Jayne is good to me – she came with me to see Think Floyd at the Hawth tonight, even though she really does not like Pink Floyd. At Live 8 she would happily have gone home after seeing Robbie Williams and skipped Floyd and the Who (but only over my dead body!) but while we were at the theatre waiting for the council meeting yesterday she relented and I got a couple of tickets.

I had never been to see a tribute band before so did not know quite what to expect. Actually thats not quite true, now I come to think of it. I did see the Every Brothers and Gold Zeppelin in Australia but they were just pub gigs. When we turned up I said that it did not feel like going to a concert: it felt more like going to a play to watch actors performing the parts of Roger, Dave, Rick and Nick.

In a way, thats what it felt like during the show as well, but it was a good show. For those of us waiting for the continually-postponed release of Pulse on DVD it was like methadone to keep us going until the hard stuff arrives.

The band played Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, followed by a couple of other songs (See Emily Play, What Do You Want From Me, Happiest Days/Another Brick pt2) then finished off the first half with Run Like Hell. After the break they played all of Wish You Were Here from beginning to end then a couple more songs (Paintbox, Coming Back To Life) before doing Dogs as an encore and finally coming back to finish off with Comfortably Numb. I may have missed one out – I wasn’t taking notes.

It was not a bad show at all, obviously they can’t compete with the real Floyd light show and don’t have the extra musicians but thats only to be expected. If it was a play in which actors were acting the parts then it looked like Bill Bailey was playing the part of Rick Wright and Max Clifford was playing the part of Nick Mason. Roger Waters had a touch of the Rodney Trotter about him and Dave Gilmour was a young Van Morrison with a dark wig. Fortunately the band got their ‘parts’ through musical ability rather than physical similarity. I wouldn’t want to see a band who looked exactly like Floyd but played as badly as I do!

Musically it was fine. Strangely they sounded at their best playing the very old stuff from Relics or the newest stuff from Division Bell. Not so strange for the old stuff perhaps as the singer sounds more like Syd than like Roger or David but when you consider that the Division Bell was written in the knowledge that 2 drummers, 2 keyboards, 2 guitarists and 3 backing singers would be available to play it live it sounded great played by a four-piece.

About the singer’s voice. He has a decent voice, and is technically good. He actually sounds a bit like Glenn Tilbrook to me. Once I adjusted to that I was happy enough. The guitarist sang Wish You Were Here and Have A Cigar and actually sounded a bit more Floyd-y.

Bugger. It sounds like I am criticising, but I am not. They kept me entertained for a couple of hours, and a couple of times they captured the sound enough to really affect me – not during Shine On which can usually bring me to the verge of tears when PF play it but during Comfortably Numb and Great Gig I could certainly feel a lump in my throat.

And what about Great Gig In The Sky? The girl singer was fantastic. She got closer to the original sound in parts than the singers with Pink Floyd did when I saw them. It must take a lot of guts to do that song: without words the attention is focussed purely on the delivery and everyone watching will have high expectations too. Even if she had been bad she would have deserved praise just for getting up and doing it, but she gets my thanks for providing the emotional highlight of the show.

I have a lot of sympathy for the musicians too. Dave Gilmour can re-score his solos or improvise as he sees fit, but if tribute musicians do that they run the risk of looking like they simply can’t do it properly. Think Floyd compromised well, delivering some pieces note-perfect just to show that they can, but adding something of their own when they saw fit.

Although Jayne is still not a fan of Floyd, even she admitted at the end that she liked “the shine on Harvey Moon song” and “the guitar bits on the last one” so there is hope for her.

Overall my first experience of a large-scale tribute band was good one. When the Genesis tribute band G2 come to Crawley I’ll be getting a ticket – and not just to see how well the Spizzenergi drummer can ‘do a Phil Collins’.