Concert review: Roger Waters, 'The Wall' at Wrigley Field, June 8, 2012

June 09, 2012|Greg Kot | Music critic





Roger Waters has been touring his Pink Floyd-era double-album “The Wall” around the world for the last two years, giving the 1979 warhorse a long, lavish victory lap that landed Friday at Wrigley Field.

Perhaps only Waters could build a wall without ivy in the Cubs playground. He unleashed massive inflatables that likely gave high-rise dwellers in Wrigleyville the shock of their lives. It’s not every evening you see a fascist pig the size of a bus drift past your window bearing Big Brother slogans such as “Trust me” and “Everything will be OK.” What’s more, this particular pig covered more ground than any Cubs centerfielder in recent memory, eventually crashing in the grandstand behind home plate.



This is a show about ideas and visuals as much as music, and Wrigley Field provided an appropriately epic setting for one of the most over-the-top rock operas ever staged. Wrigley made the United Center, where Waters first staged the tour in Chicago in 2010, seem rather quaint by comparison. With listeners filling the rooftops and the streets outside the stadium, the setting was the equal of the show’s outsized ambitions.

Waters didn’t play the traditional rock front man, and how could he? For a good part of the show he was obscured by that 35-foot-tall, 424-cardboard-brick monstrosity, which doubled as a massive video screen and art canvas upon which bombers buzzed, hideous cartoons marched and slogans were flashed like Times Square billboards.

The bassist and conceptual mastermind in Pink Floyd wasn’t content to merely replicate the original 30-date “Wall” tour from 1980. Back then, the album could have been subtitled, “Roger’s Difficulties With Authority Figures,” including his mother, ex-wife and schoolteachers. His narrator becomes a paranoid recluse prone to sociopathic fantasies. “If I had my way I’d have all of you shot,” he shouts.

But “The Wall” tour Mach II tries to come off as less solipsistic, with Waters at one point mocking “miserable, (messed) up little Roger from all those years ago.” Strumming an acoustic guitar, he performed a duet with a 1980 video of himself singing “Mother,” and it remained one of the night’s most moving moments in a show otherwise brimming with monsters, demons, psychotics and gun-wielding tyrants.

In trying to update his most ambitious album and make it more universal, Waters gave it a socio-political spin: the wall as a symbol of the barriers that divide nations. The wall was transformed into a memorial for war victims of the last century, starting with Waters’ own father, who died in World War II. Violent set pieces threaded through the show, beginning with a spectacular plane crash into the wall, complete with flames, and finishing with the wall’s destruction. In between Waters played one of his most convincing roles: the lean, gray-haired dictator in a trench coat and shades with red arm band.

Subtlety was not a strong suit in this rather cartoonishly broad evening of multi-media entertainment – the cartoonish hammers that marched across the wall are Waters’ favorite instruments when driving home an idea. But even if the connection between rock stars and despots isn’t particularly novel, Waters made it in memorably chilling fashion. As the familiar chords of “Run Like Hell” rang out, he led the crowd in a cross-armed salute, than swung his arms overhead, the fans dutifully following suit, as if to prove their leader’s point. “Follow me! All together now,” Waters commanded. “Good! Enjoy yourselves!” Later he was firing a toy machine gun, wearing a maniacal smile, then removed his gloves with a self-satisfied smirk.


It added up to one of the darkest evenings of “entertainment” that $250 could buy. There was just enough vulnerability and humanity, and a handful of truly memorable songs, to keep things from sliding into nihilism: the 15 dancing children who shooed away the demon-eyed teacher in “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,” the poignantly unanswerable questions of the bewildered son in “Mother,” the desperate cry of “Bring the Boys Back Home.”

Three guitarists took the place of Waters’ old sidekick, David Gilmour, who wrote some of the most indelible melodies on “The Wall.” When it came time for Gilmour’s showpiece, “Comfortably Numb,” one of the stand-ins replicated his solo note for note, while Waters played cheerleader. Like everything else during the two-hour show, it was scripted and executed precisely – a near replica of the concert Waters first played in Chicago two years ago.


