Not a gig but in memory of Storm Thorgeson a great evening

A few days ago I happened to hear about an organisation in London (Shoreditch) called the Proud Archivist who were running an exhibition of the late Storm Thorgeson's work and last night were hosting an event at which there was to be a presentation by Classic Album Sundays founder Colleen "Cosmo" Murphy and photographer Jill Furmanovsky who toured extensively with Pink Floyd in the 70s and worked with Storm. The event was to conclude with a playing of Wish You Were Here on a high end Linn/Naim/BW system provided by Grahams.

Now many will know that I'm not the greatest PF aficionado - I find Dark Side overrated if not boring, and some of the other stuff less than great - I guess they don't swing! - but I've always loved Wish You Were Here and The Wall and given a long time interest in photography and music art I set off for the Proud Archivist with eldest daughter Natasha.

The venue is great if a little difficult to find you enter from the canal towpath - it would be great on a summers evening rather than mid-November - with a good bistro serving freshly cooked hot food.

Now of course such was Storm's influence that in many ways he is seen as the 6th member of PF but the exhibition was terrific with many examples of his work for Peter Gabriel and Led Zeppelin amongst others. The presentation (in interview format) by Colleen and Gill at first seemed a little "pre-prepared" but the dialogue soon revealed some really great insights into the Band particularly the relationships between Roger Walters, Dave Gilmour and in particular how Rick Wright (so influential particularly on Wish You Were Here) and Nick Mason played their part. I had the chance to ask Jill as to how her approach and outlook had changed with the transition from film to digital. Her response was interesting in that she said so much of Storms work was in "real time" and whilst somewhat inconvenient - lining 50 odd beds up on a beach! - was proof that Fotoshop is far from essential. She said she also said that she saw digital as bitter-sweet in that yes you can take an almost limitless number of frames and then edit as much as you like but equally she thought her best work was with a Nikon FE 80m lens and Ilford FP4 - you just worked spontaneously. She also that she agreed with the notion that in the digital age you no longer had to really research something but everything was available instantly and that she felt that this extended to music in that people no longer really "listened". She seemed to be not criticising MP3 in itself but more the unintended impact. She quoted an example whereby she had recently been to see the Arctic Monkeys and was struck by how some in the audience seemed more interested in photographing themselves at the event than the actual concert.

Finally came Wish You Were Here. Not a bleep from the audience even when the record was turned over and certainly it was a fantastic sound, absolutely compelling, massive staging, timbre upon timbre of detail particularly from Rick Wright, and I also felt a far greater impact from the time sig changes. A simply great listening experience.

Strat