Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets (live at The Roundhouse )

London
24 September 2018

There is a buzz about tonight’s concert, a certain energy filling the air; it’s a good vibe, full of excitement and patchouli oil goodness. It was 1966 when The Pink Floyd (as they were known then) last played The Roundhouse (on the back of a truck) and it seems that some of the people who attended that benefit show for the International Times (the British “hippie” newspaper) are here tonight, keeping their freak flag flying. The venue is buzzing like I’ve not seen before and the atmosphere is very laid back. The reason why we are all gathered in this cavernous venue is to hear one of the founder members of the Floyd play a back catalogue of songs, some of which have not been performed live in forty-six years.

Nick Mason’s band, featuring bassist Guy Pratt, guitarist Lee Harris, keyboard player Dom Beken (and the big surprise) guitarist Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet, had done a small tour of pub/club gigs earlier in the year and the reception they received for these sell-out shows was ecstatic. So here we are a few months down the line and Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets are doing a month-long European tour and gaining rave reviews at each city they visit.

When I first heard about these shows I was shocked and excited at the same time. While the other two ex-members have traded pretty much solely on Dark Side Of The Moon and its following releases, here was one of the original Pink Floyd line-up about to take us back to the heady daze of psychedelia and some of the band’s most experimental output. One of the first I read was that most of the set would cover Syd Barrett’s time with the band, and at that point I knew I wanted to see them live.

The sound of summer birds buzzes over the audience, BBC Radio 3-type voices talk about random subjects while an aeroplane travels from speaker to speaker, a bass note throbs and then astronauts begin to talk to each other while a slow countdown to lift-off begins: and this is just the opening tape.

And what a lift-off it is; the band kick in to the big power chords of “Interstellar Overdrive” and we are off into the outer regions of space. Kemp improvises Syd-style for the track’s middle section while liquid lights dance over the band, suddenly it seems like 1967 all over again. As the notes to this song fade, the band launch into “Astronomy Domine” and you can hear an audible gasp from the audience. By the time the creeping Siam cat of “Lucifer Sam” kicks in, the audience are already won over and for me the sense of joy hearing these songs takes over my very being.

It’s at this point Nick talks to the audience — he explains that they are not “The Australian Roger Waters show or the Belgian David Gilmore show” and how he was “tired of waiting for a phone call from the other two, so thought he would form his own band”. Mason seems relaxed and enjoying himself, and appears to be having fun re-exploring his early songs. Later he thanks Syd Barrett, whom he says without he might not have been playing there today. An image of Barrett appears behind him and the audience cheers, and applauds for what seems like ages; and even Mason appears to a bit taken aback.

The band are in fine form and on fire as they make their way through a set of classic songs. Guy Pratt’s bass and vocal work are wonderful as he adds his own personal stamp on tracks such as “The Nile Song”. Gary Kemp is superb and looks like he is having a lot of fun as well as he takes on those Barrett classics, gives sonic space sounds on the guitar, but also add emotional depth to songs like “If”. Both Lee Harris and Dom Beken fill out the sound adding a lush psychedelic palette to each track in turn. But a lot of the audience’s eyes are focussed on Mason, a man reinvigorated on his drum stool who is beat-perfect on all those tricky early Floyd time signatures and looking like he is enjoying every minute of it.

The big surprises of the night was a section of Atom Heart Mother, a slice of “Obscured By Clouds”, that actually sounded more like a synthwave piece with its sequenced keyboards and steady drum pattern, and “Green Is The Colour”, which is beautifully performed by the band. “Vegetable Man”, a Barrett song only officially released in 2016, gets the audience chanting along, as does the Floyd’s two hit singles from 1967, “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”.

The final two songs of the set are “Bike”, and the brooding “One Of These Days” that has enough vibrant electricity running through it you could send a person to Mars and back on it. The band seem taken aback at the reception they get as they take their bows, the place erupts and there is a real feeling of joy all around. They come back for two more songs — “A Saucerful Of Secrets” (naturally), where Mason is all over his drum kit, hammering away, and the last song is “Point Me At The Sky”, which is a suitable end to the band’s two-hour set.

Tonight’s show did have a feel of what it might have been like seeing the band in those heady days in the late sixties. The vibe of the UFO Club was almost tangible in the air, as was the Fourteen Hour Technicolor Dream. Certainly the lights and visuals that were being used helped to conjure the atmosphere of ’67 onwards. But what is really special about Saucerful of Secrets is that they are a celebration of some of the greatest music to ever come from that era. The pure joy you got from the band was something quite wonderful and it certainly infected large parts of the audience.

“But why does it have to be so loud?”, to quote the famous early Floyd interview; well I for one thank the gods that it was loud and sent me homeward bound with a head full of multi-coloured thoughts. The band is playing again in 2019, so catch them if you can.

-Gary Parsons-