In the end, when Waters and the band played in front of the wall’s ruins as a scruffy acoustic street band, they celebrated the “bleeding hearts and the artists,” presumably much like the Waters of three decades ago who poured out his anxieties in what would become one of the best-selling double-albums of all time. It may be a relic of a more grandiose era, but “The Wall” still saturates the senses and invades nightmares like few stadium spectacles ever have.

greg@gregkot.com

Roger Waters set list Friday at Wrigley Field:
Part 1 (60 minutes)



1. In the Flesh?

2. The Thin Ice

3. Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1

4. The Happiest Days of Our Lives

5. Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2

6. Mother

7. Goodbye Blue Sky

8. Empty Spaces

9. What Shall We Do Now?

10. Young Lust

11. One of my Turns

12. Don't Leave Me Now

13. Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3

14. The Last Few Bricks

15. Goodbye Cruel World

Part 2 (55 minutes)

16. Hey You

17. Is There Anybody Out There?

18. Nobody Home

19. Vera

20. Bring the Boys Back Home

21. Comfortably Numb

22. The Show Must Go On

23. In the Flesh

24. Run Like Hell

25. Waiting for the Worms

26. Stop

27. The Trial

28. Outside the Wall

From chicagotribune.com
 

Pollstar Awards

 The Pollstar Awards ceremony and party was held at the Club Nokia in Los Angeles on February 7, 2013.



Pollstar Awards - Roger Waters Acceptance Video for Most Creative Stage Production



Pollstar Awards - Roger Waters Acceptance Video for Major Tour of the Year

Las imágenes de la visita de Roger Waters a la Villa 31 - Argentina 2012

20.03.2012
El artista grabó escenas para un videoclip y cantó algunas canciones junto a los niños del lugar

Roger Waters dio sobradas muestras de lo inquieto que es desde que pisó Buenos Aires. Lejos de recluirse en los lujos del hotel Faena, donde se hospeda desde hace casi dos semanas, el ex Pink Floyd se dedicó a recorrer la ciudad y conocer de cerca la realidad de la Argentina.

Tras reunirse con la presidenta, Cristina Kirchner, y luego con el jefe de Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, y sin temor a dejarse ver por las calles porteñas, visitó la Villa 31, donde grabó escenas para un videoclip e imporvisó una "zapada" con los niños de la zona.

A pesar de los cerca de 40 grados que marcó el termómetro ese día, el artista se quedó cuatro horas a la sombra de un techo de chapa, cantando con los chicos que acompañaron el ritmo con tachos de basura, botellas, bidones de agua y latitas de aluminio.

Las imágenes del creador de The Wall en la paradigmática villa de Retiro, se verán en el video de la canción "The Child Will Fly", tema que cuenta con la participación de Eric Clapton, Shakira y Gustavo Cerati (quien grabó su parte en 2008), y que se compuso en apoyo a la Fundación Alas.

From taringa.net

Roger Waters - The Wall Live - Brasil 03/04/2012

youtube.com/alankf

Roger Waters The Wall Live Rod Laver Arena 7/02/2012

Roger Waters The Wall Live In San Francisco on May 11th 2012

Here is an amazing concert video a fan has put together of Roger Waters The Wall live outdoors in San Francisco on May 11th 2012.

Roger Waters - New York Times interview, July 5, 2012

The Wall Goes On, and Grows Even Longer

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. 

Published: July 5, 2012

ROGER WATERS has never done anything small when it comes to “The Wall,” the 1979 album and rock show about his own psychic struggle that many music critics say signified the end of Pink Floyd’s most fertile period. The first performances, back in 1980 and 1981, were groundbreaking in their scale, requiring stagehands to erect a giant wall between the band and the audience that was knocked down at the show’s climax. With its animated graphics and giant puppets, it set a standard for rock spectacles.

For the last two years Mr. Waters, 68, has been touring through Europe and the Americas with a modern version of the show , studded with antiwar messages that allude to current events and jazzed up with high-definition graphics projected on the wall. It has grossed more than $333 million and helped Mr. Waters, who was Pink Floyd’s bassist and chief songwriter before he quit the band in 1983, to reclaim some of its legacy. This spring, for his last swing through North America, Mr. Waters has created an even larger, outdoor version of the show, which comes to Yankee Stadium on Friday and Saturday.

