Tim Renwick, Guy Pratt, Gary Wallis and Scott Page, with Margret Taylor, Rachel Fury and Durga McBroom on backing vocals.
Delicate Sound of Thunder kicks off with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts 1-5” and then for the rest of the first album and Side A of the second album, there are 10 songs from Momentary Lapse of Reason. After the only song that dates to Pink Floyd’s early career, “One of These Days” from Meddle, the rest of the set features music from Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, and then one more song from A Momentary Lapse of Reason. There are no songs from Animals or The Final Cut.
Not only are there additional performances included on this reissue, but several tracks – “Sorrow,” “On the Turning Away,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Dogs of War,” “Another Brick in the Wall, (Part Two),” “Us and Them,” “Run Like Hell” and “Time” – feature unedited versions available now for the first time on vinyl. Occasional editing has been done to remove an ’80s-era musical gloss that sometimes marred the original performances, notably on “Money” and “Learning to Fly.”
Hearing these tracks in their remixed and in some cases dramatically changed ways, straight through on all three vinyl discs, is about the best official live album Pink Floyd audio experience – outside of the rare Pulse four-LP analog vinyl set.
Delicate Sound of Thunder is, in fact, one of only three official stand-alone live Pink Floyd albums. Pulse was released in 1995 as a four-LP or two-CD set from the tour to support The Division Bell, another post-Roger Waters project. The third is Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, released on CD in 2000. Prior to that, one disc of the 1969 double-album Ummagumma contained live material.
Neither Is There Anybody Out There? nor Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii – originally issued in 1972 on film with a subsequent releases on DVD in 2000 and on compact disc in 2016 as part of The Early Years box – has been reissued on vinyl. Pink Floyd fans, I’m sure, would love to have all of this concert material on their turntables in the future.
There is also a wide assortment of live material from many periods in Pink Floyd’s career to draw from on the Early Years and Later Years sets that would make for excellent vinyl releases. Who knows what else lurks in the vast Pink Floyd archives? Releasing the new mix of A Momentary Lapse of Reason would be the most obvious next vinyl project that fans would love to see.