One might think that the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular would be a disorienting experience for someone with eighteen years of sobriety under his belt and only the haziest recollections of unnumbered adolescent evenings spent hunched over a power-hitter and listening to Dark Side of the Moon on the eight-track player of a 1972 Cougar.
That was our assumption the other day as we prepared to attend Laser Floyd at the State Theatre. We’ll admit to certain hardwired preconceptions regarding Pink Floyd and Pink Floyd fans, and we’ve also heard a few things about lasers. Given this admittedly sketchy background, we had reason to fear some at least mild psychological disturbance, if not outright flashbacks and seizures.
Precisely to bolster us against such fears, we felt it prudent to choose an appropriately seasoned chaperone to accompany us, someone whose own drug experiences and knowledge of the Pink Floyd catalog was a bit more up to date, shall we say. We’re not ashamed to acknowledge that our personal phone directory is full of candidates whose credentials on both these counts are impeccable, but the clear front-runner to play Virgil to our Dante for the Laser Spectacular was our old friend and occasional bookkeeper, Dutch Gaines.
We were unsurprised by Dutch’s enthusiasm for our proposition, even as we were nonetheless unprepared for the advanced state of torpor in which we found him—enshrouded in smoke and listening to Jim Reeves’s version of “Gentle on My Mind”—when we arrived at his basement apartment.
This alarming spectacle made it abundantly clear that we would be chaperoning Dutch to the Laser Spectacular, rather than the other way around. So obviously indisposed was Dutch that when we eventually managed to steer him into the lobby of the theater and immediately encountered a booth for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the do-ragged caretaker of the booth took one look in our direction and bawled, “Lots of weed smokers here tonight!”
For those who might be unfamiliar with the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular, it is, according to its website, the “longest touring theater show in history!” The phenomenon has spawned a host of imitators (e.g. Laser Nirvana, Laser Zeppelin) in its eighteen years on the road, but, we are assured, it remains the undisputed king of all laser shows. Judging by the steady emission of satisfied chortles and dissonant bleats we noted from our companion, we feel it’s safe to say that Dutch would soundly endorse this contention.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. A few words of advice: When you have a chance to check out the P.F.L.S. in the future, fork over the two bucks for the 3D glasses. Thus goggled, we discovered that even the theater’s exit lights were positively lysergic, and the uniform weirdness of the things only added to the goofy esprit de corps.
The show itself really is quite a lot to process, and frankly we had a hard time fathoming how anyone with smoldering brain cells and crackling synapses could handle the multi-tiered assault. Dutch was so fully engaged in the experience that he was of little help with the set list. Near as we could tell, however, the evening’s first half featured the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon, blasted at maximum volume (never mind the decibels, this was ten thousand watts), while the battery of lasers cut through clouds of smoke, and strange imagery was projected onto three huge screens on the stage. There was a good deal of footage from The Wizard of Oz, and as we were unfamiliar with the theories regarding the alleged synchronicity of Dark Side with that film, we’ll admit to finding these juxtapositions at times somewhat confusing and unsettling. The computer-generated imagery resembled everything from colorful Spirograph doodles to Spin Art, and there were plenty of moody interludes that featured various flying things (including a bloated, sexless baby) and religious iconography transposed over what appeared to be vats of bubbling pudding; tornadic bursts of blood; protoplasm sloshing around in a skull; and video footage of a colonoscopy. An androgynous moon-man with perfectly shaped buttocks and a bottle of whiskey did an interpretive dance, rode on a merry-go-round, and played a trumpet. Things sometimes got vaguely erotic; we were frequently dazzled.
The audience seemed comfortably numb but did manage the occasional collective gasp or burst of applause, often at oddly inexplicable moments. As for Dutch, he didn’t end up being of much use other than as a spectacle of slack appreciation. His commentary on the evening consisted of exactly two full utterances, one for each set of the show. The first, during an early segment from Dark Side, was, “This is like a really incredible screen saver.” The second came as “Learning to Fly” pulsed through the speakers—or perhaps it was “Run Like Hell.”
“Pink Floyd,” Dutch leaned over and observed helpfully, “is all about containment and freedom.”—Brad Zellar
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