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23rd DECEMBER, 2009: 'Pink Floyd First Day Covers with Division Bell Stamps'
On 7th January ‘The Division Bell’ will be available as a Royal Mail stamp, as part of the ‘Classic Album Covers’ stamp issue, featuring 10 classic covers. However, UK stamp dealer The Stamp Centre will be creating two limited-edition ‘First Day Covers’ featuring just ‘The Division Bell’, one with one stamp and one with ten stamps. The one-stamp version (pictured) includes a custom envelope with images from the ‘Division Bell’ album. It will also sport a Custom franking mark dated 7th January 2010 from Ely, Cambridgeshire, the place where the cover photograph for ‘The Division Bell’ was taken. On the reverse will be the limited edition number, a photo of the band, and some information about the album. It is available to pre-order from now up to and including 7th January from http://www.scificollectorshop.co.uk or this link If you want just the ‘Division Bell’ stamp on its own to use for postage, it can be ordered as a strip of 5 (priced £1.95 UK), from this link. 18th DECEMBER, 2009: 'Pink Floyd Ring Out The Yule Bells.'
Pink Floyd are the Artist Of The Day today on EMI Music’s Advent Calendar, which features a different mystery artist each day. Go to www.thankemiitschristmas.com to enter the prize giveaway draw. Try the ‘instant win’ competition and be entered into the Grand Prize Draw on Christmas Day, when one winner will win a bumper bag of prizes. There are also social network sharing tools to allow fans to select the featured album and select it as a present they might like to receive. Pink Floyd Royal Mail Stamps There is a bewildering array of choice in the series, but you might want to consider the ‘Classic Album Covers Presentation Pack’ which includes all 10 stamps and a printed card including comments on the sleeves by the designers and an interview with Storm Thorgerson. Price is £4.40 UK. You can also buy just the ‘Division Bell’ stamp in a strip of 5 (priced £1.95 UK), or there is a ‘Classic Album Covers Souvenir Sheet Cover’ (£5.50 UK), which features the 10-stamp set plus a filler card measuring 32.4 cm x 22.9 cm. Stamp collectors in the UK will be familiar with the ‘First Day Cover’, which features all the stamps on one envelope, posted and franked on the day of issue. London-based stamp dealer The Stamp Centre have gone one further and plans to produce a Limited Edition First Day Cover using ONLY the ‘Division Bell’ stamp. It will also sport a Custom frank mark from Ely, Cambridgeshire, since that is the place where the cover photograph for ‘The Division Bell’ was taken. It should be available to order from Monday 21st December from http://www.stamp-centre.co.uk 9th DECEMBER, 2009: 'Pink Floyd Feature In EMI’s Advent Giveaway.'
Pink Floyd are amongst the major artists included in EMI UK’s 'Thank EMI It's Christmas' online ‘advent calendar’. Similar to the concept of a daily calendar with closed windows, one of which is opened daily to reveal previously hidden images, EMI is running a daily artist-based mystery offering until December 25. Each day there are prize giveaways, free samples highlighting some of the year’s releases and gift recommendations. Each day’s theme is different, with artists or genres ranging from The Beatles and Queen to High School Musical and Hannah Montana, but we are assured that Pink Floyd will be one of the featured daily items; in order to find out when, you will have to keep checking the website www.thankemiitschristmas.com Meanwhile, on any day, site visitors can try an ‘instant win’ competition and be entered automatically into the Grand Prize Draw on Christmas Day, when one winner will win a bumper bag of prizes. As well as the daily competitions there are social network sharing tools to allow fans to select the daily featured album and email a friend (or alert them via Twitter or Facebook) to suggest the featured album as a present they might like to receive.
3rd DECEMBER, 2009: 'Floyd Footage Found – ‘See Emily Play’ from ‘Top Of The Pops’'Pink Floyd performed ‘See Emily Play’ on the BBC TV hit record show ‘Top Of The Pops’ on July 6th, 13th and 27th, 1967. The BBC at the time had a policy of wiping videotapes for reuse, so until now it was thought that no version had surfaced of those performances. Now, reports Mojo magazine, a tape of parts of two of those shows has been found. Patched up and partially restored by experts at the British Film Institute, the shows, from July 6 and 27, are due to be included in their annual ‘Missing Believed Wiped’ event on January 9, 2010. ‘See Emily Play’ entered the UK chart on 22 June 1967, peaking at No. 6.