Speaking by telephone during a tour stop in Atlanta, Mr. Waters — a die-hard pacifist who has long blamed war on corporate greed — talked about why a Pink Floyd reunion is highly unlikely and his plan, once the tour ends, to record his first studio album in two decades. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q. Will this be your last tour?

A. I haven’t made up my mind. I’ve become very enamored of the outdoor show. It was a super challenge to see if we could take the arena production and made it work outdoors, and it works beautifully, but it is unbelievably expensive. So we are trying to figure out ways to make the numbers add up to go to Europe late next summer, in 2013. This show is such fun to do that I think I’ve got some more in me.

A. What are the technical difficulties of performing “The Wall” in a stadium?

Q. The thing that makes it really, really difficult is the weather. You can’t guarantee good weather, so in consequence you have to travel with a roof, and because the show is so big we have to travel with a very big roof.

Q. At one point in the show, on the song “Mother,” you do a duet with a film of your younger self singing during the original show. Do these songs still have the same resonance for you as they did 30 years ago?

A. For me the songs have all stood the test of time. Clearly I’m not as close to the events that I described in the song “Don’t Leave Me Now.” All the stuff that was about my early relationships with women is very much in the past. But I can still empathize with those dilemmas. And a lot of the other songs, I have realized, have a much wider political meaning than I understood at the time.

Q. What do you see as the contemporary political message of this show?

A. When it was first done, it was 32 years ago, and I was bemoaning the fact I was a child of the Second World War, and I had lost my father, and that has a severe fracturing nature on the family, and it made me very angry about a lot of things. Since then I’ve realized that somehow the piece is not about little Roger losing his father in the Second World War; it’s more universal than that. It’s about all the children that lose their fathers and continue to lose their fathers because those of us who have the power are still almost entirely devoted to the idea that our only responsibility is to maximize the bottom line and make profits.

Q. Your relations with the other surviving members of Pink Floyd — the guitarist David Gilmour and the drummer Nick Mason — have thawed somewhat in recent years. [The keyboardist Richard Wright died in 2008.] Is a reunion tour a possibility?

A. I can’t imagine the circumstances in which anything would happen. There was talk after we did Live 8 together  in 2005, when Richard was still with us, we might get back together to do something political or for a charity. But, you know, the fact is, politically we are not a very close-knit team.

Q. Why did it become increasingly hard for you to collaborate with the other members after the 1973 album “The Dark Side of the Moon”?

A. It became more and more like trying to wade through treacle, as is well known. We were increasingly at odds because we had different aspirations. Up until “The Dark Side of the Moon,” I think our thoughts and feelings were pretty concurrent: We wanted to become rich and famous and we worked together as a pretty close-knit team to that end, but once that end had been achieved, then there were other things that started to become important, certainly to me, and it became increasingly difficult to have to argue about stuff.

Q. Have you forgiven Mr. Gilmour and the other members for continuing to write and perform under the Pink Floyd name after you left?

A. Of course, yeah. He was right, I was wrong. It was really simple. I thought it should be retired but I was wrong. And I’m perfectly content with what they did. I had problems at the time. I don’t have any problems now. In a way you could say it was a great tipping of the hat because they were going all around the world playing my songs — and some of their songs — so I guess it kept my music in the public eye for a few years.

Q. Have you been writing any new music?

A. I have. I have written so much, and it’s been 20 years since I made a record. I came up with a song a few weeks ago on the road and then I started playing it a bit with the band in rehearsals. I think it may be the central part and also the kicking-off point for another album.

Q. Do you hope to work on that album when the tour ends on July 21?

A. Yes. If I don’t work on it later this year, it might disappear, and I might never do anything again. So I think I have to and I’m very enthusiastic about it. And it encompasses a lot of the other songs I’ve written over the years. There are tons of them. I just never found a big enough hook to hang them around.

Q. Is it true you have plans to visit a cemetery in Italy where your father’s remains are?

A. There is a cemetery I plan to visit, again this year, because it’s something I’ve put off and I can’t put it off any longer. There is a cemetery near where my grandfather lies. He was in a mining company — Sappers, the 256th Royal Engineers — and he was one of those guys tunneling under the Germans in the First World War. So he’s in a British cemetery in northern France. That’s George Henry Waters. The remains of my father, Eric Fletcher Waters, were never found. But he is commemorated on Plaque No. 5 in the memorial garden at Monte Casino in southern Italy. So I’m thinking I might gather my children together, if they want to go, and go to both those places, just once.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 6, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Wall Goes On, and Grows Even Longer.

From www.nytimes.com

A message from Roger, JULY 23, 2012

The audience in Quebec on Saturday were magnifique!!!!





What a great way to finnish these two wonderful years.

I have to say the response at each if the 192 gigs we've done has been overwhelming.

I am very moved by it. Thank you all!

Also I have to thank the band, who were incomparable, and each and everyone of the rest of our 179 strong family, as they know I love them all, and they don't get enough credit.

My crew are the best! They are immensely talented and hard working, and loyal, and we laugh a lot. There is a camaraderie that is hard to describe. Better stop now before I start blubbing.

Love

Roger

From www.roger-waters.com

Roger Waters - The Wall - Quebec 2012 (Full)

Roger Waters Wall Tour Stats

Roger Waters The Wall Yankee Stadium 2012

Once the tour ends, Roger will have plenty of time to rest from the monumental tour that has spanned three years and, after the dates above, would have been performed a colossal 192 times! 56 dates in 2010, moving up to 64 dates in 2011 and ramping up even further to an amazing 72 wall concerts in 2012. That is an increase of 8 shows per year. So perhaps Roger Waters Europe 2013 will have 80 shows to look forward to!! Check out the Roger Waters Tour area for dates and concert listings.

                                                                                                           
Here are the 3 concerts that remain on the Roger Waters Wall tour 2010-2012. As we live in hope, especially in Europe, that Roger will bring the wall back to Europe in 2013. In particular, I think he should play the Echo Arena in Liverpool as I live not too far from there. Excellent!


2012-07-12 – Roger Waters – Verizon Center (Washington) – Washington, District of Columbia – USA
2012-07-14 – Roger Waters – Citizens Bank Park – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – USA
2012-07-21 – Roger Waters – Les Plaines DAbraham – Quebec City (Quebec) – Canada

From rogerwaterstours.com

Roger Waters Points ‘The Wall’ Toward Abuse of Power - New York Times, July 10, 2012

  Roger Waters Points ‘The Wall’ Toward Abuse of Power

By JON PARELES

Roger Waters projected his message stadium-wide, literally, when he brought his new production of “The Wall” to Yankee Stadium on Friday, starting a two-night stand. A white-brick wall, which is both an ideal video screen in concert and the central metaphor of the rock opera he wrote for the 1979 album by Pink Floyd (with additional music by the band’s guitarist, David Gilmour), spanned the stadium and towered 40 feet high.

The message Mr. Waters hammered home — with images including animated regiments of goose-stepping hammers on the march — was distrust of power and authority in many forms: parents, schools, celebrities, corporations, countries, ideologies. Throughout intermission (as elegiac music played), and at points during the concert, the names and faces of people killed by wars, terrorism and government actions were shown on the wall. Quotations from George Orwell, Franz Kafka and Dwight D. Eisenhower also appeared on it. At one point, animated bombers dropped corporate logos and religious symbols; “Run Like Hell” included a WikiLeaks video from an American helicopter firing on Iraqi journalists. Early in the concert, Mr. Waters deplored “all the victims of state terror all over the world,” and preached that giving governments, police and soldiers too much power was “a very steep and slippery slope to tyranny.”

To him, bigger and slicker did not mean better. Except, of course, at his stadium show.

The video wall, which his promoters have billed as “the largest projection surface ever toured in live entertainment,” isn’t the only huge special effect in “The Wall.” It’s an impeccable, stadium-sized show, magnifying even further what began, decades ago, as very private torments for what Mr. Waters, smiling broadly, called his “poor, miserable,” messed-up (he used a stronger term), “little Roger.” There are marionettes as tall as the wall, bursts of pyrotechnics, surround-sound effects that simulated fighter planes buzzing the stadium, a group of 15 children dancing through “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” and — a Pink Floyd essential, even if it was from the cover of a different album — a pig-shaped balloon, now a black boar with tusks, painted with mock slogans. When animation warped and crumbled the wall, with flying bricks and metamorphosing colors, it was dazzling.

