Pink Floyd - If Pigs Could Fly - Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, Germany - January 23rd 1977 (PRRP 011) (VG AUD)

Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: If Pigs Could Fly
Date: January 23rd 1977
Venue: Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, Germany

Tracklisting
Disc One
01. Sheep 12:02
02. Pigs On The Wing (Part 1) 01:32
03. Dogs 18:22
04. Pigs On The Wing (Part 2) 02:06
05. Pigs (Three Different Ones) 17:42

Disc Two
01. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (1-5) 13:35
02. Welcome To The Machine 07:50
03. Have A Cigar 05:25
04. Wish You Were Here 06:30
05. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (6-9) 15:41
06. Money 09:31
07. Us And Them 07:41

Personnel
Roger Waters Bass Guitar & Vocals
David Gilmour Lead Guitar & Vocals
Rick Wright Keyboards & Backing Vocals
Nick Mason Drums & Percussion
With Special Guests:
Snowy White Guitars & Backing Vocals
Dick Parry Saxophones

Liner Notes: Here Come the Pigs!
Pink Floyd was ready with their new album “Animals”. The album was recorded during the summer and fall of 1976 in a new studio built in Islington, North London and contained both old and new material. Ever since the end of 1974, and all the way through the many legs of the 1975 tour, the band frequently performed 'Raving and Drooling' and 'You've Gotta Be Crazy', two brand new songs that failed to make the final cut of “Wish You Were Here”. Reluctant to throw away such good material, the band re-structured the two unreleased songs around the concept of the new album, respectively re-naming them 'Sheep' and 'Dogs'. New material written to accompany those two older number included “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” and a two-part song called 'Pigs On The Wing'. Roger describes this as a love song to his wife Carolyne. Other motivations for the album, according to Waters, included moralist Mary Whitehouse and the rising conservative politician Margaret Thatcher. Both received the brunt of his scathing sarcasm.

As always, the band wanted the world to take notice of their new work. They adopted the new floating pig mascot for both symbolic and practical reasons. The cover of the new album shows the pig floating over the London Battersea power station. To get this picture, the graphic artist wanted to superimpose the pig into a standard picture. The band had other plans and insisted that a 40 foot helium filled Zeppelin of a pig be made, inflated, and launched over the site.

This spectacle was arranged with a film crew, tethering crew and even a sharp shooter in case the giant pig broke loose and needed to be shot down. Unfortunately, the first day's attempt was unsuccessful due to weather. The next day the photographs were taken but before they would return the zeppelin to the ground, the wind broke the tethering lines and the huge inflatable pig was loose. This problem was further complicated by the fact that no one remembered to ask the sharp shooter to come back for the second day. The pig floated around London for quite a while before landing in a field near Canterbury. Though it was obviously unplanned, the band could not have asked for a better publicity event.

This brings us to the present PRRP release. Dortmund, Germany, January 23rd 1977 was to witness the very first show of the 1977 Animals Tour. The new album was to be released the day of this performance, therefore no one in the audience was very familiar with the new material. Saxaphonist Dick Perry joined the band again on this tour, while Terrance “Snowy” White was asked to provide back-up rhythm guitar. Pink Floyd once more split the show into two sets. The first set consists of the whole “Animals” album while the second presented -for the first time- the complete “Wish You Were Here” album. Two encores were also provided, both taken from the “Dark Side of the Moon” album. The combination provided an excellent chronicle of the Pink Floyd approach to music at the time and received a warm reception for this very enthusiastic German crowd.

Notes from the Re-Master
The source for this audience recording is generally good but a number of problems needed to be fixed. For some reason, many of the songs were spliced together, making an abrupt cut during the audience applause. We presume this was done to shorten the recording but none the less we had to smooth these transitions in order to maintain the flow of the concert. The hiss level was quite high so it was localized and reduced. The sound quality was good with music signal clearly present up to 11,000 Hz but the tonality needed adjustment. The low treble range was particularly harsh and piercing during Gilmour's guitar solos and the saxophone leads. Selective attenuation of those frequencies reduced this audible annoyance. At rare times the bass overwhelmed the other instruments and needed to be reduced as well.

During a five minute segment on disc 2 the left channel lost significant treble. This was restored as well as possible. At the end of “shine on you crazy diamond” the recorder probably had battery failure since the pitch and tempo fall noticeably. This was adjusted to be consistent with the rest of the show but brief variations remain. Conversely, during a section of disc 1 the tempo and pitch are unusually increased. This section was slowed back to the tempo and pitch of the rest of the show. Many brief dropouts occurred. Some were removed while others were pasted over to be less noticeable.