Capacity: 16,000

Concert starts: 8pm

Address of venue: 2301 N. Highland Ave, Hollywood, CA 90068. MAP

Website: www.hollywoodbowl.com

COMMENTS

David's 2016 tour of North America continues with this second concert at the historic Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California. For many years, the Floyd have been associated with this venue, performing here as a group and also solo shows, and the design of the stage area was inspiration for the Floyd's 1994 set design.

Tickets went on sale Monday, July 27th at 10am PST through this link: Ticketmaster.com although please be aware that demand is incredibly high so you might need to be patient and keep retrying, as they seem to be adding tickets for sale progressively. We also understand that there are a limited number of VIP packages available for this venue.

As an additional incentive, purchasers of tickets online who are resident in North America will be emailed a code, redeemable on the CD of David's new album, Rattle That Lock. This is subject to terms and conditions, which should be available to you from the ticketing website.

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!

Do not read on if you don't want surprises to be spoilt, regarding what the band played!

The second night at the Hollywood Bowl took place in front of another packed, sell-out audience, appreciative for what turned into another superb show. A slight change to the set for this show - On An Island was dropped from the second half, but to make up for this, What Do You Want From Me was added it, being its first live performance in 22 years!

Full use was made of the venue’s unique appearance and layout (itself inspiration for the 1994 Division Bell tour staging), with Mark Brickman again going to huge effort to make it a spectacle for eyes as well as ears. Some 30 projectors were used, projecting onto the sides of the Bowl, and these were joined by a large firework display after the show.

We'd love to know in more detail how the concert went. Did you go? Let us know what YOU thought!

CONCERT PICTURES by BD CONTRIBUTOR, John Rivera

To see John's pictures in more detail, click the thumbnails...

CONCERT REVIEW by BD CONTRIBUTORS, Ed Lopez-Reyes and C.E. Miller
PICTURES by Marie Lopez

Longtime Pink Floyd fan and regular Brain Damage UK contributor Ed Lopez-Reyes teams up with Los Angeles writer C.E. Miller to review the second David Gilmour show in the latter’s home-turf.

These days, concert venues are treated as expendable commodities regardless of the many memories fans have cemented in them: prominent performance stages are demolished and replaced with new ones without hesitation or mental reservation, e.g., in Southern California, right down the road from the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre are about to be levelled; across the pond, in the United Kingdom, Earls Court has succumbed to a similar fate.

On Friday night, March 25th of 2016, David Gilmour played the second of two back-to-back nights at the Hollywood Bowl – a venue that has somehow managed to survive all of this. In this pocket of contemporary music industry culture the Hollywood Bowl remains a force to be reckoned with: full of history and deeply embedded in Hollywood culture and folklore, a performance there can easily surpass otherwise similar ones in competing venues. Somehow, the Hollywood Bowl has survived these modern whims and is especially triumphant when someone of Gilmour’s stature pays a visit.

Gilmour at the Hollywood Bowl is one of those iconic, once-in a lifetime moments that you can always say ‘you were there’ for. Watching one of the world’s leading guitarists live is nothing short of mesmerizing. While the fog machine effects, laser lights, video segments, animated mapping on the bowl itself, and yes, even the fireworks were fun, ultimately the impression one leaves with from this concert is the superlative skills of this consummate performer – and the sound quality and majesty of the Hollywood Bowl underscored this in a way few other venues can.

The venue itself has plenty to deliver for music geeks: according to Wikipedia the venue is fitted with a sound system in which each speaker is aimed at specific parts of the amphitheatre so the audience hears the exact same delivery, in the exact same volume, no matter where they are. “This electronic processing includes sound level, frequency equalization, occasional special effects, and time delay” because “sound passes through wire much faster than through air, therefore the sound coming from the speakers must be delayed, allowing the actual sound from the stage to ‘catch up’ so both sources reach the listeners' ears simultaneously.” In addition, and unlike most venues Gilmour has played on this tour, the Hollywood Bowl screens added punch to what was being projected onto Mr. Screen and all over the stage infrastructure during the show.

While these technical details may compel ambivalence among average audience members, they represent a critical summary of why the Hollywood Bowl sounds so great and serves as such a great vessel for such a fully dimensional musician: the audiovisual delivery was hard to match and will forever be remembered as a peak on Gilmour’s Rattle That Lock Tour – and in a particularly compelling way for guitar aficionados.

The set on Friday was similar to the previous evening’s program with one notable exception: the evening’s fifth song ushered a familiar but epic surprise for fans within seconds. The minute the first few drumbeats of What Do You Want From Me kicked in, followed by the first few keyboard and guitar notes, fans were unequivocal about what Gilmour had just dusted off for the audience. If any song anchored this set and gave a centre of gravity it was this one. Those who are mostly familiar with classics including Run Like Hell, Money, and Comfortably Numb got their most pronounced goosebumps when those tracks were played but there was a universal electricity shared when those familiar with The Division Bell and particularly fond of the Gilmour Pink Floyd era heard What Do You Want From Me live for the first time since 1994.

As with the previous night, the band delivered an exquisite performance of Sorrow. The rest of the set was the same except for On An Island, which made space for What Do You Want From Me. Overall, the second evening at the Hollywood Bowl gave you a clear sense that the 2016 North American leg of the Rattle That Lock Tour may be a particularly memorable one for guitar players and those whose ears are particularly tuned to Gilmour’s work in and outside Pink Floyd from 1987 and on: the guitar work is sublime and emancipated from the structural and arrangement constraints that make performances ‘safe’ on any given tour. In addition, the songs from A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell sound particularly regal, punctuating the strength of Gilmour’s work over the Pink Floyd catalog and beyond.

Without question, what must have struck most fans during the Hollywood Bowl shows was how comfortable Gilmour seemed in putting his skills on full display: improvisational elements included. The band’s delivery, the lights, pyrotechnics, and effects all helped sustain incredible Gilmour performances that have been recorded, apparently, but were also amplified on the venue’s screens.

Indeed, one of the best features of the concert was the screen close-ups of Gilmour playing his solos. It was akin to watching a master at work, a painter working on canvass or a sculptor deftly turning a block of marble into human form. While the second concert at the bowl did feel a bit perfunctory after the ecstatic, raw energy of opening night, still, Gilmour offered his audiences an unquestionably brilliant defence of why he is still one of our most cherished and peerless musicians. Vocally he certainly still has the chops, but it’s his guitar playing that truly shines. The poster for the concert really summed it up – an image of David Gilmour on guitar. What could be better?

C.E. Miller is a Los Angeles writer based in Aliso Viejo, Orange County, California. Ed Lopez-Reyes is a regular guest contributor on Brain Damage UK; he is based in Greenwich, Connecticut. For additional information on David Gilmour's Rattle That Lock tour click here. Additional photos of the three 2016 Rattle That Lock Tour shows in Los Angeles are being posted here and are courtesy of Marie Lopez.

CONCERT PICTURES by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Randy

YOUR HELP NEEDED! We want to cover David's concerts the best we can, to share the experience with everyone, especially those who won't be able to attend the shows. We'd love to see ANY pictures, tickets scans, reviews, newspaper reports, and anything else you come across for this show - we look forward to hearing from you!