Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets / Emma Tricca - Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham (UK) - 29 September 2018

Any chance I get to see an original member of Pink Floyd play live right in front of me, I am going to take it. Having already seen Roger Waters earlier in the year, the latest Floydian to come out of hiding means that I have completed the set of all three remaining personnel. It's just a pity we cannot see them all together, although now Richard Wright has left us, it wouldn't really be Pink Floyd anyway. I soon started to wonder, as I hadn't read anything about the tour, what Nick Mason would do with his own band. Would it be his solo stuff, would it be Floyd favourites, or could it possibly be a combination of both, and I seriously considered that this could be true, would it be Jazz? After all, he is a drummer!

It would be a while before I found out as support from Emma Tricca came first. The venue was half empty when she came onstage, and it was just her and her guitarist. To be honest, it wasn't really my thing as Tricca had a very folky voice that was also very gentle, to the extent that when she spoke I couldn't really hear her. Her music placed a picture in my mind of being laid on a sun-lounger, next to a running stream with a cool drink by the side of me on a hot summer's day with this playing just to make it complete. The audience gave her polite applause, but to be fair, they were only there for the main event as the place was full when Saucerful came on.




Now as I said above, I really wasn't sure what to expect from tonight because I didn't know what was going to be presented, but I need not have worried. Just prior to them coming on, I was reminded of the Roger Waters show I had seen in July as his "show" started around twenty-five minutes before he actually came on with video and taped sound. We didn't get the video tonight, but the build-up of Psychedelic noise over the PA prepared us for what was to come. Now I have never really been a fan of early-era Pink Floyd, but it became very obvious that was what tonight's show was mainly about. The show started with 'Interstellar Overdrive', and the band, which alongside Mason featured Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp on guitar/vocals, long-time Floyd live bassist Guy Pratt, The Blockhead's Lee Harris on guitar/vocals and Dom Beken on keyboards, sounded excellent.

I expected then to see an old-style Psychedelic light show, as in the old hot oil lights that Floyd used to employ, but using modern technology we got a new style Psychedelic display from a rig that wasn't huge yet was very effective. As the show progressed, I found myself really enjoying music that I hadn't paid much attention to, because, from what I had heard previously, I didn't think I would like. Still with me? Good! There was stuff tonight that I had never heard of, such as 'Lucifer Sam', 'When You're In', 'Vegetable Man' and 'Green Is The Colour', but it was still good, and 'If', which cleverly sandwiched 'Atom Heart Mother', was excellently vocalised by Kemp and Pratt.




'The Nile Song', we were told, was something that Pratt had heard when he was at school, which made him think that Floyd were a "Rock" band, and something that he had always wanted to play, and apparently, when he suggested this to David Gilmour, he was told if he wanted to play that then he should join another band, something which he said he had. Just before they played 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun', Mason told us that sometimes Waters wasn't the most sharing of people, and he would never let Mason play the gong, but he was going to play it tonight. It was also nice that he paid respects to both Syd Barrett and Richard Wright. This end section had been reserved for the most well-known songs and possibly the favourite was the last number of the main set, 'One Of These Days', which was given away right at the start when Beken accidentally hit the key with the sampled title. However, it was excellently performed. The night was supposed to end at 10pm, and it was almost that time before they came back for a two song encore, but this was the very last night of this tour, so they probably weren't bothered, and we got the old oil lamps that I mentioned earlier, which I imagine were projections, but they still looked authentic as the colours didn't mix very well to start with and the picture kept jumping.




I came away thinking that the music I had heard tonight must have been played differently to the original versions as I had been really impressed, and maybe that was down to the guitar work of Kemp and Harris, but I would still have to go and check out this early stuff. For those who were unsure about attending, and then decided against it, I would urge you to rethink as they will be coming out again next year in late April/May. However, if you live in the top half of the country, you will need to travel as the most Northerly place they are playing is Cambridge.

Review and photos by Andy Brailsford

Set list: Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine, Lucifer Sam, Fearless, Obscured By Clouds, When You're In, Arnold Layne, Vegetable Man, If, Atom Heart Mother, The Nile Song, Green Is The Colour, Let There Be More Light, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, See Emily Play, Bike, One Of These Days
Encore: A Saucerful Of Secrets, Point Me At The Sky.