Actually, “The Wall” isn’t as unified as Mr. Waters’ latest attempt to focus it. It’s a mélange of ideas, ricocheting amid personal and political, insular and activist. Its protagonist, a certain Mr. Pink Floyd, is a rock star going insane. He’s a pampered, miserable, abusive, sleazy, insecure wreck, toying with groupies and numbing himself before going onstage. He’s also the grown-up version of a boy who lost his father in World War II, and who was traumatized by a vicious schoolmaster and an overbearing mother; the combined impact made him wall himself off from feelings. When he leads his band as part of the narrative, Mr. Floyd becomes a fascistic demagogue in sunglasses and a leather trench coat, swaggering among backup musicians who wear Nazi-like uniforms and, eventually, firing a machine gun at undesirables.

                                                                                           

The music of “The Wall” is held together by variations on the rising and falling refrain of “Another Brick in the Wall,” which can sound like a playground taunt or a funeral march. But the album also holds some of the most chameleonic music Mr. Waters ever wrote. Pink Floyd’s distinctive slow, plangent anthems — like “Comfortably Numb” — are a big part of “The Wall.” But other songs reach back to doo-wop and Beatles-like vocal harmonies, boogie like 1970s blues-rock, role-play like orchestral show tunes (in the climactic song “The Trial”), pulsate like disco or, in the final song, strum along like skiffle.

Like other operas in repertory, as “The Wall” has become, it is a fixed work. Onstage, it diverges from the album only as much as it needs to in order to suit a concert setting — that is, with no fade-outs, and using newer sound bites for the moments when Mr. Floyd is watching TV. Robbie Wyckoff, on vocals, Dave Kilminster, on lead guitar, and G.E. Smith, on guitar, emulated Mr. Gilmour’s old parts nearly note for note, and it sounded like some arrangements from the album were mixed with the live performance. But Mr. Waters was generally live, groaning and cackling through his confessions and threats, playing the troubled introvert and then making himself the rock star in the spotlight.

Back in 1979 “The Wall” was a rock star’s abreaction to success, but Mr. Waters was also worrying about how media overload could distract and neutralize potential protest. Now, at 68, Mr. Waters has made “The Wall” far less about himself and more about his anger at abuses of power. Yet with amplification, staging, hit melodies and his celebrity status, he got the Yankee Stadium audience following his orders, submitting to his power. For the moment, all paradoxes were subsumed in the spectacle.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 10, 2012

A music review on Monday about Roger Waters’s production of “The Wall,” at Yankee Stadium, misidentified the singer who performed the vocal parts sung by David Gilmour on the Pink Floyd album “The Wall.” He is Robbie Wyckoff — not Dave Kilminster who, as the review noted, plays lead guitar in the live production.

Photo by Chad Batka for The New York Times 

From artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

Concert review: Roger Waters at the Bell Centre, Montreal, June 26

By Richard Burnett

As the likelihood of a Pink Floyd reunion becomes increasingly distant with each passing year, this second go-round of Roger Waters’ The Wall Live Tour serves as good a Pink Floyd finale as any fan could ever hope for – and then some.

While Floyd’s iconic 1979 The Wall album dealt mainly with abandonment and personal isolation, the live performance has evolved from personal confession into a more troubling anti-war, anti-capitalism and anti-authoritarian narrative.

“Giving our governments too much power is a steep and slippery slope to tyranny,” Rogers told the audience.

But last night’s concert at the Bell Centre was no downer: It kicked off with some major pyro and a plane  – yes, a plane – that crashed into an enormous wall of white bricks that stretched across the stage. That wall (which doubled as a video screen) rose brick-by brick, song-by-song, until eventually it finally hid Waters’ top-notch 12-member band (including Waters on bass guitar) by the end of the first act.

The second half began with a rousing version of Hey You played live behind – you guessed it – the wall, while Waters struck front-of-the-stage rock star poses worthy of Liza Minelli in Cabaret which, incidentally, shares much with The Wall.

But Waters worked hard for the money (top ticket price last night was $268), with grotesque marionettes and hallucinogenic multi-media projections worthy of Syd Barrett, not to mention a clean, crisp audio wall of sound that made sonic rock classics like Comfortably Numb absolutely soar.

