Madison Square Garden
It was a major rock concert event when Pink Floyd toured its new Animals album in the summer of 1977, and this was performance #1 in NYC, as denoted by the stub.
During the Animals tour, Floyd played that album in its entirety, then the Wish You Were Here album in its entirety, and then a couple of Dark Side numbers for the encore . With Animals, the order didn’t follow the album; the show began with a jaw-dropping rendition of "Sheep," followed by Pigs on the Wing Part 1. During the guitar-chord sequence out of Sheep, what appeared to be giant sheets streamed down behind the band, in sync with the jamming guitar chords ... an opener one could not easily forget! (As noted in the next post there’s now a good quality audience recording of N2 posted online, the Animals set ripping with intensity.)
The classic Fender Rhodes electric piano intro to “Sheep” by Rick Wright opened the first song and the show. At only 30 minutes in to the show, you were already blown pretty far away by the intensity of Sheep and then all of Dogs, with its rousing dueling lead guitar parts played by Gilmour and Snowy White and its swirling light show sequence at the end.
With the song Pigs, a big flying piggy was cut loose in the Garden, and Gilmour cut loose, playing blazing leads. Roger Waters pointed at the flying pig, asked the crowd whether they like his piggy, and proclaimed proudly what a big piggy it is.
On the first night I sat in section 133 of the old MSG, just above the main walkway that went all the way around the middle of the arena. In the front of those sections there was a white concrete barrier at the corners of the stairs separating the first rows of the section from the people walking on the main walkway. In those days lots of illegal fireworks were available in Chinatown in the days leading up to the 4th of July each year. People were lighting off firecrackers inside the venue, which made it a somewhat scary and tense scene, and we hoped that the concrete barriers would help shield us should anyone light off some explosive in the aisle... During the break a guy started going to the front of the sections, yelling that if he sees anyone light a firecracker he's going to beat them up. Not the most relaxing way to prepare your mind for the experience of the entire "Wish You Were Here" album coming up during the second set.
On the N2 recording you can hear how bad it was - fireworks going off during softer sections of songs, like the mellow bluesy section they added to the jam outro from Pigs. People started to boo the fireworks and culprits. But the performance still drips with intensity.
Several nights later at MSG, someone notoriously threw a firecracker or other explosive on the stage during the band's performance of "Pigs on the Wing," at which time Roger Waters stopped the band and asked the audience "Where's the stupid mother__ who just did that?" .... and these events contributed to the themes that Waters addressed in the next Pink Floyd album, The Wall.
