Pink Floyd The Later Years Box Set

Gdsank never got a cinema showing unlike Pompeii & Remember That Night.

My guess is cause RTN was only released like a year before hand they did not think too release the complete show what with the mistakes. RTN covered a full show in that respect but we got a bonus release from that tour with Gdsank with some good extra bonus material songs to complete the tour with every song played officially released

 

It certainly did and was edited as well. No Echoes and included songs not on the official release. Maddening!!!

Movie review: Pink Floyd's David Gilmour live in Gdansk

 

And boy do i wish that was......

 

my mistake thinking it didnt get a cinema showing

 

was thinking did they film the full songs from the 1987 rehearsals as the footage we have except a few songs which are complete Echoes & Learning To Fly. If so we have 3 complete live versions of AMLOR

87
The rehearsals
Atlanta 87

88
DSOT

 

Terrible sounding mix, IMHO. Can’t even hear Gilmour’s solo at the end.

 

Take It Back is not included on the Pulse cd. That made me very angry for a very long time. Several years. Until I finally forgave Gilmour. I realise now that I should probably have forgiven him a lot sooner, because carrying all that anger was just counterproductive.

 

There's a great lost 3rd PULSE disc that should have been on The Later Years. I'll never understand why for the life of me they didn't think about this. Running at 55-60 minutes, they could even throw in Echoes from 87.

1. One Of These Days (from PULSE cassette + vinyl)
2. Poles Apart (from PULSE DVD- Bootlegging the Bootleggers)
3. Take It Back (from PULSE DVD)
4. On The Turning Away (from PULSE DVD- Bootlegging the Bootleggers)
5. Lost For Words (from rehearsals)
6. Marooned (from PULSE DVD - Bootlegging the Bootleggers)
7. Soundscape (from PULSE cassette)

...and this would be the lazy way of doing it!

 

I just played it in it’s full glory

 

Played what?

 

Well, not quite - the box set also includes Venice, Knebworth, 5.1's of AMLOR 2019, The Division Bell 2014, The Endless River, and at least 5 extra live performances.

 

Almost a year in and I’m enjoying this set more and more every time I open the box. Visually and sonically stunning. Funny I would’ve thought I’d rate this below the early years but I think overall listening and watching, this gets more airtime in its first year then early years did

 

Yet Another Movie is a song which could fit on The Wall on the first disc.
The 2019 remix version is very atmospheric even more so then the good mix of the original mix. YAM is one over looked song which has all the hallmarks of classic floyd and has a bit of Welcome To The Machine vibe too it

 

I've recently bought the set, and can assure you that even for the amount I paid, it still feels a little too expensive. I've been checking Amazon UK fairly regularly to see if it ever went under £200 as there's occasionally third party sellers who discount the price for dinged and damaged boxes. Last week I saw a copy with two slight dings/crumples on the outer box and missing the teardrop sticker, which was £175. Given that £200 was my absolute top limit, and how rarely copies around £200 come up, I could easily go for it - and if knocking £254 off the original selling price for two small dents the size of a fingernail and a missing sticker felt good enough for me. It's averaging around £300 in the UK with occasional markdowns, but the lowest I've seen it before the copy I bought was £225.

From where I'm standing - at £175 - its still not worth every penny and more, and certainly not at the original RRP, not by a long, long way. There's not enough on the plate for the price on the menu. Undoubtedly it is a lavish and enormous product, but it feels that they are over compensating for a lack of substance with paper products and duplicate discs. The tour programmes are clearly a runon from the V&A production run and the reproduction posters might also be V&A stock or extra production run. Effectively this is a remixed album with a 5.1 mix, a 1988 concert film with soundtrack CD, a 1989 TV broadcast, a 1990 show, a 1994 show, some b-sides, and 34 minutes of TER outtakes. alongside some extras.

Sound + Vision
AMLOR 2019 : definitive mix of the album, and I prefer it to the original 1987 LP. The original LP now feels like expensive demos.
DSOT CD Version : never sounded better, and feels like a 'Directors Cut' of the album with alternate takes and material. I wish the edits hadn't happened, but at long last there's a full length live release from the era.
DSOT film BR : never looked better. The definitive post-Waters Floyd concert release.
Venice BR : much sharper than any previous version I have seen. Again, edits, but otherwise a lovely addition.
Knebworth BR: at last. A revelation to see, and a great, fun show.
Rarities CD4 : the live material is somewhat haphazard, and the 34 minutes of 1993 session stuff feels like extras removed from the deluxe Endless River DVD, to be honest. Good, not great.
Pulse BR : never looked as good, but its not quite up to standards set by DSOT and Knebworth. There was some distortion on the low end synth frequencies and some drum fills which I wasn't expecting.
Extras, Documentaries Etc. : Great to have the albums in 5.1 on BR, and makes the Division Bell 2014 more available again. The promos seem to be missing both "One Slip" and "OOTA", though that might be because the footage is from Atlanta. The Earls Court rehearsal is great to have. The screen films are presented 4:3 and boxed so not in the curved projection format. Essential extras.