The inflated pig was also back for an encore – with messages like “Drink Kalishnikov vodka” printed on it sides – as Waters further fine-tuned The Wall, focusing his attacks on such targets as organized religion and rapacious multi-national corporations. During a thundering version of Run Like Hell aimed at corporate overlords, the screen flashed iPod-style phrases like “iTeach,” “iLearn,” “iBelieve,” “iPaint,” “iKill” and “iPay.”

Pink Floyd’s original, ill-fated The Wall tour back in 1980 lost millions, something Waters’ 2012 version most surely will not. New technology has transformed this rock opera into a fast-paced and seamlessly orchestrated spectacle for fans raised on MTV and weaned on video games.

For those who can’t get beyond The Wall’s hoary 1970s rock band origins, even Waters poked fun at himself before accompanying a younger video version of himself – filmed at Earls Court in 1980 – singing Mother. “This may even be narcissistic,” Waters cracked.

But in this city – even during Montreal’s maple spring/summer of discontent – Waters can pretty much do no wrong, not even after his famous onstage meltdown at Olympic Stadium in July 1977 during a Pink Floyd concert that is often cited as the catalyst for Waters writing The Wall.

“I was a miserable young man 30 years ago,” Waters said last night. “I’m happier now.”

Fittingly, when the 15,323 fans at the Bell Centre gave him a five-minute standing ovation, Waters wiped his eyes with his hand.

Photo by: Marie-France Coallier/THE GAZETTE

From:montrealgazette.com

Roger Waters’ “The Wall” tour continues to stun - Atlanta Music Scene,June 14, 2012

The smoke and fire were mere background compared to the rest of the toys in "The Wall" tour, shown here from a February show in Australia. All photos: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Those who saw “The Wall” tour in 2010 left the venue with their jaws scraping the parking garage floor.

How not to be impressed by the technical masterpiece that Waters re-invigorated for the 30th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s seminal album?

How could fans do anything but bow at Waters’ feet for revisiting the 1980 tour, but this time with a 240-foot-wide “wall” doing double duty as a video screen and updated illustrations by the legendary Gerald Scarfe?

The 2010 tour was such a success – it grossed almost $90 million from 56 concerts in North America on its first leg – that Waters decided to trek overseas in January and head back to the U.S. for this current run through July.

On Wednesday night, “The Wall” returned to Philips Arena. And it was no less stunning.

The opening “In the Flesh?”, with its criss-crossing red flares, curtains of pyro and dive bomber plane tearing across the arena ceiling to crash into the wall in a fireball, was more exciting than most concerts in their entirety.

What makes “The Wall” such a marvel, though, is that all of the mechanical awesomeness isn’t an empty façade designed to distract from an otherwise hollow show.

These songs hold up both in meaning and musicality, and their retelling in this format is a stark, sad reminder of the potency of a well-crafted concept album – a dying, if not already dead, art.

Regardless of your opinion of his politics, Waters proudly declares an anti-authoritarianism stance (he even pokes a little fun at Apple’s Kool-Aid-drinking methods) and dedication to peace.

 Those values are smeared all over this live version of Floyd’s rock opera, notably in an addition to the show – an acoustic coda to “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2),” that he dedicates to Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian man mistakenly shot eight times by London police after the 2005 subway bombings – and later during a heartfelt “Bring the Boys Back Home.”


There is little difference between this version of “The Wall” and its predecessor, including his intro of “Mother,” when he told the sold-out crowd of his plan to sing along with a black and white video of himself when he was “miserable, f-ing Roger” from years ago.

But Waters did break character, if you will, to greet the audience and thank the group of local children who joined him onstage for “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).”

Those kids, donning black T-shirts reading “Fear Builds Walls,” came from the Atlanta Music Project, and followed Waters’ minimal direction to sing, clap and defiantly shake their fingers at the hideous schoolmaster puppet, a leering tower of bulging eyes and scaly fingers, hovering onstage.

Throughout the show, a group of stagehands unobtrusively stacked the “bricks,” made of corrugated cardboard, to build the symbolic wall, a stately monster that completely obscured the stage by the end of the first set and remained that way through its implosion during “The Trial.”

But Waters and his band, an impeccable team who played so clean and crisp that every thump of the bass resounded during “Young Lust” and each smack of the snare drum could be heard during the various parts of “Another Brick,” found ways to circumvent the wall.

