Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets - Concert Recap

I spent the first semester of my senior year of college in Los Angeles (I'll make a blog post about it sometime). I was there for school, and I kept pretty busy while I was out there. However, I still stayed caught up with the concert scene in and around the Columbus area, since I was only out there for 3 1/2 months. There were a couple shows I ended up getting tickets for. The first was twenty one pilots, but I ended up having to sell those. The second one I got tickets for I didn't even know was coming until a few days after it was announced, which I'm kind of ashamed to say since it was one of the surviving members of Pink Floyd. When I found out that Nick Mason was coming to Columbus, I was obviously excited. It would be really cool to be able to say that I've seen all 3 surviving members of Pink Floyd in concert. So, to avoid about $30 of extra ticket fees, because apparently Ticketmaster needs (wants) more money, my dad got them from the box office. Needless to say, those tickets we didn't end up selling, because otherwise we would all be doing something different than looking at this blog. There isn't all that much to talk about with this show, but I'm still going to talk about it anyway.

Date/City: April 7, 2019 - Columbus, Ohio

Venue: Palace Theatre; Capacity - 2,695

[Quick side note, I will be using "theater" and "theatre" interchangeably because A.) I see no distinction between the two, and B.) because I can]

I had never seen a show at the Palace before. In fact, I had never even stepped foot in the Palace until I went to see this show. Given this, I was excited to go to this place for the first time. The theater was built in 1926 in the middle of downtown Columbus as part of Leveque Tower, which is arguably the most distinct building on the Columbus skyline. The grand staircase is the first thing that you see when you walk in. The merchandise table was off to the right side of the staircase. Going up the staircase, there is a bar, a fountain, and some benches. The auditorium is really nice. Even the furthest seats from the stage still felt close to the stage which was really nice. The sight lines are really good wherever you are sitting. My only problem with the theatre itself was the leg room in the balcony. I'm 6'1", so that probably had something to do with it, but nonetheless there was still little leg room, which meant lots of desire for leg room. However, it proved not to be much of a problem since the show wasn't sold out, and there was barely anyone in the second tier of the balcony and I could just put my legs over the seat in front of me. When it comes to the sound in the auditorium, I had high expectations. Those expectations were definitely met. The theatre was built with acoustics in mind, so there was no sound bouncing off the walls, no echo, or anything else like it. The mix of the sound was pretty good for the most part. My only problems with it were that one of the guitars at the beginning of the show was up too loud, and the vocals were noticeably quiet the entire show. That said, those things didn't make the show uncomfortable to listen to. Overall, the Palace Theatre is an enjoyable venue. I recommend seeing a show there.

Opening Act:

The opening act was Sam Duckworth, who goes by the alias "Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly". While he does have a band, it was just him and his acoustic guitar for this show, which I kind of liked. He seemed promising at first, but I have to admit that he actually got old fairly quickly. His did seem to have a good voice, but he didn't seem to have all that much control over it. Whenever he hit high notes, he would scream them, often with a rasp. Some times this worked, but there were plenty of times where it didn't fit the song (at least the acoustic arrangement) because it was too aggressive. This wasn't helped by the fact that a lot of the songs that he played sounded alike. Now, to be fair with that last point - it was only him and his acoustic, so I can't rip on that very much. I'm certain that there are parts in each song that make them stand out more with the whole band, but obviously those parts couldn't be played because he didn't have a band with him. I will say though, his last couple songs actually were really good, and his vocals really came alive during them. He showed that he can hit a high note without screaming it, which was refreshing and good to hear. Personally, I wasn't too into Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, but I'm taking that subpar interest with a grain of salt since I haven't heard the full band versions of those songs. I definitely wouldn't be opposed to listening to him again. Check him out; you might like him yourself.

The Show:

When I first saw that Nick Mason was going on tour in Europe, I thought that it was really cool. It's the first time that he's been on tour since Pink Floyd's Division Bell Tour in 1994. I know that he has been wanting Pink Floyd to get back together for a while now, but I figure that he gave up hope of that ever happening, and just decided to go off and do his own thing. One of the things that I found interesting about the fact that Mason was going on a tour was the fact that he was Pink Floyd's drummer. You don't typically see drummers from famous bands going on their own tours. Sure people like Phil Collins have done it, but Collins also had the credit of being Genesis' lead singer after Peter Gabriel, as well as having a very successful solo career. Nick Mason was never anything but Pink Floyd's drummer. He did have a solo album, Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports, but he was only the drummer on that album as well, and it was the only solo album he has done. He never had any lead vocal parts in Pink Floyd either, save for the one line spoken in "One of These Days". Now technically, this isn't a solo tour. Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets is a band that Mason formed with with four other people to perform pre-Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd songs. I had never listened to a lot of pre-Dark Side stuff, but I didn't care. It was a surviving member of Pink Floyd, which meant I was going.

