Pink Floyd – Set The Controls For The Heart of the Sun, Live (1969) *NEW VIDEO

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

For nine months I had been listening to tracks from Pink Floyd’s first two albums, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and A Saucerful Of Secrets, courtesy largely of Toronto’s CHUM FM radio (and recordings I made from the station on reel-to-reel). When WYSL became an all-night underground FM radio station I found pretty much the same tracks being played … until November and the release of Ummagumma. The first track that received a lot of air time and became a station favorite was „The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party.“ No doubt this was because it was the most highly experimental of all the album’s tracks. A month later the live version of „A Saucerful Of Secrets“ was added to the station’s playlist of favorites off Ummagumma. This version was enough to wipe me out so completely I just HAD to buy the album.

In January 1970, Ummagumma became my first Pink Floyd album purchase. It was a double album and the first record is sometimes thought of as the „space rock“ album while the second disk is the avant-garde or experimental album. In actuality, the first record is robbed of having total space rock status thanks to track 2, „Careful With That Axe, Eugene.“ On the other hand, the entire first record is live, so it is often called the „live album.“

I think it possible that Syd Barrett’s tendency to present outer space and space travel as something frightful or horrific could have been the reason „Eugene“ got mixed in with the three space rock songs: „Astronomy Domine,“ „Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun“ and „A Saucerful Of Secrets.“ That and the fact that „Eugene“ and „Heart Of The Sun“ are both sets that well feature Roger Waters on bass and vocals (and screams).

So for a while it got confusing turning on FM radio where you could hear „Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun“ from the second studio album, A Saucerful Of Secrets, and also from the live album portion of Ummagumma.

Also, although it was recorded live, unlike the other three songs, you can’t hear any applause from the audience on this one.

The first of the two records remains my favorite. Despite being recorded live, the quality is amazing and if you didn’t know better you’d think it was done in a studio. The overall mood remains consistent from start to finish on all four tracks.

On this video I have a high priestess opening up the gates of dawn as we then proceed to the Temple of Apollo, the sun god. The rest is high quality sci-fi from feature film and documentary before we actually find ourselves on the solar surface, nearing the entrance to the center of the sun and a return to the ancient time and the abode of the gods.