Spirit of Pink Floyd, Jakarta

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun… 

I’m reading Indonesia’s most popular daily rag, Kompas, and notice, there at the bottom left of the page, a little ad:

Pink Floyd at @ Kempinski Grand Ballroom, Hotel Indonesia Kempinski, Jakarta, Indonesia (28 & 29 August 2010)

Wa-hey! No f***ing shit man! Floyd are coming to town!!! Well, just for a moment I thought they were. But they’re not of course – it’s the British tribute band, the Spirit of Pink Floyd, who are.

Can’t say I’ve ever heard of ‘em before, but they’ve got some good reviews on the net with one critic saying: 

... The Spirit of Pink Floyd is a superb nine-piece band and they hit the groove from the first number, clearly driven by a love of the music they are recreating. All the hits were in the set, and the grand finale of Brick in the Wall saw 15 kids from York’s Stagecoach Theatre Company make their entrance to brat out the chorus of “we don’t need no thought control,” a lyric that sits in contrast to the constant video images projected onto the stage that oozed the essence of the original material and encouraged us to constantly think Pink. 

Hell, I’m up for this. Normally the foreign acts that come to Jakarta stink but this gives me hope – especially after Slash’s recent concert. And Placebo’s. Whatever next? Radiohead, the Pumpkins, or the Flaming Lips? 

Well, perhaps not… Floyd, of course, are that most quintessential of British rock bands – a bunch of middle-class university graduates with liberal-leftist leanings who came up with some of the most pompously profound rock tunes ever recorded - but also inflicted upon us some pretty morbid mush as well (I could have sworn I heard Comfortably Numb being piped into the old people’s ward at Kemang Hospital a while back – some dude’s idea of a “sick” joke, perhaps? Hahaha!) 

In 1985, the ultra-cynical Roger Waters declared Floyd "a spent force", but, while he was probably right, there are nonetheless plenty of gems from the past to revisit – The Dark Side of the Moon (an allusion to lunacy, rather than astronomy), of course, as well as the hypnotic Wish You Were Here album. 

Waters, incidentally, went into exile during the rule of ex British PM Tony Bliar. But Waters wasn’t protesting the invasion of Iraq or even Labor’s deplorable plans to bring in ID cards. Oh no – what ironically irked the ire of old Roger was Labour’s move to ban the toffs’ cruel sport of fox hunting! 

I've become disenchanted with the political and philosophical atmosphere in England. The anti-hunting bill was enough for me to leave England. I did what I could, I did a concert and one or two articles, but it made me feel ashamed to be English. I was in Hyde Park for both the Countryside Alliance marches. There were hundreds of thousands of us there. Good, honest English people. That's one of the most divisive pieces of legislation we've ever had in Great Britain. 

 

For tickets for the upcoming Jakarta concert, I first tried to call Kempinski - and they haven’t a clue. They told me to call Grand Indonesia and – guess what – they haven’t a clue either. 

Finally I discovered you can get tickets via ticket agency rajakarcis. 

Platinum: Rp. 1.000.000 (Seat Number) 

Gold: Rp. 600.000 

Silver: Rp. 300.000 

You can call rajakarcis (021-828 2137) and they’ll bring the tickets to your office/home. Such convenience is much appreciated in this mad cap city – Good job lads!

Syd’s a bit perplexed. I wonder what he would have made of Jakarta?