Pink Floyd
ROMAYYAD – The Remaking of the Omayyad TMoQ Edition
Studio Sessions recorded in Roma and London – from Nov 1969 to Jan 1970
Live at Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, USA, 1970-05-01
This is not a revision only.
MQR releases the Remaking of the content of the original LP version of Omayyad only, primarily for those older collectors who have had it for many years.
It’s a sort of emotional commemoration of a famous and time honored bootleg LP.
You can find two artwork versions.
I want you to feel free to have it with my version or with the original set list.
Just rename and/or burn it in the way you want.
Here you find four of the eight songs of 370 Roman Yard shared recently here.
Set List (in brackets the position on the original first issue LP, side a, side b)
01 (02a). Fingal’s Cave (new remaster) 1:54
02 (01b). Crumbling Land (new restored extended version) 5:55
03 (01a). Oenone (new remaster) 6:51
04 (02b). Rain in the Country (new remaster) 6:53
05 (03b). The Embryo (remaster) 12:44
06 (03a). Interstellar Overdrive (remaster) 14:14
The first edition was released on colored vinyl in the first half of 1972 by Trade Mark of Quality in USA, the inventors of bootlegs.
(Trivia note: around this same time the Best of Tour ’72 LP was released in Europe.)
Omayyad was the 40th in the TMoQ catalogue and the first American bootleg about Pink Floyd.
It had large success and was reissued and re-bootlegged many many times due to the excellent (for the time) sound quality and the presence of unissued songs. It was probably conceived of as a smaller parallel version of Ummagumma, half studio and half live but the limitations of the length of LP sides couldn’t support that.
Pink Floyd were at the International Recording Studios in Roma from 15 November and in London again from 12 December to end of January 1970 where they recorded and produced a large variety of music for the unpleasable supervisor, director Michelangelo Antonioni and his new movie Zabriskie Point. He knew of Pink Floyd in 1966 during the making of Blow Up movie.
He really wanted Careful With That Axe, Eugene for the main scene of his new movie.
Only 3 songs were ultimately used for the film and we were introduced to them with the release of the soundtrack in 1970 by MGM. 3 more songs, plus the longer Crumbling Land, were aired early in 1970 from KPPC-FM radio Pasadena, California, by Don Hall, radio DJ and Musical Advisor of ZP movie. Don announced the songs with the titles written on the tape box.
All four surfaced in 1972 with Omayyad. Thanks to Don Hall, now we know that the source used to make it was a multigenerational tape of the FM broadcast. 25 years later the extended soundtrack by Rhino Records gave us four more outtakes. The rest of the known outtakes came out a while later with the first half of the
double CD bootleg named A Journey Through Time & Space.
None of the 4 Omayyad out takes surfaced later in the Rhino release or in the AJTT&S boot. The first edition was released on colored vinyl in the first half of 1972 by Trade Mark of Quality in USA, the inventors of bootlegs.
The live performances of The Embryo and Interstellar Overdrive come from the show at the Civic Center Auditorium in Santa Monica, California the 1st of May 1970, just 4 months after the end of ZP Sessions and the day after the famous KQED sessions.
For years a lot of people thought these tracks were from Chicago 1971-10-27 but in reality the last Interstellar Overdrive was performed in February 1971.
Another error perpetuated by the Leopard boots.
At the time of Omayyad’s release these songs were unissued as well. No one had on vinyl a live version of the 2 pieces. Two unique masterpieces to be enjoyed throughout the 70’s and onward through the future.
- Titles and Songs –
ROMAYYAD as Remaking of Omayyad, recalling the work made in Roma.
The correct name was OMAYYAD and NOT Omay Yad.
Like the first dynasty of Arab caliphs whose capital was Damascus, like the big Mosque in the same city.
I hope I am making this clear ones for all.
This error originally probably occurred on the hand written paper insert.
It had the two Y’s a little bit separated. The largely circulated version on LP and CD by the Leopard label was clearly named Omay Yad and the error was in that way officialized.
The four ZP outtakes are properly named.
The names possibly came from the announces of the songs Don Hall read on the tapeí boxes when he aired them.
- Fingal’s Cave –
This name referred to Irish Mythology and a place in the Scottish isle of Staffa.
