Beer and football V — week four

The game: Patriots at Chiefs
The beer: Clown Shoes Pecan Pie Porter
The result: Loss, 41–14; Chargers win, 33–14
The commentary: "No pictures of my little girl will accompany losses, especially losses as ugly and perplexing as this." Almost. Here's an outtake from week one, basically summing up the game.

The porter was delicious and might prove to be the best beer of the season. I sampled it at a recent Clown Shoes tasting up the road and meant to ask the sales rep if the company had run out of ethnic stereotypes to exploit. They've now moved on to fantasy origin stories about "Genghis Pecan" repelling violent turkey revolts because nothing counterbalances overt race-baiting like heavy-beer mania.

Speaking of furious madness, now's as good a time as any—since I'm not emotionally prepared to write about the state of my football team—to present a homemade compilation of a few Pink Floyd bootlegs recordings of indeterminate origin I've… acquired… in our digital era. All are live cuts and span the meaty post-Syd/pre-stardom era from September 1969 through September 1971. The transitions aren't graceful—are Dobson and Thompkins seriously inactive simply because they can't cover kicks?—but I favor the pacing, like James Earl Jones reading "The Night Before Christmas" while tumbling down the stairs: "The prancing and pawing of each little oof!" Clown Shoes's gleeful prejudice and I present: Pass the Tequila, Manuel.

1. Astronomy Domine
2. Fat Old Sun
3. Atom Heart Mother
"Good morning." The first three tracks are lifted as-is from Smoking Blues, recorded in Montreux, Switzerland in November 1970. Surely the best version of "Astronomy Domine" I've heard. "Fat Old Sun" is striking and lovely as heartthrob David Gilmour giggles halfway through—if "Money" is Pink Floyd's "Brown Sugar" then "Fat Old Sun" is their "Sway." "Atom Heart Mother" is stripped down from its overindulgent studio source (with "brass and chorus") and vastly improved as a result.

4. Grantchester Meadows (a.k.a. "Daybreak")
Roger Waters's solo piece from Ummagumma is retitled "Daybreak" to open The Man and the Journey, a two-part conceptual touring suite featuring four grown men drinking tea onstage. This version, along with tracks 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14, were recorded in Amsterdam, Netherlands in September 1969. Is it "Netherlands" or "the Netherlands"? Is a "the" derogatory like with Ukraine? These are the problems I create for myself.

5. Green Is the Colour
Electric Factory 1970. Great name for a Philadelphia club. "We'll head to the Electric Factory after Hextall gets ejected." "The fucking Mummers mean we gotta detour past the Electric Factory." "I can't believe those Electric Factory pricks cut the power in the middle of Bardo Pond's third encore."

6. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
All back to Montreux! Recorded almost a year after the Smoking Blues set. This was retitled "Beset by Creatures of the Deep" when played as part of The Journey. I wish more things were titled "Beset by Creatures of the Deep." "Helen Hunt and Sidney Poitier are… Beset by Creatures of the Deep."

7. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
"The second stall in the Electric Factory's ladies' room is out of toilet paper."

8. The Grand Vizier's Garden Party (a.k.a. "Doing It")
9. Cymbaline (a.k.a. "Nightmare")
Skipping over "Work," "Teatime" and "Afternoon"/"Biding My Time," we observe our Man taking his lady friend to bed, having some efficient four-minute English sex and (bypassing "Sleep"/"Quicksilver") suffering from night terrors about special teamer Matthew Slater being the Patriots' MVP for the second week in a row. The alarm clock bleeds beautifully into…

10. Echoes
"Ping!" Get comfortable for the next twenty-four minutes. This Meddle standout comes from the '71 Montreux show and it's the most poorly recorded one of the bunch. Drag. If I could travel back in time, save Jim Morrison's beard and follow Pink Floyd around Europe to hear one song it would definitely "Echoes." "Quiet, Jim Morrison's beard. I love this middle section."

11. Interstellar Overdrive
A subdued, experimental and nearly nineteen-minute "Overdrive" was all they could talk about for years at the Electric Factory. "Pink Floyd were super trippy at the Electric Factory." "The Electric Factory hand stamp gave me the HIV."

12. Pow R. Toc H. (a.k.a. "The Pink Jungle")
13. The Labyrinths of Auximenes
14. Behold the Temple of Light
"The Pink Jungle" is a good interpretation of the first album's filler track (I like the song but it's as filler as they come), though not as good as the thirty-second segment recorded in 1967 for BBC Look of the Week and featured during the band's Behind the Music as it cuts to commercial. I love that thirty seconds—if you think Peter Jackson wasn't taking an occasional break from C Average to listen to Roger Waters's proto-Nazgûl screeching then I still don't know what to tell you. Wikipedia says "The Labyrinths of Auximenes" incorporates parts of "Let There Be More Light" and "A Saucerful of Secrets" but I don't hear it. "Behold the Temple of Light" seems to be otherwise unreleased. This Amsterdam threesome (Amsterdam Threesome now playing in back-alley theaters across the country) is followed by "The End of the Beginning," which is actually the "Celestial Voices" portion of "A Saucerful of Secrets" and formally closes The Journey. But…

15. A Saucerful of Secrets
This Electric Factory version ("Seriously, the HIV!") is superior to The Journey's and includes all four parts: "Something Else," "Syncopated Pandemonium," "Storm Signal"and "Celestial Voices." It's as strong a performance as the one recorded in '69 and released on Ummagumma's live disc. A never-realized fifth section was entitled "Thrice Against the Vikings" and I hope to hear it tomorrow night.

16. More Blues
"Ze Pank Floyt!" We close with nine minutes of "More Blues," returning us to Smoking Blues and ending three hours of curious excess. Much better, truly, than the three hours of entropy witnessed in Kansas City the other night. I am here to help.

Up next: The Misfits are not walking through that door. Cheers!