Last Saturday night in Falls Church, a capacity crowd was treated to the best replication anywhere of the mesmerizing music of Pink Floyd in the performance by The Machine, in its first appearance here since the pandemic. It was a magnificent show, as veritably anything associated with the sound and lyrics of that titanic Pink Floyd band almost has to be. In various iterations, Pink Floyd has been performing since the late 1960s until quite recently and one of its original members, the ingenious lyricist Roger Waters has been doing separate tours performing the same music under his own name.
As for The Machine, its first show last weekend here in almost a decade was without one of its two co-founders, lead singer Joe Pascarell, who died suddenly in January 2022. The other co-founder going back to its founding in 1988, drummer Tahrah Cohen, was there, and was brilliant, as were all four of the musicians in their own rights, bassist Chris DeAngelis, lead guitarist Ryan Ball and keyboard maestro Scott Chasolen.
While the band has gone through a considerable number of musicians since it turned its attention solely to Pink Floyd music in 1988 (that’s over 30 years ago!), one of its most loyal, and singularly talented components who was here last time, as well, is Chasolen, a New Jersey native now living in New York.
Chasolen, who studied jazz and contemporary music at the New School in New York, had a very powerful role in the creation of that profound Pink Floyd sound last weekend, which warmed up to become almost indistinguishable from the original about a third of the way into the first half of the show.
To Pink Floyd aficionados, all their songs performed were familiar, all 222 of them that have been recorded, with many “sing along” lines, as in the “Wish You Were Here” case, and such was how it was last Saturday.
This writer’s favorite, “The Gunner’s Dream,” has not been performed by The Machine in almost 20 years, but another song off the same heavily anti-war themed final Pink Floyd album done in the early 1980s, “The Final Cut,” was, one entitled “Your Possible Pasts.”
The imagery and poetry in the Waters lyrics to that one are completely transporting, in his oft repeated, as in the famous “Comfortably Numb” that closed the show this Saturday, theme of how things were more honest and direct before we were forced to become part of the adult world.
From “Your Possible Pasts:” “She stood in the doorway, the ghost of a smile haunting her face like a cheap hotel sign, her cold eyes imploring the men in their macs for the gold in their bags or the knives in their backs. Stepping up boldly, one put out his hand. He said, ‘I was just a child then, now I am only a man.’ Do you remember me? How we used to be? Do you think we should be closer, closer, closer?”
Chasolen, who is a prolific songwriter in his own right, with 12 original songs being released this fall, told me prior to the show Saturday that his life is so much better now that he is out and about performing with The Machine, and other tribute bands like Ulu and Beginnings, including one he, himself, is in the process of forming to do the works of Phish.
But it was during the Covid pandemic that I got to know Chasolen and how extraordinary he really is. He turned his apartment bedroom into a concert hall for usually better than 100 folks of all ages who tuned in via Facebook or his website almost every night to listen to his incredible keyboard sounds, including a lot of brilliant improvisations. He often also brought his guitar in and, of course, his own voice.
He played and sang hour upon hour in that first year of the pandemic beginning in March 2020, and had stories about the stuffed platypus toy he named Hurley, that sat atop his piano (most may not have noticed, but Hurley was on the stage at the State Theatre last weekend).
Before he was done with his bedroom concerts, over a hundred stuffed toy platypuses were sent to him from fans and devotees. He named a number of them at first, but that eventually became too daunting.
What made it more fun was the fact he was watching the comments coming in electronically, and engaging in dialogues with them. He tolerated no politicking or taunts, but offered his sage thoughts on as wide a range of subjects as those who were writing in wanted to explore.
Reflecting on that period with me last weekend, he repeatedly stressed how important the “community” that came around him was in his cluttered (with platypuses and instruments) bedroom many nights per week during the toughest days of the pandemic. His bedroom he named the “Platydome” and his online community was his “Platy-posse.” He even had Joe Pascarell show up and join in with him one night there.
Scott’s one mantra to help see everyone through the pandemic was, and remains, “Music is the medicine.”
