Hey, has anyone else noticed that when Mr. Mirror Ball On A Stick is opened up all the way and twirling around that it looks exactly like a brilliant, spinning Star of David?

Anyway, perhaps the best thing that can be said after watching 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' again after a few years of having the damned thing shelved is that it unearthed a lot of half-forgotten memories from the summers of 1988 and 1989. Following my rather under-whelming live introduction to the band on a cold September evening in 1987, the two shows I attended in 1988 were more than enough to convert me into the sadly-addled fanboy a few of you are familiar with today. As for 1989 ... well, all I can say is that it amuses me now to think back on how ravenously impatient I was for this video to finally be released, how my piece-of-shit Charger decided to break down on the way home from the store on the day of it's release, and how I gladly ditched the fucker on the side of the road and half-ran the rest of the way home in my desire to relive that past summer's magic.

Hotly anticipated for months by the multitudes who had attended the shows (the companion live album had been cruelly released seven months earlier), the now-deleted 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' video offered up at long last the officially-sanctioned version of the late-1980s Pink Floyd concert experience in the form of a slickly edited conglomeration of film footage shot over the band's five-night stand at the Nassau Coliseum (save for "The Great Gig In The Sky" which was drawn from the band's appearance at Versailles) and mastered in Dolby stereo.

Well, what can I say? The sound quality is indeed quite striking at times -- viewed on a decent home theater system, 'Thunder' certainly has the ability to shake the walls -- but the film footage itself was another matter entirely.

We start off amusingly enough, with a laser technician lighting a cigarette off of one of the laser beams apparently crisscrossing underneath the stage. The technician watches something off screen, calmly inhales on his cig and then rather rudely blows smoke in our face as the camera zooms straight into the left panel of his sunglasses (behind which floats the band's giant inflatable pig for some reason or another).

From this silly assed point onwards, 'Thunder' is all blue-tinted slo-mo hell -- everything seems to move at glacier speed -- the lights, the crowd, the band, you name it. Compounding the effect is the editing (which involves boatloads of annoyingly out-of-sequence bits and crudely composited long-views of the screen, stage, and crowd), which makes all the camera shots bleed into and out of each other veerrrrrrrrry slooooooowwly, which I suppose was an attempt to drive home the scale and grandeur of Pink Floyd v 3.0 in concert. The end result of all this leisurely panning and drawn-out cross fading, however, is that the show seems twice as long as it actually is (which, in this case, is *not* a good thing).

As for the theories/allegations that have been circulating regarding parts of this video not actually being recorded live, I will say this much -- there are quite a few bits of 'Thunder' that feature a lot of VERY tight-in shots that would have been intrusive as hell to film during a concert performance. That, coupled with the fact that absolutely *nothing* seems to be happening in the background of these shots (there appears to be some inconsistent use of stage lighting during the super-close-ups of the slide guitar during "One Of These Days" or the acoustic guitar during "Wish You Were Here"), lends one to conclude that at least *some* of this material was shot seperately and edited in later. Considering just how much visual trickery was going on in other parts of this video (especially in all the shots where screen footage in concerned), I wouldn't be very surprised at all if this were indeed the case. "What visual trickery," you ask? Just about every shot of a film being shown on Mr. Screen is a composite image of three separately filmed elements (audience, screen outline, and the film itself) blended together; otherwise these movies wouldn't show up any clearer than on any of the VOIOs reviewed earlier. While this would be fine for that reason, 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' then obliterates major chunks of these films ("Signs Of Life," "On The Run," "Time"), or re-uses pieces of them throughout a given song for whatever reason ("The Dogs Of War"). Sure, only the lamest super fanboys notice this kind of thing (*cough*), but what was wrong with just shooting the fucking show and leaving it at that?

There are also dozens of gratuitous crowd-reaction-and-singing-along shots that make one wish Wayne Isham had just aimed the god damned cameras at the stage and left it at that (like, oh, 'Pulse')...

* "IIIIIIIIIIIIIII have become come comfortably numb! YEAHHHH!" shouts a tank-topped young man.

* "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl!" sing one couple.

* "What have we found?" sing two fist-waving muscle dudes a few seconds later.

* "LOOK AT THAT FUCKING PIG!" shrieks one young man to his friend (this was in reference to the inflatable that was menacing the audience at that point and not any person on stage, for what it's worth).

* The tight-jean clad blonde, seemingly the only person in the entire venue dancing along to "Learning To Fly."

* The tie-dyed, do-ragged kid jamming out to "Dogs Of War." Heh. As if.

* The blonde guy studying the stage with a curiously detached look during "On The Turning Away." (now, this was a much more true-to-life recreation of the concert experience as I remember it).

If the above wasn't enough, 'Thunder''s song selection is yet another reason (pun intended) to bitch -- reducing "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" to an instrumental three minute intro for the sake of drama is barely excusable anyway (I suppose the point of this was so that we get our first real look at the band when all the orange VariLites pop on dramatically during "Learning To Fly"), but the allegedly forced removal of "Welcome To The Machine," perhaps the emotional high watermark (and certainly the most authentically "classic" Floydian moment) of the show, is downright heresy. Further salt in this particular wound is helpfully provided and vigorously rubbed in by glimpses of the song being performed (running at high-speed, of course) that can be viewed while the credits roll to a heavily edited version of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" at the tape's end.

It's not ALL bad, however -- there are a few nice touches here and there that enhance the experience...

* THERE IS NO "ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL (PART 2)." How and why that came to pass remains unknown, but thank God for small favors, eh? On that note, Vernon Fitch reports in 'The Pink Floyd Encyclopedia' that the European versions of 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' didn't have "Money," either. Lucky bastards.

* While many of the songs here are relatively unspectacular at best, it has to be said that the performances and visuals for "On The Turning Away" and "One Of These Days" are absolutely fucking great.

As a final note for those who care - 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' sports plenty of nicely executed T&A shots (from the side and rear, to boot!) for those who find the woo-woo girls as much fun to watch as the light show. You can also make out Rachel Fury's left nipple without too much trouble during the Versailles footage from "The Great Gig In The Sky." Woo!

'Signs of Life'	'Learning to Fly'	'On the Turning Away'
'One of These Days'	'Time'	'Money'