PITTSBURGH — Rock fans cannot see Pink Floyd live anymore, but they can attend a concert by the next best thing: Brit Floyd.
The nine-piece band, complete with a laser and light show, performs many of the well-known hits of the English rock band, whose classic albums include “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Wish You Were Here” and “The Wall.”
But they also play some of Pink Floyd’s lesser known songs, and on this tour plan to play “Echoes,” a lengthy tune that makes up one half of Pink Floyd’s 1971 album, “Meddle.”
“Your average Pink Floyd fan wants to hear something from ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ ‘Wish You Were Here,’ but we also like to delve deeper into the hidden gems,” said Damian Darlington during a Skype interview from his home near Manchester and Liverpool in England.
Brit Floyd will perform at 8 p.m. March 4 and 5 at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh.
The show will be 2 1/2 hours long, Darlington said, and not only will include a laser and light show, but also inflatables.
“It’s a spectacular recreation of a Pink Floyd concert,” he said.
Known for progressive and psychedelic rock, Pink Floyd had been around for about six years when in 1973, the band released its seminal concept album, “Dark Side of the Moon,” which has sold 50 million copies and features songs such as “Time,” “Money” and “Us and Them.”
Pink Floyd followed that up in 1975 with “Wish You Were Here,” an album known for the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.”
Four years later, Pink Floyd released another concept album, “The Wall,” which featured the band’s only No. 1 hit, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2.”
Darlington has been playing the songs of Pink Floyd for a total of 22 years now, — 17 years in a tribute band he joined in 1994 and five years now with Brit Floyd.
But as tribute bands go, Brit Floyd does not try to emulate Pink Floyd band members in looks, but instead to recreate a Pink Floyd concert.
However, “I suppose I’m a mixture of David Gilmour and second guitarists like Snowy White and Tim Renwick,” he said. “I fulfill both those roles.”
Gilmour was not only the guitarist for the band, but also the co-lead vocalist, sharing that duty with Roger Waters.
For Darlington, becoming a musician seemed like an obvious thing to do, as all of his older siblings played instruments.
“I started seriously playing guitar when I was 12 or 13 and quickly got to play live on stage at local pubs,” he said.
He played in a variety of genres of bands, including progressive rock, country and western and big band jazz, and also studied rock and pop music in college.
“I had a very varied apprenticeship in learning my skills when it comes to playing music,” he said.
Around 1993, he had the opportunity to audition for a Pink Floyd tribute band just around the time that tribute bands were starting to form.
“The next thing I knew, I was rehearsing and playing my first shows with that band,” he said.
None of the members of Pink Floyd has seen a Brit Floyd concert, Darlington said, but he did have the opportunity to play “Comfortably Numb” at Gilmour’s 50th birthday party in 1996, along with another Pink Floyd member, Rick Wright.
“It was wonderful, but a very nerve-wracking experience,” Darlington said.
For more information, call (412) 456-6666 or www.trust.org
Lifestyles Editor Mary Wade Burnside can be reached at (304) 626-1438 or by email at mwburnside@theet.com
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