Wish You Were Here

For me, Pink Floyd has always had a sort of voodoo. The group's classic lineup last performed the year I was born and Roger Waters severed ties with his bandmates shortly after my third-birthday, ruling out a chance for any post-uterine performances. Not that it really mattered. Pink Floyd, in my mind, always had a mystic quality, a loose collection of sounds and voices tied together somewhere in space. Unlike more iconic figures like John Lennon or Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour's voice, in particular, was never attached to his face but, instead floated free into the sky filled with lasers, smoke and strobe lights. And, now, a decade after Pink Floyd parted ways, David Gilmour stands in the present --- a real person playing to a post-9/11 crowd. A few vocal scratches aside, he sounds just as I remembered him or, more precisely, how I envisioned remembering him. Sometimes, it is easier to look at the lights.....