This month of Movember, when men are sprouting ‘staches and raising research dollars and awareness to fight prostate cancer, has taken on a life of its own. And around the time Movember started to spread around the world, a 20-year-old Londoner named Jesse Hildebrand-Nestor was losing a number of people he knew to the disease. Â
A prolific guitarist, Jesse conceived a fundraiser based on the music of Pink Floyd, partly also to honour that band’s keyboardist, Richard Wright, who also died of cancer in 2008. He gathered local musicians and technical people and launched Wish You Were Here. Now, four years later, here we are, selling out the Grand Theatre again and raising $100,000 for research.
Perhaps I’ve seen too many shows with “good cause” attached to them because a little nugget of fear forms in my belly that it won’t be great. Maybe it’s because any tone-deaf wannabe with a guitar tries to foist a benefit single on radio people. So I’m doubly thrilled when the night turns out to be as stellar as Friday at the Grand. Hildebrand-Nestor is a superb guitarist. He’s not only technically perfect, matching the great David Gilmour note for note, he also has soul. Well known local vocalist Doug Varty provided most of the leads, knocking them out of the park. There were extra guitarists and keyboard players so they could match the huge sound Floyd made with overdubs, and they killed it. Drop the needle and crank it up. The second half of the show was Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. At encore time, I leaned over to Derek and said, “I would have loved to hear Run Like Hell.” They closed the show with it as their third encore song. I couldn’t have been more satisfied and, if I haven’t mentioned it 100 times, I saw Pink Floyd live on their Division Bell tour in ’94.
On site as Free 981 reps, we talked to dozens of Floyd fans. Some brought their teens who are learning to play instruments and bathing their ears in classic rock. Seated ahead of me were a woman and three teenage boys in rapt attention. Alas, I have but two thumbs to turn up for Wish You Were Here 4. Looking forward to 5.
PS. One of the female vocalists was looking unsure all night. Not a smile. She had what the kids call Resting Bitch Face on stage! And it was only later in the show that I realized why. She just about split her spleen doing the first part of the female solo on Great Gig in the Sky. That bit of vocal calisthenics is, as you may know, not an easy task. I’m attaching a video of Aussie Pink Floyd, who I saw perform many years ago in Hamilton. The legendary near-hysterical vocal performance begins at about 1:30. You can hear why anticipating it might make you a little nervous!