Celebration ofan iconic band

Five full Pink Floyd album sides in one show is a challenge Brit Floyd will take in their stride.

“It could be considered ambitious”, says musical director, guitarist and vocalist Damian Darlington, “but it is not something that we see as a problem.”

In celebration of the music of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason and Syd Barrett, they are promising note-for-note performances of full sides from The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, The Division Bell and Animals.

Why those particular albums?

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“I suppose it just gives more variety during the course of the concert. We are not closing the door to other eras by doing an entire album. If you did that, you might get three albums in the concert. This way you get a greater feel of the band.”

The context, of course, as Damian says, is that Pink Floyd were always one of the great album bands: “They certainly weren’t famous for releasing singles.

“They were about albums. Even the albums were to be released as downloads, they were wanting people to listen to the whole album.”

Brit Floyd has been around for coming up for three years: “We had our launch gig in January 2011.

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“We were around for a few months before that. Before that, I played in the Australian Pink Floyd for 17 years.

“They had a guitarist to fill in late 93. They had relocated to the UK from Australia, and one of the guitar players had gone home.

“They needed a replacement, and I auditioned, and now 20 years later, I am still playing Pink Floyd!

“You can do a tribute to any band, but there is definitely something special about Pink Floyd”, says Damian who points out that as individuals they were quite anonymous.

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“And that means that we don’t feel obliged to put wigs on like you would have to do for a Queen tribute. Pink Floyd approached it in a different way.

“It was much more about the artistic concert experience. They remained anonymous. They didn’t run about the stage being showmen.

“There is just so much in their music. There is such a wide variety of styles they had a go at and developed over the years or developed in their own right.

“And the lyrical content, the subject matter that Roger Waters was writing about, had such a depth to it.

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“People can relate to it. There is a timeless aspect to them.

“To a certain extent, I love it all, but I was discovering Pink Floyd when The Wall came out and when The Final Cut came out, the end of the Roger Waters era. That really stuck as the big era for me. I have always had a special place for those two albums.”

Damian played at David Gilmour’s 50th birthday party and has met them all, bar Roger Waters, on a number of occasions.

“They seem to be quiet happy about tributes. There are certain bands that really, really didn’t like the idea of tribute bands and tried to stop them, but Pink Floyd have never been like that.

“There has never been overt support, but there has been a kind of tacit approval.”

The band play The Brighton Centre on Tuesday, November 5. More details on www.britfloyd.com

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