The hazy “Hey You” was performed with the band and Waters completely obstructed (anyone else wonder if they were really playing and singing back there?), but for “Nobody Home,” Waters, sounding pleasantly gravelly all night, appeared in a small living room setting in a space that folded out of the wall.

For the aching “Comfortably Numb,” a song that causes involuntary body swaying, Robbie Wyckoff, a tremendous singer who handled David Gilmour’s parts throughout the show, and guitarist Dave Kilminster, stood atop the wall to perform. The way that Waters, parading the stage below, thrust his arms in the air to lead the crowd through the soaring chorus made you feel as if these songs are more than a continuous cash machine to him; he actually seems to feel the material.

The appearance of the black floating pig – a remote controlled fellow with sayings such as “Trust Us” and “Them Not Us” painted on his side – floated above the crowd (via remote control) as Waters and the band, donning their black fascist attire with marching hammer armbands, tore through “Run Like Hell.


All these years later, it remains a tense, thrilling piece of music – and automatic air guitar song – and its relevance hasn’t diminished with age.

By the end of “The Wall” live, it becomes obvious that while Waters is the ringleader and messenger, the real heavy lifting in the show comes from the superior technology and array of props.

At 68, Waters is still a vibrant presence. Let’s hope he has the stamina to keep this beautiful beast of a show on the road indefinitely.

By Melissa Ruggieri, Atlanta Music Scene

From: blogs.ajc.com/atlanta-music-scene 

Roger Waters The Wall - Quebec - July 21st, 2012

Roger Waters The Wall - Quebec - July 21st, 2012 from Roger Waters on Vimeo.

Gallery: Roger Waters at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, June 6, 2012

Photos By Chris Clark

From photos.mlive.com

Roger Waters in concert Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Review: Roger Waters' 'The Wall Live' an immaculate sound-and-vision spectacular at Van Andel Arena.

There’s a fine line between triumph and fiasco.

Roger Waters’ immaculate sound-and-vision extravaganza, "The Wall Live", is very much the former. Without the ex-Pink Floyd singer/bassist’s exacting eye for detail (and, arguably, his massive ego), the show presented Wednesday night at Van Andel Arena could easily have been a cheesy, psychedelic rock opera for the extraordinarily stoned. But as it stands, it’s amazingly elaborate, impeccably executed and possibly unforgettable - even for the stone-sober.

Waters is easily the grand-poobah professor of Rock Spectacle 101, using grandiose imagery to tell a story about war, repression, corporate influence and rebellion. As he and his band – including guitarist David Kilminster and singer Robbie Wyckoff playing estranged Floyd partner David Gilmour’s parts – worked their way through the entirety of Pink Floyd’s 1979 double album “The Wall,” crew members slowly and steadily stacked large bricks into a literal wall across the stage. The show was divided into two hour-long sets with an intermission. The first built the wall, the second presented the oppressive massiveness of it, and tore it down. It’s a metaphor, you see.

Although the presentation sounded more clear and crystalline than any arena show I’ve ever attended, and Kilminster’s guitar work during “Comfortably Numb” soared majestically, I’m sure none of the crowd of nearly 10,000 went home talking about that. It’s the over-the-top visuals that stick with you: Insane hallucinatory footage from the “Wall” movie (fornicating flowers, etc.) was often projected on the wall and, most memorably, a digital animation of bomber planes opening their bays and dropping corporate logos and religious iconography. Also powerful was footage of soldiers returning from war to their families during “Bring the Boys Back Home.”

And then there were the inflatables: the flying pig, the dancing teacher, the ominous Mother character the scary praying-mantis woman. For “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” the giant teacher loomed menacingly over a children’s choir – Waters recruits local kids for every show – with beady LED eyes, eventually deflating under the chanting youth. It was as bizarre as it was endearing.

The evening opened with sounds of war chattering around the arena via surround sound, and an airplane crashing into the wall. It ended with Waters donning a double-breasted cloak and wielding a machine gun and megaphone, mimicking a fascist totalitarian rally before pre-recorded chants of “Tear down the wall!” mingled with the audience’s shouts, and the wall crumbles – a little bit anti-climactically - amidst cheers and dust and smoke.

