The Pink Floyd exhibition at the V&A
Posted by: Kevin-W on 10 May 2017
I managed to blag a press ticket to yesterday's preview.
I must say I was very impressed. There are about 350 artefacts - old frilly shirts, letters, posters, gadgets, photos, covers, instruments - on display at this exhibition, which tracks the band's career from 1965 through to 2014's swansong TER. Like the V&A's Bowie exhibition, you need to don a pair of bluetooth headphones, which change from room to room and from exhibit to exhibit - although I have to say that both the effectiveness and sound quality is better than the Bowie show (the kit is very sensitive though - you have to be in exactly the right place).
One of the highlights is the last room, in which "Comfortably Numb" at Live8 is rendered by an amazing surround sound "3D audio" system. Never heard anything quite like it. Other highlights include a 1975 tour rider asking for 600lbs of dry ice, the cane used to beat Syd, Roger and Storm when they were at school, a replica of Algie flying over Battersea Power Station, Wall puppets, a visually arresting WYWH room, the Division Bell heads (to be honest, the exhibition drags a bit once Big Rog leaves, but those heads are pretty cool) and a bank of mixing desks which allow you to remix "Money" for yourself. Talking of mixing desks, look out, as you go in, for the Abbey Road EMI 16-track custom desk used to make DSOTM.
Some people will wonder, "Does rock music belong in a museum?"
The Floyd are the perfect musical group for a museum, as their visual iconography and presentation of their music is so powerful and so famous (as, of course, is the music). Unlike someone like Bowie, however, it isn't about costumes and make-up, or what they looked like at various points in their career; it's about album covers, light shows and objects. Cows, prisms, lasers, burning men, flying pigs, quad sound systems, Battersea Power Station, beds on beaches, metal heads in fields, Hignosis' airbrushed surrealism, bricks, sonar pings, sound effects, Mr Screen, outer and inner space, Syd's whimsy, Roger's bombast, etc etc.
If you're a fan, you won't want to miss it. As a V&A member, I will be returning!