I never saw The Wall tour but I did catch Momentary Lapse of Reason in ‘87 (part of a major band trifecta: Pink Floyd, REM and U2 in four days). After experiencing Roger Waters and his band last night at the Key Arena in Seattle, makes me wonder how great the spectacle was that I missed.
The show last night is in one of my top five of all time - it was so incredibly good. More than just the 10 piece band with Roger (3 guitarists - 2 of 3 were excellent, 3 black female singers, 2 keyboardists, sax player and drummer/percussionist), Roger’s piercing voice, Adoring crowd in the packed house, near perfect sound at high volume, various fun adds like 10 minutes of confettie/a flying pig with anti-bush propoganda/a flying astronaut and the video screen - it was the entire interaction of all the elements in a visual and audio tempest.
Roger has always had great vision and the advent of high technology allows him to play with video, audio and the senses in very creative and compelling ways. Everything just worked so well together last night. For example, the show was to start at 8pm with no opening band. After dinner and drinks we get there right at 8pm. Instead of getting lame pre-show music with nothing going on - the huge video screen in the back eerily starts to light. You slowly make out different shapes - Is that a scotch bottle? What are those round things? Is that an ashtray? all while good 50’s music plays - loudly. You start to make out a bottle of pills and some smoke wafting up. Suddenly and hand reaches up from the bottom of the screen and turns the white round things - they’re radio knobs! It changes the music that you hear! How cool! More 50’s stuff - Hound Dog from Elvis, a little Buddy Holly. It was ~20 minutes or so before the band came out, but we were highly entertained from the start!
Then came Roger and the band. HUGE band, BIG sound. The 2 of the 3 guitarists were exemplary and the singers were fantastic. The opening set was a series of songs from The Wall (The Wall, Mother), Wish You Were Here and his new album. Lots of highly political attacks on George Bush and Tony Blair (great!), lots of great visuals with sound. During one sequence on screen you zoomed into a stadium where the field is all water, you cut between and arial view and an underwater view in which a submarine is firing two torpedo towards a monolith. As you zoom in from the top you hear the crowd roar and I’m wondering if is the crowd in the audience or the crowd in the stadium on the screen. Doesn’t matter really, it was impressive.
After the first set, they took 15 minutes - we got more beer and then it was the Dark Side from heart beat to heart beat. The singer on The Great Gig in the Sky was spot on and the sound was impecable. It was almost too loud. If it had been at all distorted, it would have been annoyingly so, but it was clear and lovely.
After the Dark Side, they played a series of encore songs such as Another Brick in the Wall and ended with Comfortably Numb. At this point, you get to see the guy who has been smoking, drinking and drugging on the screen behind as part of Comfortably Numb neatly tying together the beginning and end. Now here I am at work - tired, thick and comfortably numb myself. Thank you Roger for a great night.
