Last weekend I had the extraordinary pleasure of seeing Roger Waters perform The Wall live! Thank god I have an awesome cousin that jumped on me months ago and informed me that I was going :) Seriously, THANK GOD. I've been to a lot of shows in my day and thoroughly enjoyed them all, but this was unlike any show I've ever been to before. Generally, I go to smaller shows - more along the lines of 500-3000 people. This wasn't a huge show by any means, but it was the biggest I've been to, with about 18,000 people at The Garden and it was more of a stage production than a concert.
The first half of the show revolved around the wall being built up between the band and the audience, the original inspiration of the movie. Stage hands would walk out one by one carrying bricks and piling them up as the band performed. They left small window holes in place so that you could see the band until the last song of the first half. The engineer in me thoroughly enjoyed seeing the construction. As the bricks were put in place, they became screens on which various images were projected onto, in addition to a giant circle above the stage. Sometimes it was sections from the movie and other times they were just provocative images. Waters had fans send in images and stories of family members who had died in war to bring some of the themes into current times. Their images were projected onto the circular screen and then transferred onto the individual bricks, starting with his father. It was quite epic.
The Wall being built, rally scene, 13 channels of shit, the Teacher in puppet form, the marching hammers and a giant floating pig - in the flesh.
It was a most excellent time. The crowd was quite the mix of people. We had a group of 40 year old stoners making up the rest of our row. They lovingly nicknamed me "Number 5" for my seat and commented on my every movement in and out of the aisle. One was smoking next to me and did eventually offer me a hit with 5 minutes left. Just a few hours too late buddy. Then we had the family in front of us - mom, dad and daughter. Mom was clearly there because it was a "family thing," but daddy and daughter were rocking out together, quite adorably. It had my roomie and I talking - what the heck music that's come out any time recently could someone our age enjoy with their child? Nothing. Just nothing. Definitely some stuff from more of the 90's, but anything past y2k is generally just crap and certainly not classic.
A small glimpse into the show.
It was an epic night and much fun had by all. Of course we needed something for bragging rights in the future to say "I was there!!" We both decided to commemorate the night with some wonderfully inappropriate flower t-shirts from some of the animated sequences. There were some really cool dark t-shirts, but this one screamed "buy me!!"
I'm so glad I went and got to experience this for probably the last tour ever. For an almost 70yo dude, Mr. Waters can still put on quite the show. And there was only one "old man moment" - when he was exciting the stage at the end of the show, gripping that stair railing like his life - or probably his knees - depended on it. Everyone loves a silver fox.
Hey all right! Glad you're back blogging again!
ReplyDeleteThe last paragraph of this cracked me up pretty good ... and I'd say there's been a lot of crap produced in every generation, it's just the good stuff sticks around so we trick ourselves into thinking a lot of brilliant, enjoyable music came out of older generations.