For the second time in roughly a month, I attended a
legendary concert. Last month I had the pleasure of seeing Joe Walsh and Tom Petty. This time, I got to see Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame
perform in front of a packed Xcel Center. The last time he was in town he presented
The Wall, and I was secretly high on meth, and probably drunk and maybe on
mushrooms. This time I was sober, and I brought my camera to show you what I saw.
We sat patiently in our seats. Our view was almost straight
on and we were on the third level, it would be a perfect angle for the show.
For 15 minutes there was nothing but a screen showing an ocean view with a
person facing away from us, sitting on the sand. There was noise all around us
from seagulls and barges. Eventually, some lovely female chanting interrupted
the serenity. And then, the sky in the background of the scene started turning
red, and it quickly escalated into a frenzied chaos of lights from there as the
beginning chords of Breathe from Dark Side of the Moon broke through. The crowd
went wild.
We screamed and cheered as the heavy bass line slaughtered
our brain with melody from One of These Days, a song I had always hoped to hear
live, and then the melodic transmissions continued on with Time, the song that
I attribute to my early love for the band. What followed was epic, and a great
translation of the original song. Great Gig in the Sky is
has always been a one-woman act, but the two ladies (Jess and Holly I believe)
from the group Lucius took it to
another level; almost a dueling banjos sort of deal with their voices. It was
truly breath taking. The links I have provided in this post are all from the
current tour.
Lucius battles over Great Gig in the Sky
Who knew that I would get to hear such a lineup of songs? I
mean, last time he was in town, he played The Wall from start to finish: no
frills. He played it to whatever the musical equivalent to verbatim is. Don’t
get me wrong, it was great, but this was better. There was more depth and
longer riffs, and I’m sure that technically it was very true. They played Welcome to the Machine,
followed by a captivating version of Wish You Were Here.
We then time travelled to The Wall where he did the standard
Another Brick in the Wall part 2 where some “inner city” kids danced to the
beat and tore off prison jumpsuits to reveal shirts with the “Resist” logo. It
was pretty cool. It was time for an intermission.
The second act began with red flashing lights and a platform
curiously appearing from nowhere, well from the ceiling actually, and settling
just over the crowd going up and down the length of the floor jutting out from
the stage; intriguing. Seemingly out of
nothing, smokestacks slowly emerged from the metal scaffolding and before I
could catch on, we were staring at the famous Battersea PowerStation from the
iconic Animals album. The strumming for my favorite Floyd song began. It was
time for Dogs. This video
shows the lowering and rising that I tried to describe above, and the song in
its entirety which includes what I believe to be the best live guitar solo in
existence. There were pigs everywhere: one floating above the building, and a
larger one floating around the stadium. There were many pictures of Donald
Trump who is also a pig. The set continued with the actual song Pigs, and the
PowerStation became several floating projector screens for the remainder of the
show: pictures to follow.
We drifted from Animals to some of his newer stuff which was
pretty good, back to the Dark side. At some point, a mysterious floating orb
came and went, and ducked and dodged—sometimes hovered, but always remained in
motion. It was nearly the end, so I thought. We were already into over two
hours of music and he started in with Us and Them, Brain Damage followed by
Eclipse which included a minor snafu which he owned up to right away. I will
try to include a video of this here.
Here is the link to the video I took of the transition between Brain Damage and Eclipse. It gets colorful at the end. It was a huge file so I uploaded it to YouTube.
When I thought it would be done, the ladies from Lucius
joined him and they began a chilling montage of Vera and Bring the Boys Back
Home that made me tear up just a little. Their voices cut through the smoke and
lights to deliver a powerful message that we need our troops back home. Sadly,
on the day Trump ordered that transgender troops were no longer allowed to
participate in his game.
The screens that were once the Battersea PowerStation were now a colorful, ever-changing array of footage and live transmission.
The Orb. What are you?
Confetti for the finale.
And then it was Comfortably Numb: another fan favorite, and
another memorable guitar solo. It was done. We went home. I remembered
everything, and I took some mental snapshots to go along with these which I
have also shared on FB if you haven’t seen them yet.
I will never forget this concert, and it made me want to see
his counterpart David Gilmour even more. If you ever have the chance to see
Roger Waters, if he ever comes to town again, be sure to get tickets, you will
not regret it.