David Gilmour - Meltdown Festival, Royal Festival Hall, London, Britain, 6-22-2001

David Gilmour was the lead guitarist of Pink Floyd for almost the entire duration of that band's existence. He'd led Pink Floyd since the band's former main lead vocalist and songwriter Roger Waters left around 1983. But by the time of this concert, he was tired of playing stadiums and doing everything big when the name "Pink Floyd" was involved. He hadn't done a proper solo tour since 1984. But he decided to do a different kind of concert in 2001, performing in semi-acoustic mode and playing more unexpected songs instead of all Pink Floyd classics.

The impetus for this different kind of tour was Robert Wyatt, the former lead singer of the prog rock band the Soft Machine. The annual Meltdown Festival is unusual in that every year a famous musical figure is the director, and gets to pick the acts that perform at the festival. Wyatt was the director for 2001, and one of the acts he picked was Gilmour. (Note that Wyatt also was a guest vocalist in this concert on the song "Comfortably Numb.") Gilmour hadn't been doing much musically at the time, but he spent several months practicing new songs and learning to do familiar songs in a new way that fitted the semi-acoustic format. He later commented that he was so nervous at first that his hands were shaking. But he liked the format enough to do six more concerts in this same format in 2001 and another eight in 2002.

Surprisingly, given all the effort he put into these concerts, he has never put out a concert album from any of them. However, a DVD based on this concert was released in 2002, called "David Gilmour in Concert." I took the audio from the DVD, so the sound quality is excellent. That DVD had a few songs at the end from other concerts on the tour. I haven't included those here. However, I will include most of those songs on a different album I plan on posting here later.

Because Gilmour felt free to play what he enjoyed playing instead of what audiences at Pink Floyd concerts expected, he played some unusual cover songs. "Terrapin" is a solo song by Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett. "Dimming of the Day" is by Richard Thompson. "Hushabye Mountain" is by Robert and Richard Sherman, and first appeared in the 1968 movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." But the oddest song of all was "Je Crois Entendre Encore," which is an aria from the Georges Bizet opera "Les Pecheurs de Perles." Gilmour sang it in French, a language he didn't actually speak.

Note also that this was the first performance of the original song "Smile." It would be included on the album "On an Island" five years later. And while the focus was not on Pink Floyd hits, he did play eight songs first done by that band. A couple of them were lesser known choices, like "Fat Old Sun," which is from the 1970 album "Atom Heart Mother."

This album is an hour and ten minutes long.

01 Shine On You Crazy Diamond [Parts 1-5] (David Gilmour)
02 Terrapin (David Gilmour)
03 Fat Old Sun (David Gilmour)
04 Coming Back to Life (David Gilmour)
05 High Hopes (David Gilmour)
06 talk (David Gilmour)
07 Je Crois Entendre Encore (David Gilmour)
08 talk (David Gilmour)
09 Smile (David Gilmour)
10 Wish You Were Here (David Gilmour)
11 Comfortably Numb (David Gilmour with Robert Wyatt)
12 Dimming of the Day (David Gilmour)
13 Shine On You Crazy Diamond [Parts 6-9] (David Gilmour)
14 talk (David Gilmour)
15 A Great Day for Freedom (David Gilmour)
16 Hushabye Mountain (David Gilmour)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15952402/DavdGlmour_2001_MeltdwnFstivalRoylAlbrtHallLondnBrtain__6-22-2001_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Gilmour comes from this exact concert.