Roger Waters Tour 2012 ... The Wall Live
Ranked #564 in Music, #13,345 overall
The Wall Live Tour 2012 ... Roger Waters Brings Pink Floyd Classic Back to Life
It's the great news Roger Waters and Pink Floyd fans have been waiting for: After a triumphant jaunt across North America in 2010 and Europe in 2011, and following record-smashing sales for the early 2012 South American dates, Word thas come down that Roger Waters' The Wall Live tour will return to North America for a second round of tour dates beginning in May 2012.
This leg of the The Wall Live tour will visit many of the cities that were missed during the first and will return to a number of others for repeat performances, many in larger venues than before. Make sure you lock in your tickets as this tour has exceeded expectations worldwide and tickets are selling very fast. Some venues have added second shows but this is not guaranteed to happen in all locations.
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Bookmark our site as we will be posting reviews,videos and setlists from the upcoming The Wall Live Tour.
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This leg of the The Wall Live tour will visit many of the cities that were missed during the first and will return to a number of others for repeat performances, many in larger venues than before. Make sure you lock in your tickets as this tour has exceeded expectations worldwide and tickets are selling very fast. Some venues have added second shows but this is not guaranteed to happen in all locations.
Roger Waters Tickets North America 2012
Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Bookmark our site as we will be posting reviews,videos and setlists from the upcoming The Wall Live Tour.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Xcel Energy Center St Paul Minnesota Oct 27, 2010
Roger Waters The Wall North America Tickets
Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Minneapolis Star Tribune
by Jon Bream
Waters' 'The Wall': Thick as 424 bricks
REVIEW While not always easy to follow, the rock opera delivered for Pink Floyd fans in a big way
You can see rock operas on Broadway or watch them in the comfort of your home on DVD. But Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is the only rock opera coming to an arena near you.
Thirty-one years after the landmark work was released as a two-disc album, rock hero Roger Waters, the mastermind/bassist/lyricist/co-lead singer of Pink Floyd, has mounted a massive production of "The Wall" that he is taking everywhere from Montreal and Mexico City to Moscow and Milan. On Wednesday, he built "The Wall" brick by brick in St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center and, of course, brought it tumbling down two-plus hours later. It was a provocative, over-the-top, self-indulgently spectacular epic that left 15,456 arena-goers excitedly numb.
As with Green Day's "American Idiot" and the Who's "Tommy," you need a Playbill to provide a synopsis or at least background and context because rock operas never make much linear sense, but they do deliver musically.
"The Wall" is an autobiographical exploration of alienation, isolation and rebellion. Waters' manifesto is anti-war, anti-authority and anti-corporate (despite tickets costing as much as $201). Waters' themes sadly resonate today, and he updated the visuals to include references to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and such newly coined terms as iKill and iProfit.
The visuals were riveting -- everything from gigantic marionettes to an inflatable pig that flew over the audience to Gerald Scarfe animation (he worked on the 1982 cult movie "Pink Floyd's The Wall") to a group of St. Paul kids singing and dancing with Waters as to a fighter plane zoomed over the arena and crashed into the wall, a 30-foot high structure assembled during the first act.
More a singer than an actor, Waters performed 27 songs, with some vocal help from Robbie Wyckoff, who sang the parts rendered originally by David Gilmour. (Floyd has been fractured since Waters acrimoniously left in 1985.) Occasionally, there were little scenes such as Waters, the bored rock star (one of his themes) watching TV in a Hollywood motel.
In the first act (highlight: "Mother" done as a duet with himself on film from a 1980 production of "The Wall" that played in only four cities), Waters performed in front of and behind the wall. In the second act (highlight: a dramatic and exorcising "Comfortably Numb"), his six musicians and five backup singers were mostly behind the fully constructed wall while he was in front, with the wall being used as a ginormous screen for animation, graffiti and video footage.
