David Gilmour Wish You Were Here Live Acoustic

David Gilmour's Live in Gdansk was recorded and filmed in 2006 at the Polish city's shipyards, the very same historic location where Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement began its populist assault on the country's repressive Soviet-installed regime in 1980. By all accounts of the time it was a truly awesome multimedia spectacle. But there are strange and sad ironies that accompany this release as well. For starters, it was released in the U.K. exactly a week after the death of Richard Wright, Gilmour's longtime bandmate in Pink Floyd, and his keyboardist here. Secondly, it appears during a period of increased tension between Russia and the United States over the latter's proposed missile defense system to be placed in Poland (by the U.S.) and the country's membership in NATO…

David Gilmour's two concerts assembled for Live at Pompeii mark the first time that the amphitheater has hosted a rock gig since Pink Floyd played there in 1971. They didn't play for an audience, however, they were filmed for Adrian Maben's documentary Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. Gilmour's gigs – some 45 years after Floyd – bests their gig historically: It hosted a paying audience assembled from all over the globe, and it was the first time an audience had occupied the site since 79 AD. This double-disc set is the movie's soundtrack. Pompeii was just one of the historic sites Gilmour played on the tour, others included amphitheaters in Verona and Nîmes, Circus Maximus in Rome, a chateau in Chantilly, and five nights at London's Royal Albert Hall, none of which held quite the weight of history like this one.