Roger That

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.

 

The Chappelle Show

9:40am-- Yesterday I witnessed history. Since inaugural day of Target Field—April 12^th, 2010—the Twins have tried to win a series of games against The Bronx Bombers six different times. Each attempt to win at least two of three games ended in disaster, until yesterday. For my eleventh game of the year I watched the Twins trounce the Yankees 6-1. All of the action happened in the second inning including a three-run homer by one of our All-Stars Miguel Sano. It was a fun, fast-paced game with great pitching and stellar defense. The Twins are now 5-6 while I’ve been in attendance this year.

Hoping the positivity from yesterday will flow over to today, I will be once again trying to get tickets to see my comedic hero, Dave Chappelle. He came last year and I waited by the computer on Ticketmaster, and the tickets were sold out before I could even get in the electronic queue. Tickets to see him perform this time at The Icehouce—the Eat Street music/cocktail club that holds around 200 people—go on sale in 14 minutes. I think tickets will be even harder to come by this time because of the limited seating, but I must try. You will see my elation or frustration in just moments, although it will all appear as one post to you. So, until then, I will watch Netflix and chill. Stay tuned.

 

Briefly

Hey there, strangers; it’s been a while.  Fifteen days ago I wrote my last post, and during this two-week break I’ve been a busy boy. Aside from working 50 hours per week, I like to walk my dog, eat at new restaurants, go to Twins games and workout six of seven days. Really it all sounds normal to the average Joe, but it’s all still kind of new to me. 

I plan on taking another long break between this post and the next because I need it. I need to spend a little more time living life and developing more material to write about. For example, this post really won’t be too significant because I had no idea of a direction when I opened up my laptop. I did play Words With Friends between the first and second paragraphs looking for some inspiration, but FA, AA, LOFTY, and RELIEVERS are not exactly the Tony Robbins of the blogging world. Now I have to find something to do between this and the next paragraph…

Well, I looked at Facebook and I discovered that most of my friends still hate Trump, police are finally shooting unarmed white people too, and accidental panoramic shots are hilarious. I’ve been trying to stay off of the mighty FB for a couple weeks now because really nothing good comes from it. I used to check my phone all the time to see if anybody liked (or loved!) anything I had posted recently, or anybody had anything constructive or meaningful to say about a blog post or political issue or science, but after a while I found myself constantly going to my phone for reassurance and it just wasn’t doing my life any good. From now on I will only post blog material and things that I think are hilarious, and I won’t even care if people like (or love!) them.

I would love to write something inspirational or related to recovery but I just don’t have it in me today. Maybe when I come back in two weeks, I will have something more substantial to write about. For now, all you need to know is that my life is going well, and my recovery from addiction and alcoholism is progressing each day into this new life that keeps me so busy I no longer have time to just watch Netflix and chill.

Actually, I think that is what I am going to do with the rest of my night. I will be back in a while with an update. Until then…

Love Your Life

It’s been a week since my last post, and I think this is the only chance I’ve had to actually sit down and write in a coffee shop since. This week has had a theme, and it isn’t letting up: Go Go Go.

I now have 157 weeks of continuous sobriety, that’s three years and one week for those of you for whom math is an obstacle. In 51 weeks I will have four years. In two months, I will have been out of prison for two years, and I will have less than one year left on parole. Now that the math portion of this post is complete, I can move on, although it’s nice to devote some writing to a subject as innocent as math, since I have written so much on meth in the past.

Work has been going well. It’s chaotic, but I seem to be able to handle it. The station I was intimidated by just a few short weeks ago is now second nature. More and more, I look down the line toward grill and garde manger (‘food keeper’ (desserts and salads)) and I wonder if they will come to me as quickly. Of course they will, my head is clear, and my mind is straight. I haven’t lost my cool yet. I haven’t lost my cool since I’ve been sober. Weird…

In my home group in A.A., I am the sponsorship representative. This means that I stand up in front of nearly a hundred people every week and give a little speech along with a female counterpart about the necessity and benefits of having somebody assist you in reading the first 164 pages of the Big Book. The first 164 is where the 12-steps reside, and it’s not a task that should be done alone, and it’s probably impossible to completely understand without some assistance from somebody who has been through it before. I always end my speech by asking people if their relationship with their sponsor is the best they’ve ever had. You see, if you aren’t getting the most out of your sponsor: if you are getting away with old behaviors, if you have resentment, or you’re getting angry with the daily grind, you are doing something wrong and a new sponsor might be the key.

I say that to say this: that theory can be used anywhere in life. And although I may be typing this paragraph to a very particular person this time, (yes, you from The Depot) the logic holds for anybody anywhere. If everything in your life isn’t the best it possibly can be, if something or somebody is holding you back from being the happiest you have ever been, if you can’t be in the moment wherever you are because your thoughts are taken away to something darker, then something needs to change. And every time, deep down, we know what that change needs to be. YOU have the power within you to shake things up and even though stuffs might quiver awhile afterwards, eventually you will find happiness when the toxic thing is removed from your life. Every day you have one less day on this planet and you cannot afford to cry and worry when there is so much out there to experience. Never give up. Never stop trying to find what makes you live inside, because if you do then you truly die.

It’s a beautiful day out there, I need to get out and love it. I will be going to the Twins game tonight with my friends from down in Fillmore County, I will put pictures up on FB. That’s all for now.