by HopHead
Back in the days when I was a committee chairman at the Georgia Tech Student Center, I was buddies with all the local concert promoters … and I took full advantage of these relationships. This was long before TicketBastard came to dominate the industry. Instead of computerized sales, the promoter divvied the actual printed tickets up and delivered them to the various ticket outlets all over the city. So at each outlet, you could only select from the tickets they had on hand.
Leveraging my relationship, I’d simply stop by the promoter’s office the day before the tickets went on sale and buy them directly from him – I could pick any seats I wanted since they hadn’t been distributed yet. It’s a beautiful thing to be in a office with an entire show’s worth of tickets to pick from! Generally I’d purchase the same fifth row, left of center seats for every show at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium.
Pink Floyd, however, was appearing at Atlanta Symphony Hall during the Meddle tour – the first-ever rock concert at Symphony Hall. I was a huge Floyd fan, ever since Umma Gumma scared me silly. I’d never been to Symphony Hall and had no idea what tickets to buy – there was no seating chart at the office since they’d never before done a show at this venue. This particular show was especially important because I was getting tickets for all my friends as well, about two rows worth. So I just took Alex’s word on what the best seats were, and walked out of his office with 10 seats in row KK and another 10 in row LL.
I had no idea where these seats were located and had some trepidation – the seat numbers were unfamiliar and I’d spent all my friends’ money – but I shouldn’t have worried. Alex had taken care of me. The whole batch of us arrived at the concert tripping our brains out – how else are you supposed to see Pink Floyd? We entered the Hall in full hippie regalia and discovered that our seats were in the direct center of the first two rows of the balcony. Whoa! The balcony in Symphony Hall swoops right down almost to the stage – we were looking right down on top of it!
Looking down from our seats we could see a huge light boom with three rows of lights resting on the floor of the stage, stretching horizontally almost the entire width of the stage. Behind it, the curtain was closed. The show began almost subliminally with the sound of a beating heart gradually increasing in volume until it was just loud enough to hear. Then the lights started to pulse red in time with the beating heart. After a moment, the band started to play from behind the curtain. Already this was show unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
The lights continued to pulse and sequence in a manner I’d never seen before, and the curtain remained down until after the first song began to segue into the next. Suddenly, the entire massive light boom began to slowly and majestically rise from the floor until it was as high as the top of the stage – the lights still pulsing rhythmically with the music. Then the curtain opened, exposing the band and their equipment for the first time. Suddenly the entire light boom rolled from the front of the stage to the back and the lights rotated from pointing to the audience to pointing down at the band. Given the special effects available today that may not seem so much, but in 1970 it was brain overload!
Later in the show we heard a helicopter approaching – an unmistakable sound to anyone who had seen news clips from Viet Nam. Louder and louder, the helicopter sounded like it had entered the hall even though we couldn’t see it. It flew directly overhead, then behind, then around the hall again. It dawned on me that Pink Floyd’s sound crew was using quadraphonic speakers – I looked behind me and, sure enough, there were giant PA speakers positioned in the back corners of the balcony. Still, I felt like I needed to duck when the helicopter flew overhead. One of the guys with me stood up screaming, flung his clothes off, and ran out of the hall. This is a band that likes to play with your mind …
Pink Floyd Part Two
Ok, so I had a wonderful, mind-bending experience the first time I saw Pink Floyd – these guys had caught me by surprise with a show unlike any I had seen before. I knew they were going to mess up my mind, and still, they did it anyway. So next time they came to Atlanta I figured I was ready for them.
This time they were playing in support of their brand new album, Dark Side of the Moon, at the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium instead of Symphony Hall. (Could the naked, screaming guy have had something to do with that?) The Municipal Auditorium was where I’d seen most of the shows that hit Atlanta – Traffic, the Who, Mountain, Elton John, the Dead, the ABB, among many others – most of them from my regular fifth row, left of center seats.
But this time, remembering the quadraphonic experience from Symphony Hall, I decided to get creative. Instead of sitting up front, I figured I’d get the seats with the best sound. So I took out a seating chart, drew a big X on it, and determined the exact center of the floor seating. This is where I bought two rows of tickets for Floyd (since I could get seats anywhere I wanted).
Well, when we arrived for this show we were even more psychedelicized than the last time, I mean we were on a different planet! We were a little late getting there (for obvious reasons) and, although the show hadn’t started yet, the auditorium was very crowded. Rather than work my way through the crowd in my precarious state of mind, I decided to ask an usher for help. Now I’m a tall guy – I seldom have to look up at anyone and when I do, it tends to make me a little uncomfortable. So when the usher told me to wait and came back with a guy about a foot – a foot! – taller than me, I was discombobulated to say the least. Then this giant of a man looks down on me and says in a voice I’ll never forget, a basso profundo not unlike Lurch the butler, “Come. With. Me.”
Yikes! The show hadn’t even begun yet and already the mind games had started. Lurch led us right past the rows I’d purchased, all the way to the front of the auditorium. I freaked when we went by the seats I knew were ours – I had no clue what could be happening. Turns out the soundman for Floyd had done the same thing I’d done – he’d drawn an X on the floor plan and situated his soundboard in the exact spot I’d selected for our tickets. In order to accommodate the missing seats, they had set up two rows of rickety, wooden folding chairs in the space between the front row and the stage. We were all seated, crammed together within touching distance of the stage.
Oh glory! The show started and Floyd proceeded to blow our minds. There were three black chicks doing back-up vocals all wearing sequined dresses. Each girl was wearing a different colored wig in bright neon red, blue and green. A guy wearing a gorilla suit cavorted across the stage, climbed some scaffolding, and began swinging on a rope from the balcony. Another guy dressed like the Mad Hatter walked down the aisle through the audience on stilts. When he reached the stage, he took one giant step up and started walking around the musicians. They ignored him as if he wasn’t there. Same with the gorilla. This is all happening right in front of us. No other concert experience had ever prepared me for this. The music was incredible and our minds were unlimbered from reality.
My buddy Jim was seated right next to me and was white-knuckled, grabbing the arms of his chair. Later he told me he thought he’d been kidnapped by aliens, for real. I can understand why. A truly unforgettable concert experience.