Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason is following his ex-bandmates Roger Waters' and David Gilmour's cue and touring America next year with a new band playing their old songs – very old songs in Mason's case.
Mason's Saucerful of Secrets – featuring Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp and former Floyd touring bassist Guy Pratt -- will be picking through some of the band's earliest and most psychedelic albums on their spring U.S. tour, which includes an April 3 date at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. Tickets will cost $45-$200 plus fees and go on sale next Friday, Nov. 9, at 9 a.m. through Ticketmaster or 10 a.m. in-person at the State Theatre box office. Pre-sale options start Wednesday.
The band of British vets played U.K. dates this past year and earned a favorable response from diehard Floyd fans and critics. Among the songs they brought back to life were such wigged-out, wowee-zowee jams as "Interstellar Overdrive," "Astronomy Dominie," "Lucifer Sam" "One of These Days," "Arnold Layne," "Fearless," "Point Me at the Sky" and the band's eponymous song, from such late-'60s and early-70s albums as "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," "Meddle" and "Saucerful of Secrets." You can see a full list of the songs at setlist.fm.
The Telegraph in London wrote in its review, "if you have ever wondered what Pink Floyd sounded like when they first disrupted the British music scene, this was the place to be." Kemp and Pratt handle most of the vocal duties, including many lyrics originally sung by the long-lost Syd Barrett.
While he very rarely sang in Pink Floyd, Mason did have a hand in a decent amount of the songwriting, especially early on. This will be his first time performing in the Twin Cities since the Metrodome in 1994 on the Division Bell Tour (the last official Floyd tour).
