World War I sym­bol­ism gets lost on Amer­i­cans. Our his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ries are short and selec­tive, and the War has “large­ly van­ished from view,” as his­to­ri­an Geof­frey Wawro writes at Time mag­a­zine. But in Europe, of course, where some armies suf­fered ten times the casu­al­ties as U.S. troops, and where mil­lions of civil­ian died and towns were bombed into obliv­ion, the mem­o­ry of the Great War is very much alive.

In Ypres, Bel­gium, the War has been memo­ri­al­ized every day since 1928 (with the excep­tion of four years of Ger­man occu­pa­tion dur­ing WWII) by the Last Post Asso­ci­a­tion, a devot­ed com­pa­ny of buglers who play the mil­i­tary song at the Menin Gate memo­r­i­al every evening to com­mem­o­rate the British dead at the Bat­tle of Ypres. As of this writ­ing, they’ve held their 31,748th cer­e­mo­ny.

In Britain itself, and around the world, the tune has a long his­to­ry as a sym­bol, like the pop­py, of Remem­brance Day. Just like Taps in the U.S., the Last Post is “a bugle call,” writes the Last Post Asso­ci­a­tion, “played in the British Army (and in the armies of many oth­er lands) to mark the end of the day’s labours and the onset of the night’s rest…. It has come to rep­re­sent a final farewell to the fall­en at the end of their earth­ly labours and at the onset of their eter­nal rest.”

Robert Graves summed up the song’s asso­ci­a­tion with death in his 1918 poem, “The Last Post”:

The bugler sent a call of high romance—
“Lights out! Lights out!” to the desert­ed square.
On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,
“God, if it’s this for me next time in France…
O spare the phan­tom bugle as I lie
Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,
Dead in a row with the oth­er bro­ken ones
Lying so stiff and still under the sky,
Jol­ly young Fusiliers too good to die.”

I imag­ine Mark Knopfler, a lover of poet­ry, might be famil­iar with Graves’ verse. In his own ren­di­tion of the Last Post, above, Knopfler com­mem­o­rates 17,000 Northum­ber­land Fusiliers killed in the War, who came from his home region and suf­fered more casu­al­ties than any oth­er reg­i­ment. Record­ed on Remem­brance Day, Novem­ber 8, 2018, the 100th anniver­sary of the War’s end, Knopfler’s ver­sion is both restrained and fierce­ly over­driv­en, recall­ing Hendrix’s “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” in some of its flashier moments of vibra­to. Rather than one of his usu­al icon­ic gui­tars, he plays a cus­tom instru­ment that howls like a keen­ing bugle.

The record­ing was part of a project in which musi­cians around the world played the cer­e­mo­ni­al call on a vari­ety of instru­ments. For com­par­i­son with Knopfler’s cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion, see a straight­for­ward ren­di­tion played above by a mem­ber of the Aus­tralian Roy­al Mil­i­tary Col­lege Band. The bugle call reminds us of the war dead we may have for­got­ten, and the mil­lions killed by star­va­tion and influen­za after the armistice. And per­haps it also reminds us of the impor­tance of col­lec­tive mourn­ing for the dead in our own extra­or­di­nary his­tor­i­cal moment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Mark Knopfler Gives a Short Mas­ter­class on His Favorite Gui­tars & Gui­tar Sounds

The Great War: Video Series Will Doc­u­ment How WWI Unfold­ed, Week-by-Week, for the Next 4 Years

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you’re feel­ing a lit­tle stressed today—maybe a lot stressed today, maybe severe­ly-rationing-your-social-media stressed—it might do you some good to get com­fort­ably numb. And unless the laws of your local­i­ty pre­vent it, you can reach a safe state of bliss at home with his­toric live con­cert films from Pink Floyd. “Fol­low­ing the lead of Radio­head and Metal­li­ca and launch­ing a YouTube con­cert series,” notes Con­se­quence of Sound, “the band will release unseen, rare, or archived mate­r­i­al from their vault and stream it for free” over the next few weeks.

It may or may not be nec­es­sary to qual­i­fy that Pink Floyd these days con­sists of only two peo­ple, David Gilmour and drum­mer Nick Mason, key­boardist Richard Wright hav­ing passed away in 2008 and bassist/rock opera impre­sario Roger Waters hav­ing stormed off to make his own records in 1985, nev­er to return. Per­haps only coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the first film the band has released is 1994’s Pulse, a 22-song set from the Divi­sion Bell tour, the sec­ond stu­dio album made with­out Waters. But it’s got quite a lot to rec­om­mend it despite his absence.

“Filmed at London’s now-defunct Earls Court dur­ing the band’s record-break­ing 14-night res­i­den­cy,” this show is notable par­tic­u­lar­ly for “the inclu­sion of the first-ever film record­ing of Pink Floyd play­ing The Dark Side of the Moon in full.” The 1972 album’s sar­don­ic rumi­na­tions on the banal­i­ty of mod­ern life in an econ­o­my that can­not stop its con­stant grind might strike us as par­tic­u­lar­ly grim while we’re fac­ing such huge col­lec­tive loss­es of life and liveli­hood. But as always, the band knows how to make its med­i­cine go down with some sweet eye and ear can­dy.

Mixed in 5.1 sur­round sound and dig­i­tal­ly re-mas­tered by James Guthrie, Pulse also includes some of orig­i­nal screen films used for the 1970s con­cert per­for­mances of The Dark Side of the Moon (which were nev­er filmed) as well as the visu­al com­po­nents for the piece which were remade for the 1994 tour.

On their Face­book page, the band promis­es more “inter­est­ing and divert­ing images, music and video to help us all get through this”—as best as we can, in any case. And if you run out of Pink Floyd to help you get through a tough time of day, head over to see anoth­er band bring­ing blues-based psych-rock, Amer­i­can style, to the shut-in mass­es this spring. The Grate­ful Dead have their own week­ly stream­ing series of full con­cert films. Of the first con­cert post­ed, they write, “Its excel­lence is indis­putable and is some­thing that we think pret­ty much every­one will enjoy in the absence of actu­al­ly being able to see live con­certs.”

Take an hour or two to relax with some clas­sic live shows from clas­sic bands of yore, and maybe make a list of all the cur­rent bands you want to go out and sup­port as soon as you get out of quar­an­tine. Some­thing tells me after all this livestream­ing, there’ll be waves of renewed appre­ci­a­tion for live music. Good­ness knows, musi­cians every­where will need it.

Vis­it the Pink Floyd Youtube chan­nel for more lives streams in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Dead & Com­pa­ny Announces Couch Tour, Let­ting You Stream Free Con­certs at Home

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness