Roger Waters - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

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The New York Times, August 29, 1987

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.

Smarter in Sixty Seconds: The Zen Of Pink Floyd

By Mark Hermann
September 17, 2012


So you’re working your ass off on your band, your songs, your productions, your blog, your app (fill in the blank with that amazing thing you do). You know you’re not fooling yourself. You’ve really got skills. Yet, it still feels like you’re just not connecting with the world. Why?
Maybe you’re just not sending the right message.
Or maybe you’re searching for some elusive answer to your woes, when you really should be learning to ask a better question.

Is There Anybody Out There?

That’s where it all began for Roger Waters, mastermind behind one of the most successful and influential bands of all time, Pink Floyd.
So here’s a simple but powerful tip that may just help to right your course on your life’s journey to shine your own crazy diamond and make a difference in the world.
(No, this is not a recipe for fame and fortune in the music business.)
In his tiny and most excellent little book, Tribes, modern marketing guru, Seth Godin describes the secret to how ideas spread.
He says that for an idea to take hold and spread to the world, the message must be bigger than the messenger, who created it.
For Roger Waters, that message began as a question.

Is Humanity Capable of Being Humane?

This question burned inside him as a teenager, born into a ravaged England, laid to waste by the Nazis during World War II. The same war that claimed his father’s life.


That question ultimately found its wings — and transformed into a message that would resound around the world for almost four decades and counting when Waters and Pink Floyd put it to words and music — creating one of the most celebrated albums of all time: Dark Side Of The Moon.
Within that big question were sub-chapters in the form of songs that supported the grand view.
Take for example the song, “Us And Them.”
This song speaks to the idea of separation and opposites. Each of us living apart as individuals with differing views, lifetstyles and ideals, who identify with this or that group, as opposed to the one we all have in common: the human race.


The message is that in the end, there really is no “them.” There is only “us.”
We are all the same.
“Us and them/And after all we’re only ordinary men.”
“With…without/And in the end it’s what the fighting’s all about.”
Notice how the idea is much bigger than just a great song. It’s an expansive concept that resonates far and wide.
Or take another song, “Time,” which deals with the concept that we’re so obsessed with the passing of time, we never stop to wake up and live in this moment — the only moment that truly exists. And the consequences we invite when we don’t.
“…and then one day you find/Ten years have got behind you/No one told you when to run/You missed the starting gun”
Brilliant lyrics for certain, but all the more so because the idea itself of this obsession with time is almost universal in human beings. We live either in memories from the past, which is already gone, or hope for some better future that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s really very Zen if you think about it:
The Buddha says there is no permanent self (no Us or Them) and that the only path to enlightenment lies in becoming truly awake in the present moment, not somewhere in the past or some unseen future.
And finally, take a look at the title of the album itself, Dark Side Of The Moon. Waters explained this again as a concept. That in life you have only two choices. You can either walk toward the darkness or you can walk toward the light.
It’s this combination of brilliant music wrapped around a powerful message that has resonated so far and wide for Pink Floyd over the span of their career and beyond.

The Great Gig In The Sky

If you could create just one masterpiece in your life that was loved and celebrated by the world, wouldn’t that in itself be a miraculous lifetime achievement?

Imagine. Your own Mona Lisa. (Your name here’s) Fifth Symphony.
You could leave this world with a smile, knowing you accomplished something grand with your life.
Dark Side Of The Moon has broken all records for the longest-time-running on Billboard’s Top 200 albums chart, along with a wealth of other industry accolades.
If this iconic album were the one and only masterpiece the band ever produced, it would have cemented their place in music history. But for Pink Floyd, it could be argued they did it at least three times, maybe four.
So how could you possibly follow up Dark Side Of The Moon? If you’re Pink Floyd, you create another masterpiece, of course.

By The Way Which One’s Pink?

Wish You Were Here: An ode to their original band leader, lead singer and chief songwriter, Syd Barrett, who suffered a nervous breakdown and basically went into hibernation, disappearing from society.
It was a message in a bottle to someone they cared deeply for wrapped inside a musical masterpiece. As in “Syd, how we wish you were here.”
And though the sentiment was mostly Waters’, the concept was born from the first four, now-indelible notes of a song, guitarist David Gilmour was working on at the time that reminded Waters of Barrett. It became the foundation for the song, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” which in turn became the cornerstone of the record.
One major underlying theme was absence.
The absence of Syd Barrett. Or the absence of conscience of, say, a record executive as depicted in “Have A Cigar.”  Thrilled with the band’s success, he claims to be on the same team when really all he cares about is the money they’ve made for the record company. He’s so out of touch, he think there’s really a guy named Pink in the band.
Sure you could read about all the turmoil in the band at this point in their career and who contributed what. But in the end, what resonates is the work itself.
The message.
One could put up a strong argument that Animals, which came out in 1976 was indeed their fourth masterpiece. An opus in three movements whose titles are based loosely on George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The concept that people basically fall into three categories: Pigs, Dogs or Sheep.
It’s perhaps Waters’ most directly caustic view of society but no less brilliant a body of work to the other three mentioned here. But whatever your position on Animals as masterpiece, no one would argue about their follow-up album.

Mother, Did It Need To Be So High?

The Wall: Released in late 1979, it was perhaps their most ambitious effort, though tensions within the band were at a breaking point. Their only double album, it sold more than 23 million units.

It was born out of Waters’ deep frustration with — and isolation from — an audience that was growing so big as to become unreachable, due to the band’s monumental success and stadium-sized productions at that point.
The story is built around a fictional rock megalomaniac named Pink. A pop cult leader who stirs his legions of minions into a frenzy with a not-too-distant-nod to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. (The first brick in Waters’ own wall with the death of his father.)
But the real Pink grows ever more insular and disconnected from the crazed world around him until he completes the wall and arrives at a near catatonic state, “Comfortably Numb.”
The Wall is back on tour again now, more than 32 years after the original tour (which this author saw back in 1980 and still remembers quite vividly). Why would people still even care?
Maybe because the work was so profound and the incredible songs that comprise it so embedded in our collective psyche that the message still resonates today across all cultural, geographic and generational boundaries.
So how can you benefit from all this praise — showered upon a band which really doesn’t need the plug at this point?
In all of Pink Floyd’s incredible body of work (and we didn’t even touch on any of their early albums) there are some common threads you could apply to any work, including that unique thing you do.

Remember When You Were Young? You Shone Like The Sun

You begin with an idea. A concept. Your passion. Like say, forming a psychedelic art rock band. You play around with the idea. You nurture it.
If you find yourself returning to it consistently over time and you’re still passionate, one day you decide to dedicate yourself to it. Even when everyone seems to be ignoring you. No matter. You’re committed now.
You experiment with it, toiling away in obscurity. You hone it until it begins to take shape.
If you’ve chosen the right course and you are creating something of real value to others, people begin to take notice of your dedication, of the excellence in your work. A tribe forms. They begin to tell their friends. The message begins to spread.
You endeavor to distinguish yourself from everyone else in your field. You dissect every aspect of your craft, the songwriting, the musicianship, the album production, the live show, and you endeavor to push the envelope to the brink.
Until one day, your work combines with timing and opportunity and you hit that bullseye and explode into a blazing sun that serves as a beacon of inspiration for all to see.

Don’t Be Afraid To Care

So if you’re trying to figure out where your tribe resides, the secret is not to change where you’re looking. Change your focus.

Remember Us and Them?
Start focusing on Them.
If you’re focused on others; what they long for, what keeps them awake at night, if you can find empathy with the human condition you begin to recognize that we are all much more the same than we are different.
Your fears, your doubts, your feelings of disillusionment and alienation are pretty much the same as everyone else. We’re all trying to figure it out. And no one has the answer.
You are not alone.
If you can always keep that focus at the forefront of your craft, then wrap it around your remarkable music, or your product or your service, you’re on your way to finding a message that can resonate far and wide.

A message bigger than the messenger.

There is no dark side of the moon.

Breathe.

NYC-based producer/artist/engineer/more Mark Hermann spends his life in the professional service of music. He has toured the world with rock legends, produced hit artists, and licensed music for numerous TV/film placements. Hermann also owns a recording studio in a 100-year old Harlem Brownstone. Keep up with him at .Rock & Roll Zen

From www.sonicscoop.com

Roger Waters joins bill at upcoming Levon Helm tribute concert

The Poughkeepsie Journal  reports that Roger Waters has joined an all-star lineup of musicians at a Levon Helm tribute concert scheduled for October 3rd at the Izod Center (part of the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey).
Organisers announced  that Waters will perform at "Love for Levon" which will also feature John Mayer, Bruce Hornsby, Ray LaMontagne, Gregg Allman, Joe Walsh of The Eagles, and many others. Tickets are on sale NOW through this direct link and cost $46.50 to $221.50 plus booking fees.
The concert is in honor of Helm, the late Woodstock resident who was a member of The Band and a Grammy-winning solo artist. Helm, along with Rick Danko and Garth Hudson (fellow Band members) took part in Roger's 1990 Wall concert in Berlin. Helm sadly passed away on April 19th this year.
Proceeds from ticket sales will "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue The Midnight Ramble Sessions." More information about the show can be found a loveforlevon.com


Written by Matt  
Wednesday, 19 September 2012

From www.brain-damage.co.uk