A 25 year-long project continues for another week.

Darn it!!! I thought I finally had this one in the bag!!!

Some history: around 1985 I somehow managed to get my hands on a VHS tape titled Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii. This tape represented a pivotal musical turning point in my life. I had, of course, heard of Pink Floyd before 1985. Dark Side of the Moon had been released two years before and Money was still dominating the FM airwaves having finally displaced Hey Jude (talk about a song that hung around forever).

But I digress. The songs on Live at Pompeii were played, well, live and they were amazing. It was hard for me to believe that a band could make so many noises with so few instruments. It was unreal. At the time I was a guitar student and never before could I have imagined what a talented and motivated person could do with a Fender Startocaster (honestly, I thought Jimi Hendrix showed all that was possible - not so!) As far as my own development as a guitar player I was shown was real talent looked like in real time and I was old enough even at that age to realize I didn't have what it took. But that's another story for another time.

After hearing these Floyd songs, Echos, Saucerful Of Secrets, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, One Of These Days I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces, Careful With That Axe Eugene and others, I embarked on a discovery of all things OLD Pink Floyd. I purchased Ummagumma, the album on which Saucerful of Secrets, Set The Controls and Careful With That Axe all resided. I was disappointed. So was I with Meddle. Both albums were great albums but the Pompeii versions were simply much, much better than the ones on the album.

But herein was the problem - Pompeii was released only as a movie, not a soundtrack. So I did what any teenager would do at that time in history - I placed an audio tape machine in front of the television and hit 'record' while the VHS tape played through the crappy 3 inch speaker in the TV. You can imagine the poor quality of the resulting audio tape. But that was all I could do - this was high technology of the day. The audio tape broke a couple of years later and I forgot about Pompeii, more or less, for over 20 years.

The while perusing Netflix I saw Live at Pompeii on DVD! It was remastered as a "Director's Cut" but, hey, it was there and waiting so I got it. It was everything I remembered in remastered DVD glory. No muted tones from a worn VHS tape, no washed-out colors - just brilliant sound and color. I was hooked. So I purchased a copy and ripped it to my Apple TV for rainy days at the beach. It makes for great background music.

Then I thought, heck, since I own the media why not rip the audio only to my iPod? And last night I did just that. I took the audio out from the back of the Apple TV and ran that into a Griffin iMic (early clear version). I then pumped the audio into Audacity oh the Macbook and recorded the songs. It worked and the sound is brilliant and so far there is only one problem - a noticeable POP in Echos Part 1. I'll have to re-record that so I can't yet close out the 25 year project just yet - but I'm close. And soon I'll be done.

(update: the only affected song was Echos Part 1. The other songs all ripped to mp3 beautifully. In fact I heard some subtle sounds in Careful With That Axe I've never heard before. All things considered I'll have to call this project a success. And once I re-rip Echos Part 1 the project will be over.)

I consider most of the songs recorded on Pompeii to be the DEFINITIVE versions of the songs - especially for Echos, Saucerful of Secrets, Set The Controls and One Of These Days. They are that good and that much better than the original recordings. If you're a Pink Floyd fan you would rent the DVD. I think you'll be quite pleased.