20th OCTOBER, 2009: 'Point Me At The Sky - Dark Side Tribute On Primrose Hill'
Sky Arts are to create a pyramid on London’s Primrose Hill to publicise their showing of Pink Floyd’s Earl’s Court 1994 performance of The Dark Side of The Moon on Sky Arts 1 in high definition. They will be constructing a 5-metre high pyramid and photographing it as a large structure over the London skyline, using the imagery to promote the screening of Pulse: The Dark Side Of The Moon Live, which transmits on Sky Arts 1 on Friday 23rd October at 10am and 4pm. The main triangular part of the structure will house the large ‘prism’ which will use diffused LED lighting to create the glowing effect that appears on the album artwork. Lasers will be set up and installed behind the structure, with a white laser emitting from the left hand side and coloured beams emitting from the right hand side, re-creating the image that appears on the famous Pink Floyd album cover 15th OCTOBER, 2009: 'The Division Bell' Soon To Be A Royal Mail Stamp
Pink Floyd will receive the accolade of being featured on a UK Royal Mail postage stamp on 7th January 2010. After the success of Royal Mail’s recent British Design Classics stamps, they have created a series featuring only classic UK album cover designs. Available from Thursday 7th January 2010, it includes the 1994 UK Number One album ‘The Division Bell’, which went on to sell more than 10 million copies around the world. Designed by Storm Thorgerson with Keith Breeden, the cover depicts two massive heads, created by Sculptor John Robertson, placed in the East Anglian landscape, which in turn suggest a ‘third face’, echoing the album’s themes of contradictory communication. Royal Mail literature says: ‘Many of the most significant graphic designers of the last 40 years are represented by this selection of ten iconic album covers. Royal Mail began with very extensive research of existing lists and polls of ‘Greatest Album Covers’ in books, music press and the web. This trawl of literally thousands of albums uncovered many that were common to most lists. The editors of three of the UK’s most influential music publications together with a number of graphic designers and design writers were asked to independently list the most significant album sleeve artwork used on records by British artists. Royal Mail reviewed all the research to assemble a shortlist of albums that spanned the decades from the 1960s. Some albums could not be included for operational reasons (for instance, designs that were too dark), after final deliberation the ten albums were arrived at. Album covers featured include: The Division Bell by Pink Floyd; A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay; Parklife by Blur; Power, Corruption and Lies by New Order; Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones; London Calling by The Clash; Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield; Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin; Screamadelica by Primal Scream; The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie. This band of designers and photographers have not only reflected the visual styles of many musical cultures, but have also defined and created them, too. The stamp issue explores some of the most potent graphic images of modern times, many of which have provided a visual soundtrack to people’s lives. Technical details: The self-adhesive stamps are printed in two separate sheets of 25* There is also a souvenir sheet (223 x 188 mm) including stamps with water-activated gum.
21st AUGUST: Dark Side ‘Greatest Rock Album Of All Time’ on Planet RockListeners to the UK’s Planet Rock radio station have voted online to choose their favourite Rock album in the station’s “Greatest Rock Album Of All Time” poll. Number One (and rightly so) is “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, although ‘The Wall’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ also featured in the listeners’ Top 10.. The full Top 10 is:
The top 10 will be played on Planet Rock on Saturday 22nd August 2009 at 7pm UK time. The full top 40 will be played on Bank Holiday Monday, 31st August 2009, from 2pm to 6pm. For non-UK listeners, Planet Rock can be heard at www.planetrock.com
16th MARCH: Azimuth Co-ordinator Excavated At V&AAs any dedicated Floyd fan knows, the ‘Azimuth Co-ordinator’ was an invention, unique in its time, that allowed Pink Floyd to pan sound around the whole concert hall in quadrophonic sound, rather than in mono, which was the norm in 1967 when it was launched. The ‘Co-ordinator’ was developed by Bernard Speight, a technical engineer at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, and first used at the Games For May concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in May 1967. The first one was stolen, so a second was built, with 2 pan pots and 4 channels, debuting at the Royal Festival Hall on April 14, 1969. The whereabouts of the Azimuth Co-ordinator had been uncertain in recent years, but it has just resurfaced under the aegis of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, who will be displaying it as part of their Theatre Collections from March 18th onwards. See their site for more details.
4th MARCH: More Clicks For Nix:
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To explore the boxset please click here.
If you'd like to get a better impression of how the forthcoming 'Oh By The Way' boxset appears please click here for a 3D animation.
