Disco de Pink Floyd: “In London 1966-1967”

i guess the interviews are relevant, by the fact that they are indeed from the 60's. that's about it. you get to hear julie christie, michael caine, david hockney, and jagger talk about their feelings. i knew that the floyd performed only two songs, but i did expect to see 'the floyd' during these performances. it's more like a music video, with occasional shots of the band. a time capsule of history i agree, but if you're going to release a dvd and call it a 'pink floyd' dvd, have more than 28 and a half minutes of the band (shown sporadically), and some meaningless interviews to round it out to an hour. just another example of using the 'pink floyd' name to sell a dvd. should have known better when 'rolling stone' gave it a good review. 2 stars cause it's syd barrett even if you don't get to see very much of him. (or the rest of the band for that matter) very disappointing.

We are once again asked to witness the snarled and ultimately predatory relationship between music and commerce. This DVD should be promoted as a short film by Peter Whitehead, supplemented by shorter interviews with Michael Caine, Julie Christie and a few others (uniformly uninteresting interviews, by the way). Then one could approach this for what it is, the work of a filmmaker who happened to like what Pink Floyd got up to on stage and decided to edit event footage using Floyd's music as the soundtrack -- the ONLY soundtrack by the way: no location sound occurs anywhere. When you watch the performance the sound you hear is the sound of studio overdubs, not of live performance. Had this DVD been titled "Let's Make Love in London, A Short Quasi-Documentary Film Featuring Mostly Stoned Audience Members Trying to Dance to a Soundtrack by Pink Floyd" one assumes interest would be significantly lower. Instead, it is billed as a film about Pink Floyd, which it clearly is not.

Looked at as a documentary snippet of an era in which noodling -- with sound or with images or with other persons -- was elevated to high art, this DVD stands as little more than a mildly interesting example of period style, never attaining the heights of better works of the time which could be indexed as "style, period."

Looked at as a Pink Floyd concert, you will be better off slipping on the "full length" CD versions of the hastily-made studio takes of a somewhat rambling "Interstellar Overdrive" and a nearly disposable "Nick's Boogie". (As an unrelated aside, "Nick's Boogie" does beg the listener to participate in a rather playful thought-experiment: What would the early work of Floyd, up to and including Umma Gumma, have sounded like if Nick Mason had been forced to play without his tom-toms?)

As another reviewer has already correctly noted, with some effort this could have been of great interest (Think Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Syd Barrett, et al) had those in a rush to grab a few bucks considered a better, more honest effort to include relevant information and opinions about the events, the time and the place from the artists involved. Absent of Whitehead's somewhat self-congratulatory tone, others directy involved in the events documented here remain literally mute. But before we get ahead of ourselves on compiling a list of possible improvements, given the bald-faced greed demonstrated by the manner in which this material is "packaged", do the artists even matter in this case?

HAPPY '08 UPDATE: It's good to see that the manufacturer has done the right thing and discontinued this DVD.

It's completely amazing that something as fantastic as this could remain tucked away for so many years. This is a Floyd fan's greatest dream. To not only be able to hear new unreleased music (Nick's Boogie) but to also get to see it! This is not the Pink Fraud of recent years, this is *THE* Pink Floyd. The video is stunning and I'm still not over the fact that we're able to see Syd in all his glory, up close and in the studio! This version of Interstellar Overdrive is a fantastic 17 minutes long and Nick's Boogie is another 12 minute instrumental with thumping bass. This DVD is relatively short in length, but the impression it leaves you will not leave too soon. I highly recommend this for all true Pink Floyd fans!!

This DVD gives you live footage of early Pink Floyd (Syd Barrett and the others, but no David G.) performing two numbers, "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Nick's Boogie" with lots of psychedelic 60's footage spliced in. This is absolutely wonderful to watch if you're a hard-core Floyd fan, especially if you have a beer in your hand (or whatnot). Unfortunately the two pieces aren't two of the very best from the Floyd's early work. They're both good instrumentals, but they're not anywhere near as interesting to watch as say the songs "Bike," "Astronomy Domine" or "Corporate Clegg" might have been--had they been filmed. In fact, at times the two songs on this DVD noodle and ramble a bit, and the filmmaker does things like show you footage of a girl having her bra snipped off (It's actually a Yoko Ono art piece) to keep you wide awake. There's lots of fun stuff on this DVD, but my biggest beef with this package is what's not included. The special features don't have any commentaries by the director or any of the Floyd--telling us stories, telling us about the recording session, telling us about Syd, telling us about the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream extravaganza, about the UFO, about John Lennon--all of which appear in the footage. As usual with any DVD or books about the Floyd, this product is underwhelming. There should have been a whole host of commentary tracks (by Peter Whitehead, by friggin anyone who was in London 1966/1967) and there isn't. I can tell you stories/anecdotes behind a good forty Beatles songs, how they were written and why. I probably know the story of about three Floyd songs, total--it's really hard to find good, descriptive stuff about them. Out of all the major rock bands of the 60's and 70's (Beatles, Stones, Who, Doors, etc.) the Floyd has the worst paper trail, the worst biographies (poorly written, superficial, short little things), the worst documentaries. Occasionally I read snippets by Dave and Roger where they revel in the fact that the Floyd is such a faceless band. Whenever I read that my heart sinks a bit, because it suggest their story may never be fully told. They aren't talking. Which is a pity. They were young, rich and famous and lived a life that few have lived--all at a very interesting time in history of the world. So what's the big secret about it all? How about sharing a little bit of the fun with working saps like me. Tell us some detailed stories about the good times, the bad times, the crazy times, the music, the laughter, the tears, the visions, the inspiration. Here's another look at Floyd history that could have been great, but once again...

I bought this DVD out of curiosity after reading a Syd Barrett biography, thinking that it was a retitled version of "Let's Make Love in Swinging London." Such is not the case. It is about 30 minutes of Pink Floyd in a rehearsal studio, doing a painfully extended psychedelic jam of Interstellar Overdrive, and an improv piece called Nick's Boogie. There is also some black and white footage of the band performing a gig at the UFO club. The director filmed these performances with the intent of splicing footage into his documentary on swinging London. One would think that the original documentary would be included as an extra, but it is not. The interviews of Michael Caine, Mick Jagger and Julie Christie are almost incomprehensible, due to their thick British accents, and possibly whatever they had been smoking prior to the interview.

The John Lennon footage shows him wandering around the event with a friend, but it is all silent and shot in black and white.

For hardcore Syd Barrett fans and Pink Floyd completists only.