I can't even retire or gift the bootleg Venice DVD or the unofficial DSOT 2002 Brazilian DVD or even 2006's Pulse DVD because of the unique content on them.

Books :
Photo book - not essential. Feels like an expanded version of the booklets inside the Early Years release.
Lyric book - again, not essential. Feels a little like padding to make the set feel more substantial than it actually is.
Tour programmes - faithfully reproduced, but smaller than they used to be.
Posters, stickers, fake tickets - Feels like padding. Nice to have, but never going to use these.

7"
Would it really have been too much to get this audio onto the Rarities CD?

What's Missing?
Overall, The Later Years is incomplete, and by the sins of omission, somewhat thin in terms of content and bait. What's in there is well presented and excellently executed. But there's the baffling omission of Atlanta 1987, which whether we like it or not, did happen and was filmed, and is included in part as audio on the rarities disc even if no one can ever claim its the best Pink Floyd show ever played. I cannot understand why it is not included by that parameter. I watched Atlanta earlier this week, and aside from the VHS nature of the tape, it's a more than adequate advertisement for the 1987 iteration of the band.

There's also LCP not included in either video or audio form. Well, it might be a tediously boring documentary to watch as rich dudes drive expensive cars around foreign roads and soundtracked by somewhat unexciting suit rock jams, but it's original and unreleased Floyd material from the period in question. Can't pretend it didn't happen.

It would have been nice to have included as an extra the original 1989 DSOT release on a DVD, if only to show just how much better the 2019 edit is, but that's not my call to make. I also am fairly surprised by the absence of any of the 16+ recorded 1994 shows as an audio component on 2CD's to present a 1994 non-DSOTM show which would have made the package better value.

The studio rarities could easily have been beefed up with say, the exclusive mixes/audio on the Endless River DVD as well as including La Carrera Panamerica. An official CD release for some of the promo mixes and edits such as the vinyl version of "Wearing The Inside Out" would have been a nice bit of fan service as well.

Having seen the BR version of this this afternoon, Pulse on BR is the biggest disappointment of the set - there sounded like some distortion on high bass frequencies (such as the intro/outro to "Sorrow" when the low throbbing keyboards came in, a couple of drum fills in "Keep Talking" and the jam in "Any Colour You Like") which detracted from the experience. The BR is the best Pulse has ever looked though.

Overall

A lot of content here, and all of it sounds and looks and sounds better than ever before by an enormous margin. I know this is how the band want to present their legacy, and there's a degree of revisionism in this set by letting certain things lapse out of circulation. There's the well known omissions of material that exists that we would almost all like, and that makes the price tag for this release a little bit sour to me. As a £175 set, it's at the upper edge of what I would be prepared to pay for it, to be honest, but at £429, I'd be very, very disappointed in the music-for-money ratio. It's a (at most) £200 box stuffed into a £300+ price bracket.

 

Yes it’s hard to quantify this through the standard dollar per minute ratios and if your strictly a numbers person, you may find it less then satisfying. I’ve bought a number of box sets in my life, including the very high music to dollar sets by the likes of the Dead and King crimson but I firmly maintain a level of over all satisfaction with this set that may defy logic, but remains none the less

Disclaimer to give a sense of my investment:
I purchased as part of a buy 2 get 1 free deals

 

Mine was a Christmas present, so I consider it great value: but I would never have paid that much myself.

 

I was very impressed with the print reproductions in the box. As someone with 20+ years experience in the field, I can appreciate how long it would have taken to get that right - restore old mechanicals/files, source identical stock as the original tour booklets, do prepress for the more bespoke pieces, etc. etc.

 

That was a great Christmas present! The kind I usually buy myself as no-one else would spend that much on a music purchase for me

 

As far as I’m concerned this set was disgracefully overpriced, only beaten by the ridiculous Appetite for Destruction boxes Guns n’ Roses put out.

I keep thinking of pulling the trigger on the digital version, but with Delicate Sound of Thunder getting a cinema release I’m holding off to see if that comes out separately, because that’s the thing I’m most interested in.

 

DSOT will be getting an independent release.

 

If DSOT does get a separate release I would suggest getting that Plus the fairly cheap download as the previously unreleased and rare audio is still worth having IMO.

 

That’s good to hear. I suspected it might if they’re planning on screening it. Hopefully the video will come out too.