What does it all mean? Peace, man. All we need is peace. It also means Waters can outdo his big-venue competitors with outrageous, entertaining extravagance. The legions of rock fans tuned in to Pink Floyd’s brand of art rock devoured it, singing along and pumping their fists. It is a little disconcerting to see a show with such a pro-human, anti-greed message charging upwards of $200 for a ticket and $40 for a T-shirt. But that’s the price of doing business. It isn’t cheap to stage a rock spectacle, you know.

By John Serba

LIVE REVIEW

Roger Waters: The Wall Live

3 ½ stars (out of 4)

When/where: Wednesday night, Van Andel Arena

Attendance: Just under 10,000

Time on stage: Two one-hour sets with a 25-minute intermission

Highlight: Midway through the second set, Waters led the crowd on a sing-along of anthem-to-end-all-anthems “Comfortably Numb. David Kilminster’s guitar song-ending guitar solo was soaring and powerful.

From www.mlive.com

Roger Waters floors Joe Louis crowd with ambitious 'Wall' - The Detroit News, JUNE 6, 2012

Roger Waters floors Joe Louis crowd with ambitious 'Wall'

Roger Waters performs Pink Floyd's towering epic "The Wall" to a near-capacity crowd at Joe Louis Arena on Tuesday night. (Photo by Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News)

Is there anybody out there?

There were plenty of people out there Tuesday at Joe Louis Arena as Roger Waters brought Pink Floyd's towering epic "The Wall" to full life for a near-capacity crowd, the second time he's brought the live staging of the 1979 classic to Metro Detroit.

The first time was a riveting show in October 2010 at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Waters has presented "The Wall" more than 140 times since on three different continents, but it shows no signs of wear, and aside from an exasperated "ugh!" he let out mid-show, neither does Waters.

That's because "The Wall" touches on universal themes of alienation and mistrust of authority and takes an anti-government, anti-corporation stance that resonates just as deeply today as it did when "The Wall" was first released. And it's also because this presentation of "The Wall" is, quite simply, one of the most astounding rock spectacles that's ever been staged, an exquisite visual masterpiece that takes its cues from rock theater and is daring enough to capture "The Wall" in all its ambitious, over-the-top glory.

Here's the quickie version of the two-and-a-half hour show: A wall stretching the width of the arena gets built, images are projected on to it, the wall gets knocked down. In between there is a choir of local schoolchildren, some ghastly inflatable characters, an airborne pig and enough messages of anti-capitalism and anti-greed to make you never go to the store again. At one point Waters pulls out a tommy gun and mock-mows down the audience. Show's over, thanks everybody for coming out!

But the pinpoint timing of the show, the masterful lighting and the unbelievable staging make it an out-and-out event for the ages that everyone should experience at least once. And once it's gone, it's gone. Where is the next "The Wall" going to come from? Does Taylor Swift have something hidden up her sleeve, is Drake sitting on something big? "The Wall" is a big idea made even bigger by Waters' grand, exacting vision, and it takes a certain level of crazy to even attempt something on the level at which he's working. Even U2's gargantuan stadium epics don't touch the rich detail and grand sweep of "The Wall." So whomever is stepping up to the plate next has some pretty big shoes to fill. Let's just hope it's not all downhill from here.

"The Wall's" first act, where the wall is being built, is startling, but the second act is where it towers. "Run Like Hell" was a grand piece of showmanship, but the chilling "Comfortably Numb" remains the highlight, with Waters at the base of the wall while vocalist Robbie Wyckoff and guitarist Dave Kilminster fill in David Gilmour's parts from atop the structure. Tuesday night at the Joe, it rang out as one of the most electrifying songs I've ever heard in concert.

The messages and questions from "The Wall" still ring out: The show must go on; tear down the wall; is there anybody out there?

And fans know that thanks to Waters' masterful presentation, "The Wall" remains as strong as it ever was.

By ADAM GRAHAM 

From www.detroitnews.com

   

Gallery: Roger Waters in the flesh at Rexall, May 28, 2012.

Roger Waters performs The Wall at Rexall Place in Edmonton on May 28, 2012.

Photograph by: John Lucas, edmontonjournal.com

From: www.edmontonjournal.com