Rock: Roger Waters Sings of Political Despair
By JON PARELES
Roger Waters had a double agenda for his concert Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. He wanted to warn, in no uncertain terms, of the dangers of unbridled militarism and mindless consumption. And he wanted to reclaim an audience that's rightfully his: the fans of Pink Floyd, most of whose songs were written by Mr. Waters.
Mr. Waters has toured on his own before, but this year a group called Pink Floyd, featuring his former band mates, is also touring arenas; it will come to Madison Square Garden in October. In Mr. Waters's two-hour, 45-minute set, the audience sang along wholeheartedly on Pink Floyd songs from ''The Wall,'' ''Wish You Were Here,'' ''Animals'' and ''The Dark Side of the Moon,'' and rallied to the special effects that crowned Mr. Waters's newer material.
Above all, the concert showed how coherent Mr. Waters's career has been. His music is generally slow-moving and enveloping, like rockers and hymns preserved in amber; now and then, his newer material comes close to straightforward hard-rock, but leaving Pink Floyd hasn't changed his approach much. His voice is introverted, better for talking than belting (for some of Pink Floyd's songs, Paul Carrack sang lead vocals); Mr. Waters did deliver strangulated shouts for some of the nastier characters from ''The Wall.''
While the lyrics on Pink Floyd's albums and Mr. Waters's solo albums each have their own concerns -childhood repression, lunacy, star-making, greed - the overriding feeling is one of pessimism and dead-end despair. Pink Floyd's albums have an enduring hold on the rock audience, both for their plush production and their grim tidings. ''The Dark Side of the Moon,'' about incipient madness, holds the record for the longest run on the Billboard Top 200 album chart.
Mr. Waters's current album, ''Radio K.A.O.S.,'' brings his despair to the political arena. One song attacks ''the powers that be,'' and parts of the stage show denounced military spending (to the tune of Pink Floyd's ''Money''), the Reagan and Thatcher governments, and the despoiling of the environment, complete with statistics. Rarely is arena-rock so explicitly political.
''Radio K.A.O.S.'' has a plot line involving a disk jockey and a genius with cerebral palsy who communicates via computer and who can tap into the world's information systems. As with Pink Floyd concerts, the stage was dominated by a circular screen for film projections (some of which were older Pink Floyd animations) and lighting effects; there was also an electronic signboard, carrying what may be the first supertitles seen at a rock concert.
The production's conceit was that it was a live radio broadcast over station KAOS, complete with station jingles, mock advertisements (including jokes about shredders and Senate subcommittees), and a live disk jockey, Jim Ladd, in a simulated studio. Mr. Ladd would sometimes announce between songs (after a set of Pink Floyd material, he named the songs and called them ''music of Roger Waters'') and he carried on simulated conversations with ''Billy,'' the computer genius, whose words were carried on the signboard.
The show didn't reprise the album, but it did lead up to Billy's big moment: a simulated nuclear apocalypse. The band created a whooshing crescendo, aerial projections whizzed by on the screen, numbers and jargon rushed across the signboard, followed by a flash, silence and darkness -and a huge ovation, suggesting the crowd was less than terrified. Eventually, Mr. Waters led the band in a hymn of guarded hope, ''The Tide Is Turning.''
For the encore, Mr. Waters and his Bleeding Heart Band returned to older material. A cameo appearance from Clare Torry, who sang wordlessly through ''The Great Gig in the Sky'' from ''Dark Side,'' gave Pink Floyd's old fans what they'd come to hear.
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