Saturday 30 December 2017

Perfect Strangers and Link Floyd live

Deep Purple or Pink Floyd? When I were a lad, this question would really upset me: I grew up with these bands. Thankfully, this time around I didn’t have to choose between the two, thanks to our own Canarian tribute acts, Perfect Strangers and Link Floyd, playing their end-of-the-year concerts in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Timur, I and Harold attended both shows. In fact, we would never came to the second gig (Link Floyd at Teatro Guiniguada) if Emilio Sánchez, the vocalist of Perfect Strangers, hadn’t told us about it during their show in CICCA! That’s advertising Canarian-style for you.

Perfect Strangers played the vintage DP, with all the major Mark II and III hits: Child in Time, Speed King, Highway Star, Lazy, Woman from Tokyo, Mistreated, Soldier of Fortune, Knocking at Your Back Door, not to mention the very Perfect Strangers and that obligatory one about some stupid with a flare gun... There were surprises too, very much in Purple spirit, such as the Stormbringer quote within Burn, the Mark I first hit Hush, and one hell (or high water) of a drum solo in Space Truckin’.

Perfect Strangers

    Dave O’Connor: guitar
    Mathias Klatte: keyboards
    Javier Negrín: drums
    Emilio Sánchez: vocals
    Aaron Santana: bass

One week later, Link Floyd took us on an epic journey from Astronomy Domine and Echoes to (and through) The Wall. Man they can do it: like the entire darker second side of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pigs, Dogs... and the first five songs of The Wall plus Run Like Hell for an encore, how’s that? The band were so superbly faithful to the original that at times I wished they were, um, not and improvised more, or played the guitar solo on the sax or vice versa, or something. Anyway, it was magnificent. (Also, the sound at Guiniguada was much better than that at CICCA.) How I wish you were here.

Link Floyd

    Besay Brehcist: lead guitar, vocals
    Sergio Casquero: guitar, vocals
    Javier Guerra: bass
    Fran Navarro: drums
    Rafael Santana: keyboards
    Kenneth Suárez: guitars, keyboards, vocals

    Ángel Fernández Bordón: saxophones
    Patty Brichis: backing vocals
    Virna Ceballos: backing vocals
    Violeta Millares: backing vocals

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