Nick Mason, the drummer and founding member of Pink Floyd as well as mega car collector, visited Google in Venice to discuss his career on February 6th as part of the “Musicians at Google” series. Here is the video of the conversation:
I didn’t hear it mentioned in the video, but the famous (at least according to my college roommate Marcus who was a Floyd fanatic) “Syd Barrett face melting concert” actually took place in Venice right down the street from Google at POP’s The Cheetah Club (1 Navy St) on November 5th, 1967.
The Syd site says “it was during that show that Syd emptied the contents of a jar of Mandrax, broke the pills into tiny pieces and mixed the crumbs in with a full jar of Brylcream. He then poured the whole coagulated mass onto his head, picked up his Telecaster, and walked on stage.
As he was playing, the Mandrax/Brylcream combination started to run amok under the intense heat of the stage-lighting and dribbled down from his scalp so that it looked like his face was melting into a distorted wax effigy of flesh. Audience members supposedly screamed in horror. Needless to say, there was a wildly positive review in the LA Free Press newspaper. The reporter states that this gig was the only area appearance for Pink Floyd.”
If you have never seen it, check out Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii. It is a must see:
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