When I’m expressing my opinions on music or film or what-have-you, I have a tendency to distort it in either direction. Something is either “the greatest ever” or “the worst ever.” “Best song ever written.” “A complete waste of time and electricity.” I know that I do it and I try not to in my writing. Still, it does creep in there and I have a reputation among my friends for such hyperbole.

So know that, while I am aware of my propensity to embellish, what I am about to say carries not even the slightest hint of exaggeration. I have never been more honest in my life:

If I was forced to live the rest of my life music-free and if I was only allowed one musical recording to listen to, on repeat, for the rest of my natural life, I would pick, without hesitation, the bootleg of Pink Floyd’s November 21, 1970 performance at Montreux Casino in Switzerland. It is my absolute favorite record, legitimate or not, of any band, ever. If I could time travel to any point in human history, I would choose to be present at this gig. I am not fucking kidding.

If you love Pink Floyd but have never heard this particular bootleg, you will lose your mind before the end of “Astonomy Domine.” If you hate Pink Floyd, chances are you will be rethinking your opinion by the end of the show. If you like Pink Floyd, but don’t like Atom Heart Mother, you will be rushing out to purchase five copies of it for each of your CD players after you hear the 14-minute full-length version of “Fat Old Sun.” I would submit it to you that you have no hope of ever truly understanding the band that was Pink Floyd without hearing this recording.

Forget Dark Side of the Moon. There are no synthesizers or backup vocalists here. Just four guys- guitar, bass, organ, and drums- blowing your fucking mind. It’s a professional soundboard recording, commissioned by the band themselves, so you hear absolutely everything. God knows why they chose not to release this show as a live record. The course of music as we know it would have been drastically altered. No band, not even Pink Floyd, has sounded anything like this before or since.

Listen to this alone, on headphones, in the dark, and you will emerge a changed person. Or, better yet, put it on around midnight during your next road trip. Guaranteed that ghoul from Carnival of Souls will show up at your passenger side window. And then you get some blues jams to calm you down. Or freak you out more, I don’t know how you’ll react.

But you’ll never listen to any band, on record or in concert, the same way again. The noisiest noise rock will seem conservative, the most interesting jam rock will sound dull, and the most intricate prog rock will sound overly complicated. You’ll wonder, for at least a moment, why all albums aren’t recorded live. Any band with more than four people will look pompous and silly. The things that used to frighten you will torment you no more. In a nutshell, Smoking Blues will fuck you up.

Sorry if I’m building this up too much for you, but I don’t know if I can. It’s absolutely brilliant and I am as passionate about it as I can possibly be. If you have never had the opportunity to experience the Pink Floyd of 1969-1971, you are missing some of the finest music ever made. Smoking Blues- especially as a companion piece to their Live at Pompeii concert film- is a near-perfect document of a band in their prime.

Pink Floyd - Astronomy Domine.mp3
Download the concert via BitTorrent (note: any recordings that display the date as November 21, 1969 are the same show, they’re just labeled incorrectly)

And, as a bonus, here’s “Embryo” from my favorite video bootleg of the band’s, taken from a performance in Saint Tropez a few months prior to the recording of Smoking Blues. Enjoy.