280. No lights, no staging, just a mass of equipment, 4 musicians … and an audience transfixed.

Racecourse grandstand was to be

Enshrouded by massive marquee

To accommodate daytime light-show

Supposedly amazing, immersive.

Trouble, August winds.

No chapiteau.

No lights. No staging.

Just masses of equipment

Crowding the stage.

Pink Floyd – in the raw!

Discontent evaporates.

Silence enshrouds grandstand

Haunting chords build, cymbals roll.

My tape-recorder switched on!

Bootlegger!!!*

Note:

* Yes, I illegally recorded the Randwick Pink Floyd Concert. It was on cassette and the quality was not hi-fiedlity but it wasn’t bad. It was only in the last couple of years that I discarded this tape (unplayable), still labelled in my high school handwriting – Pink Floyd – Randwick Racecourse – Aug 71. I am sure I’d copied it for others and transferred it to reel-to-reel … nowhere to be found.

** See also Short Memory #233. Between the roof & the rafters, the Penrith Poet (un)settles a restless audience.