Rock ‘n’ roll for the holidays. Local band performs Pink Floyd at benefit concert.
The spirit of the holidays can translate into many things. It can mean gatherings with friends, embracing a sense of charity and community or simply honoring life with a little choice rock ‘n’ roll.
Scott Whiddon plans to take on all of that this weekend by bringing together a pack of pals who just happen to double as some of Lexington’s finest musicians for a concert performance at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center.
The reason? To celebrate the music of Pink Floyd and Big Star, two seminal bands whose career-defining recordings were cut almost concurrently between 1971 and 1975. But the holiday spirit is at work here as well. The performance will also serve as a benefit with proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity.
“Christmas to me is about being with people that love you, being with people you love, and doing things that you like to do,” said Whiddon, a member of the Central Kentucky bands Letters of Acceptance and Palisades. “There are very, very few things I love to do more than playing rock music and doing that with people that make you do that better.
“I especially love it when I can work and serve people like Habitat for Humanity. ”
The performance, initially scheduled for the new Cosmic Charlie’s location on Loudon Ave. but relocated to the Downtown Arts Center as construction on the club continues, will boast a full performance of Pink Floyd’s most critically and commercially popular recording, 1973’s “The Dark Side of the Moon.”
Along with an ensemble that includes keyboardist Kevin Holm-Hudson (of the Twiggenburys), guitarist Jim Gleason (The Johnson Brothers), bassist Mark Richardson (Palisades), saxophonist Joe Carucci (Joslyn and the Sweet Compression), drummer Thomas Hatton and vocalists La’Shelle Allen and Megan McCauley, Whiddon will help provide a live voice for a record that prided itself on innovative studio arrangements than dressed abundant shades of progressive psychedelia.
“I’m interested in texturing. I’m interested in the context of notes. You get all of that and more with ‘Dark Side’ as a listening experience at home on your turntable. You get that when you hear ‘Money’ (the record’s popular single) for the four thousandth millionth time in a grocery time. There is just something about the density of these sounds. It’s what keeps you going back to it.
“Real art is something you go back to and look at again. There is something about it that remains mysterious. I have loved ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ for over half my life.”
The Big Star segment will be handled exclusively by the Lexington band Otto — Otto Helmuth, Chad Ward, Tim Welch and Joshua Wright. Whiddon, a longstanding fan of Big Star, said he will be unavoidably jealous when he becomes an audience member for that portion of the program.
“There was a release of ‘#1 Record’ (Big Star’s 1972 debut album) and ‘Radio City’ (its 1974 follow-up) on a single cassette that was a real passcode record for me. It’s a record that connects you to other records. Big Star is a band that should have hit it big. It was sort of like The Beatles meet Memphis soul meets a little bit of the psychedelia from the coast. They were such a great band.”
But Whiddon, who has staged several other benefit tribute shows (the most recent being a Velvet Underground celebration in February), said the level of community spirit that surfaces when members of different but mutually admiring bands come together affords him a special thrill.
“Looking out and seeing people I care about, people who care about Habitat for Humanity, people who care about the other musicians in the bands and their families ... that’s a really special feeling.”
If you go:
The Music of Pink Floyd and Big Star, A Benefit for Habitat for Humanity
When: 8:30 p.m. Dec. 14
Where: Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, 141 E. Main
Tickets: $10 online: etix.com