I had a hunch from the beginning that Mason was trying to emulate early Pink Floyd shows. And it would make sense that he would want to. He was playing early Floyd music in the same kinds of venues that they played in their early days playing those same songs. David Gilmour and Roger Waters have both recreated Pink Floyd shows in their own ways with their own shows, so why would Nick Mason not be able to do the same, just taken a little further? Heck, Waters toured The Wall for 4 years. However, I think the motives for each are different. Waters didn't just tour The Wall for the heck of it; he felt that the album had taken on a new meaning in the 21st century and wanted to explore it. Gilmour sort of recreates Pink Floyd shows because he knows it would be a crowd pleaser. Mason just wanted to play old Pink Floyd songs because he thought they were fun, which is why I think he took the concept of recreating Floyd shows a little further.

The beginning of the show was actually quite similar to that of the beginning of David Gilmour's for his Rattle That Lock Tour. At first, there was pre-show music playing. However, about 15-20 minutes before the band took the stage, sound effects started to play. The difference between this and Gilmour's pre-show is that Gilmour didn't have pre-show music - it was just sound effects. Pink Floyd played sound effects before their shows as well, so these sounds were another clue to Nick possibly trying to recreate early Pink Floyd shows. When the house lights went down, the band came on stage and opened the show with "Interstellar Overdrive", which is an instrumental piece from Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. After that, they went into one of my favorite early Floyd songs, "Astronomy Domine", from the same album.

The thing that almost immediately struck me was how in tune the members of the band were with each other. Not in the sense of instrumental tuning, but the chemistry between them. A lot of the shows that I go to, it seems like each member of the band is just kind of doing their own thing and seem to be in their own separate places, and that the frontman is the most energetic one on stage and usually gets the most attention. The feeling that I get when watching bands like that is that they're in a band, and they just happen to be friends because of it. I know that's not usually the case, but it's just the vibe. It wasn't like that with this show at all. It didn't feel like I was watching a band that was just thrown together, which is honestly what I was kind of expecting. Instead, it felt like I was watching 5 friends who happened to be in a band together. Those five friends are Gary Kemp on guitar and vocals, Lee Harris on guitar and backing vocals, Dom Beken on keyboards and programming, Guy Pratt on vocals and bass - who also toured with David Gilmour on his last two tours as well as on Pink Floyd's last two tours - and obviously Nick Mason on drums. They were dancing around the stage (save for Nick and Dom, who were stationary due to their instruments), playing off of each other, and all around seemed to be having the time of their lives on stage. It felt like there was nowhere else they'd have rather been, which made the show that much more fun. Something else that I noticed was that even though Nick Mason is the namesake of the band, there really isn't a single defined frontman. Everyone, except Dom, passed the mic off between songs to address the audience between songs. Guy, Lee, and Gary took turns on lead vocals, and they each got their fair share of time in the spotlight on their instruments. Guy Pratt also got some time to sing as well. I really liked this because it really highlighted the importance of each of the band members. A lot of times with other bands, the other members of the band just have their names mentioned a couple times, and that's it for them. The frontman gets most of the rest of the attention. That wasn't the case here. Everyone was equal, and they made sure that the crowd knew it.

One of the things that Pink Floyd was really well known for was their light shows. They didn't want to go on stage and be the only thing that people had to look at. They liked having visuals onstage with them in order to captivate audiences more than the band would be itself. This has become commonplace nowadays, but it wasn't back then. This show didn't have a lot of the visuals that Pink Floyd came to be known for, most notably the circular screen that had been used in every Pink Floyd show beginning in the Dark Side era, and has been used by both Roger Waters and David Gilmour in their own shows. To be honest, the light show wasn't too impressive. There were no lasers, mirror balls, or anything like that. However, there didn't need to be any of those things. They were present enough that they were effective, but not distracting. The lights blended with each song beautifully, and were perfect for the show. Perhaps the coolest part of the visuals was the bleeding colors being projected onto the screen behind the band. Most bands when doing something like this will pre-make videos to show on screen, and play that same video for each concert. For this show, the bleeding psychedelic colors were done live. There was a man in the sound/light booth with a camera pointed down onto a clear plate with water in it sitting on a light. The man pored different colored dyes into the water and swirled them around, and it was projected onto the screen in real time. When I found this out, it made the show that much cooler because doing that live helped to make each show unique.

As for the setlist, it had a good combination of songs that probably not many people knew, to more well known songs as far as early PF songs go. Some of the more well known songs that they played were "Astronomy Domine", "One Of These Days", and "See Emily Play". Some of the more obscure songs that they played included "Set The Controls For The Heart of the Sun", and "Vegetable Man". They were all enjoyable songs even if you didn't know many of them. A full setlist of their Columbus show can be found here.

Overall, Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets was really something. It was something different, it was something off the beaten path, and it was something unexpected to happen. While the band didn't introduce any original material, they didn't have to because it wasn't the point of the show. With Roger Waters and David Gilmour playing all the hit Floyd songs on their own solo tours, Mason wanted to do something a little different by showcasing some of the bands early, lesser-known material. While the band is called Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, there was definitely no secret that Nick or his band had to hide during this show. They gave it their all, and put on a fun, nostalgic, and trippy show.




*All photos were taken by me, and may not be used without permission.