This energetic song was written for the first Flying Scene of the movie together with two more songs. It is rare to hear a loud, bombastic blues number like this performed by Pink Floyd, and only a couple pieces on More come even close to it stylistically.
The working title was Take Off. - Crumbling Land –
This is the long studio version with all the traffic noises recorded by Nick Mason in the streets of Rome. Since the musical part is the same as the official one, a merge was made with the two. The result is a restored complete studio version. Having an unusual rhythm for a Pink Floyd song it’s considered a country song, although in the end it’s not.
For the movie only 34 seconds were used, and those were from an early take, not from the final version. The title and some of the lyric content refer to Zabriskie Point (the place), to USA and the lyrics even include a reference to Michelangelo Antonioni.
Its working title was Highway Song. - Oenone –
The name refers to Greek Mythology, similar to Sisyphus recorded a few weeks before. Oenone was a nymph married to Paris of Troy. He left her for Helen of Sparta.
Oenone was an isle as well, connected to the Sisyphus story (!). This song was written for the Love Scene, and Love Scene was likely a working title for it, as on the released tracks on the Rhino soundtrack. Pink Floyd tried four different musical styles to please Antonioni for that scene, including a blues. This is the style that worked the best, from Pink Floyd’s point of view. It comes from several psychedelic approaches they tried under the direction of Antonioni.Great psychedelic performance by Rick and Dave. - Rain in the Country –
Along with The Narrow Way Part 1, this song almost certainly has it’s roots in Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major and in the second part you can clearly hear the germination of Atom Heart Mother (in fact The Amazing Pudding was performed only one month later…).
Probably another of many approaches to Love Scene, Pink Floyd tried it for Antonioni coupled with the desert scenes as well, as Don confirmed. One of Gilmour’s more interesting early compositions which really showcases his acoustic playing.
We aren’t certain of the origins for the title but likely designed to create contrast with the dry locations of the movie. The working title for this remains unknown. In fact a dissimilar mix was called Unknown Song on the 1997 Rhino Expanded Soundtrack. - The Embryo –
In 1972 this was a completely new song, same as the ZP outtakes.
It was surprising to hear the ìseagullsî or ìwhalesî sounds of Echoes in another piece. - Interstellar Overdrive –
For 30 years it has been my definitive live version of the song.
It’s the final evolution of the Barrett masterpiece with a stunning intro before the famous riff.
It was one of the last times it was performed as part of the live show.
A few more times and it was dropped.
- Artwork –
I made the artwork of this newest release attempting to reproduce the first TMoQ LP.
Since is a modern reproduction, the writing on the paper insert are not by hand as it was on Omayyad and on most of the bootlegs at that time. The proportions of the sticker, the writing and the paper insert used for the back are not the same of the LP due to the dimensions of the CD case.
On the paper insert the writing “Side 1 and Side 2” were obviously omitted. Inside the booklet you can see pictures of the original parts of the first TMoQ release.
I couldn’t use the same label of the first edition being only a big 1 and 2. So I made a compromise writing titles on the 2nd edition label with the MQR logo.
Our MQR sticker is now affixed instead the TMoQ one on this last release.
For this ROMAYYAD the “back” for the original lineage is made with the handwritten original paper insert.
Note that the original set list was forced by length of the songs and the capability of the LP to support them. The original set list is the only one possible on LP with those 6 songs.
Today on CD the order of the songs would probably be ìrestoredî like this.
For this edition I followed the scenes of the movie and placed the songs from Santa Monica afterward with The Embryo before Interstellar Overdrive as it was performed in the show. - Sources –
The audio of the ZP outtakes comes from a copy of the Omayyadë master.
This was provided to me by Grolsch and MQR did the remastering work.
To restore Crumbling Land the official one was used since the musical part and the real end are the same. The two live songs were remastered as well.
They come from a 1st generation reel better than other sources heard before about this show.
Thanks to
- Grolsch for the new Tape source of the ZP outtakes
- Don Hall for the big help
- Glenn Povey for The Document
- Floyder with his big Omayyad LPs collection
- Dub & Ken for the Omayyad LP release and for inventing bootlegs and TMoQ.
Completely Remastered by Magna Qualitas Records
MQR for this project was WRomanus, creamcheese, }{eywood
Project and Artwork by WRomanus – Roma, 05 Giugno 2011
themidnightcafe.org 