PINK FLOYD BOX SET NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER
Both the physical boxset & the digital bundle are now available to pre-order - please click here for full details.
The 40th Anniversary year of Pink Floyd ends with a typical flourish, the release of, Oh By The Way, a spectacular limited edition box set which contains, for the first time ever, the band’s 14 studio albums. These classic albums are presented in mini vinyl wallets with all the original extras also miniaturised. Floyd’s longtime design wizard, Storm Thorgerson, has designed a sumptuous box, as well as miniaturising the original sleeve artwork. Oh By The Way is released on EMI Records on 10 December (11 December in the US).
This unique box set is the first time in Pink Floyd’s incomparable history that all of their standard studio albums have been packaged together and made available as a set. In addition to the albums and their extras the set comes with a specially designed 40th Anniversary Storm Thorgersonposter featuring 40 Floyd images.
Oh By the Way contains:
Many of these 14 Pink Floyd albums regularly appear in the ‘Greatest’ lists of all time. They represent a body of artistic work which captured the imagination of fans across the globe.
Oh By The Way will be a must for the legion of Pink Floyd fans worldwide, who will note the careful reproduction of the original classic labels. The box set will no doubt be figuring high on the Christmas wish list of many of the new generation of Floyd fans, as the band’s musical legacy continues to exert a powerful appeal some 40 years after it played its first notes.
David's new DVD will be released on Monday 17th September in Europe and Tuesday 18th September in North America.
The 2 part concert on Disc 1 features the full live performance of Gilmour's Platinum album On An Island, mixed with Classic Pink Floyd, performed by Gilmour's band that includes Richard Wright, Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera, Crosby & Nash, Dick Parry, and Pink Floyd regulars Guy Pratt and John Carin.
Other Guest performers in the show include David Bowie on Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb, Robert Wyatt on Then I Close My Eyes, and the aforementioned Crosby & Nash on an incredibly emotional pared-down version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, amongst others.
Disc 2 features some amazing extras including;
- bonus tracks from other nights at the RAH not included on the main concert
disc,
- live performances from The Mermaid Theatre and Abbey Rd,
- 3 documentaries: behind the scenes on tour, the making of the album, playing in California,
- 2 promo videos,
- photo gallery,
- Island Jam 2007, a new recording of the track streamed for a day on DG.Com
last Christmas and previously unrelease,
- and more!
The concert was shot in High Definition on 23 cameras by award-winning director David Mallet, with sound in stereo 2.0, and 5.1 surround sound.
Remember That Night is now available on Amazon
* Please note for our US readers - the 2CD package will now be released on September 4th & the 3CD edition on September 11th.
While searching the EMI and Abbey Rd archives for the original master tapes to be used in this release, it became clear that the producers had unearthed some previously unreleased versions of tracks from the 'Piper' sessions. In order to allow thee rare and previously unreleased new versions to be included on this special anniversary edition, it has been necessary to move the album release date back 1 week.
As previously reported the 40th anniversary release is newly remastered by James Guthrie from the original recordings, with Discs 1 and 2 containing the full 'Piper' album, represented in both stereo and mono versions. Disc 3 includes bonus tracks, including the following: all the Pink Floyd singles from 1967, ('Arnold Layne', 'See Emily Play', and 'Apples And Oranges'), plus the B-sides 'Candy And A Current Bun' and 'Paintbox' as well as previously unissued versions of 'Matilda Mother', 'Apples And Oranges' (1967 stereo version) and two rare edits of 'Interstellar Overdrive', one previously only available on an EP in France (French Edit) and take six of the track from the original recording sessions discovered in the EMI archive.
When the re-mastering of this groundbreaking album started to come together, a collector loaned EMI a copy of the original French EP, much to the surprise of Guthrie it was a different version of 'Interstellar Overdrive' to what had been supplied from the EMI archive...
James Guthrie explains "Whereas the French release used the same take as that later used on the album albeit in a shortened and pre-overdubbed form, this version was more structured and clearly not from the same take. The tape box information was emphatic this was the French edit. The 40 year old job files were pulled and only confirmed the same information listed on the tape box."
Following investigation into the reason behind this, it was discovered that this version was an unreleased mix from take six of the original session, it also materialised that a different version of 'Matilda Mother' had been recorded - it had the same backing track as the album version, but the verse vocal and lyrics are different.
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is now available on Amazon
