Pink Floyd 1974 tour copyright dumps
2024 was the fourth year in a row in which Pink Floyd temporarily released
numerous 50-year-old concert recordings on streaming services, for the purpose
of extending their copyright ownership of the material. The previous two times,
the concerts were only available on the streaming services for a matter of
weeks. This time, they were apparently gone in a matter of days! In most cases,
these recordings were sourced from fan-made bootlegs, and have varying sound
quality, some of them very poor. These stealth-released live recordings were
really not meant to actually be heard by the fans, and in this latest case, the
fans missed the streams if they sneezed, let alone snoozed.
I myself was not aware of this latest Floyd "copyright dump" until the recordings had already come and gone from the streaming services. According to information I was able to glean from the web, these recordings appeared on streaming services on or around December 6th, and disappeared around December 13th. This dump featured 13 concert recordings from 1974, just as the previous ones focused on 1971, 1972 and 1973 dates. These were the recording dates and official titles I was able to find for the streams:
Now that they have been removed and are not likely to come back, it may not matter which of the streamed concerts had better or worse quality. But the word on the web was that many of them were unlistenable, which may have been the reason for the shorter time span of their availability. The Manchester show at the Palace Theatre from December 9th of that year was singled out as the one with the clearest sound of the bunch. Of course, many of these concerts can be listened to (unofficially) on YouTube, among other places, but there is no way for me to know if the quality is the same as the official streams were.
This tour took place the year after the release of the legendary 1973 Dark Side Of The Moon album, which is now one of the biggest selling albums of all time. The set lists for the 1974 concerts generally featured full performances of the Dark Side album in sequence, as well as the lengthy 1971 song "Echoes", early performances of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" (with the two halves played together), and early versions of two songs from the 1977 Animals album: "Sheep" (then titled "Raving and Drooling") and "Dogs" (then titled "You've Got to Be Crazy"). Two of the concerts took place in June of that year, as part of the French Summer Tour, and the other 11 took place in November and December, as part of the British Winter Tour.
Die-hard Floyd fans are the ones who would take the most interest in these concert recordings. Bootlegs have almost always been outside the scope of this blog; however, now that these recordings were made legitimately available and then taken away, they will now be considered collectible. I do not recommend paying money for bootleg recordings. However, there are ways to hear these concerts online. So, if you're one of the die-hards who has an interest in them, then happy hunting.
The currently available album The Dark Side Of The Moon - Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974 contains professionally remastered performances of the songs from the album, drawn from the Wembley Empire Pool shows held on November 15th and 16th of that year. It gives a clearer-sounding example of what the full-length performances of the Dark Side album generally sounded like on the '74 tour: these live versions of the album's tracks were very faithful to the studio versions, even using the sound effects (and adding a few, here and there). That may be exactly what casual fans of the band and of the album want to hear, but personally, I found it more interesting to hear the work-in-progress versions of the songs from the copyright dumps of 1972 and '73 concerts.
I myself was not aware of this latest Floyd "copyright dump" until the recordings had already come and gone from the streaming services. According to information I was able to glean from the web, these recordings appeared on streaming services on or around December 6th, and disappeared around December 13th. This dump featured 13 concert recordings from 1974, just as the previous ones focused on 1971, 1972 and 1973 dates. These were the recording dates and official titles I was able to find for the streams:
- Théâtre de Plein Air, Colmar, France - 22 Jun 1974
- Palais des Sports, Paris, France - 24 Jun 1974
- Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland - 4 Nov 1974
- Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland - 5 Nov 1974
- Newcastle Odeon, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK - 9 Nov 1974
- Wembley Empire Pool, London, UK - 15 Nov 1974
- Wembley Empire Pool, London, UK - 16 Nov 1974
- Wembley Empire Pool, London, UK - 17 Nov 1974
- Trentham Gardens, Stoke-on-Trent, UK - 19 Nov 1974
- Empire Theatre, Liverpool, UK - 29 Nov 1974
- Palace Theatre, Manchester, UK - 9 Dec 1974
- The Hippodrome, Bristol, UK - 13 Dec 1974
- The Hippodrome, Bristol, UK - 14 Dec 1974
Now that they have been removed and are not likely to come back, it may not matter which of the streamed concerts had better or worse quality. But the word on the web was that many of them were unlistenable, which may have been the reason for the shorter time span of their availability. The Manchester show at the Palace Theatre from December 9th of that year was singled out as the one with the clearest sound of the bunch. Of course, many of these concerts can be listened to (unofficially) on YouTube, among other places, but there is no way for me to know if the quality is the same as the official streams were.
This tour took place the year after the release of the legendary 1973 Dark Side Of The Moon album, which is now one of the biggest selling albums of all time. The set lists for the 1974 concerts generally featured full performances of the Dark Side album in sequence, as well as the lengthy 1971 song "Echoes", early performances of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" (with the two halves played together), and early versions of two songs from the 1977 Animals album: "Sheep" (then titled "Raving and Drooling") and "Dogs" (then titled "You've Got to Be Crazy"). Two of the concerts took place in June of that year, as part of the French Summer Tour, and the other 11 took place in November and December, as part of the British Winter Tour.
Die-hard Floyd fans are the ones who would take the most interest in these concert recordings. Bootlegs have almost always been outside the scope of this blog; however, now that these recordings were made legitimately available and then taken away, they will now be considered collectible. I do not recommend paying money for bootleg recordings. However, there are ways to hear these concerts online. So, if you're one of the die-hards who has an interest in them, then happy hunting.
The currently available album The Dark Side Of The Moon - Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974 contains professionally remastered performances of the songs from the album, drawn from the Wembley Empire Pool shows held on November 15th and 16th of that year. It gives a clearer-sounding example of what the full-length performances of the Dark Side album generally sounded like on the '74 tour: these live versions of the album's tracks were very faithful to the studio versions, even using the sound effects (and adding a few, here and there). That may be exactly what casual fans of the band and of the album want to hear, but personally, I found it more interesting to hear the work-in-progress versions of the songs from the copyright dumps of 1972 and '73 concerts.
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