NXT Rockumentary Film Series: Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972)

Adrien Maben, 1h 32m The word “live” in the movie title is a bit of a red herring when it comes to Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, since the only audience in the oldest surviving Roman amphitheater in the world is the film’s crew. But it’s also what makes it all so entrancing. Seeing Floyd bookend a set of late-Sixties space-rock triumphs like “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and enfant terrible gong-banging freak-outs with Meddle’s “Echoes” – while watching it all seem to evanesce into the air, amidst the weeds, ancient sculptures and molten lava of Pompeii (with an assist from a barking dog) – seems like the perfect setting for the group. With the addition of some trippy camera effects and studio footage of the group making Dark Side of the Moon, Pompeii became the ultimate document of psych-rock’s transition into prog. —Rolling Stone Co-presented with Next Chapter Records