Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason is getting back behind the drum kit with a new band dedicating to performing the iconic prog rockers' early music.
Named for Pink Floyd's second album Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets boasts a lineup featuring guitarist Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet, guitarist Lee Harris of The Blockheads, former Pink Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and composer Dom Beken, who collaborated with late-Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright.
A press release touted the group as providing a "unique opportunity to experience Pink Floy'd celebrated and significant early body of work played live," including music from the first two albums, Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets.
Mason is the only member of Pink Floyd to appear on every one of the band's early albums and all of its live shows.
While Mason's surviving bandmates, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, have toured annually and released solo albums since Pink Floyd last performed, Mason has mostly concentrated on his visual art. The first shows with Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets will represent the first time Mason has performed a full set for the public since Pink Floyd's 2005 Live 8 concert. Mason and Gilmour performed with Waters in 2011 during a live performance of The Wall.
But Mason's band with its focus on Pink Floyd's early work will also provide a welcome alternative to the concerts by Waters and Gilmour, which have primarily focused on Pink Floyd's best-known work from albums like Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall and Animals and their respective solo material.
The drummer told Ultimate Classic Rock in 2016, "There's a whole swath of early tracks that are missed by an audience that we think started at Dark Side of the Moon." Mason added that the success of Dark Side pushed Pink Floyd from its underground psychedelic roots to a more mainstream audience."
Mason has called Saucerful of Secrets one of his favorite albums, because it marked the band's transition from the Syd Barrett-era.
Get more information and show dates on Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets here.
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