Waters, 67, surprisingly stepped out of character and talked to the sold-out audience a couple of times, making it seem a bit like a concert. Even though this was a captivating production of one of the best-selling albums of all time, the evening wasn't as exciting musically and as trippy visually as Waters' 2006 Xcel performance, which featured the classic album "Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety. But "The Wall" was a special rock-opera experience in an arena, especially at the end when the 424 bricks magically crumbled from within and Waters came out with his trumpet and band to stand amid the rubble and perform "Outside the Wall," singing "bleeding hearts and artists make their stand."
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Qwest Center Omaha NB Oct 25, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Omaha World Herald
by Kevin Coffey
Waters does well with 'The Wall'
"The Wall" is surely something to behold.
It's like the king of concert tours. Since it was performed by Pink Floyd only a handful of times in its original form (and because it was so over-the-top even then), it has attained legendary status.
But instead of rehashing the same old thing, Roger Waters took it to the next level on Tuesday at Qwest Center Omaha.
Dancing puppets. Flying planes. Pyro. Animations. A flying pig.
Oh, and there was that giant white wall, built up between the audience and the band, brick by cardboard brick.
Aside from a few longer guitar solos, there was no deviation from the original album. And there were only a few pauses - one for an intermission and two or three for Waters to take a minute to speak to the gathered crowd.
"Good evening, Omaha. Welcome," Waters said. "So, it seems hardly possible, but we first did this thing back in 1979, 1980 with Pink Floyd. And here we are again."
I confess to being a huge Pink Floyd fan starting in high school (wasn't everybody?). And seeing "The Wall" live in concert has always been one of those unattainable dreams.
Floyd only did it several times in a handful of cities in 1979 and 1980 and Waters did it once more when the Berlin Wall came down.
Though a rumored appearance by Waters' former Pink Floyd bandmate, David Gilmour, didn't happen, the show was still - quite literally - a smashing success.
More than 12,000 filled the arena to watch Waters & Co. build up "The Wall." And then (spoiler alert!) smash it all to pieces for the show's finale.
Clad in a black T-shirt, black pants and white shoes, Waters was backed by a band of hired guns, including two folks (a guitarist and a singer) to take the parts of singer/guitarist Gilmour.
One of the climactic moments of the show takes place in "Comfortably Numb." With the wall completely constructed, Waters sang his parts in front of the wall while the Gilmour replacements sang the chorus and played the guitar solo from the top of the wall.
That song is one of my Floyd favorites and that performance of it gave me chills.
Another cool moment was when Waters dueted "Mother." With himself. His singing partner was actually a video of a "The Wall" show from about 30 years back.
Waters showed he was much more comfortable with fans than when he conceived of "The Wall," which happened after he spit on a fan at a Montreal concert and thought a wall between him and the annoying gits in the crowd wouldn't be a bad idea.
In Omaha, he waved at fans, encouraged claps and swayed to the music.
The original album and tour was about isolation. This time around, it was more anti-war, anti-capitalism and anti-poverty than about any kind of psychological issue.
In addition to wild and slightly creepy animations from Gerald Scarfe, projections on the wall and video screens showed images of poverty, soldiers and others who died in conflicts as well as video of planes bombing areas with crosses, dollar signs, Shell Oil logos and others.
Waters' version of "The Wall" was everything I hoped it would be, but bigger and better.
When the wall came crashing down, and Waters sang in the rubble, I got chills again.
"Thank you, Omaha!" Waters said. "You were a great audience."
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Palace of Auburn Hills Detroit MI Oct 24,2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Detroit Free Press
by Brian McCollum
Roger Waters climbs high in performance at Palace
It was worth the three-decade wait.Sunday night at the Palace of Auburn Hills, ex-Pink Floyd mastermind Roger Waters scaled the heights of "The Wall," the 1979 concept album that stands as one of the rock canon's all-time greats. In an ambitious show before a sellout crowd of 13,500, Waters and his band wound their way through the album's gritty, politically pointed tale of psychological isolation.
It was a rock production unlike any the Palace has seen in recent memory. A frenetic, unrelenting spray of pyrotechnics adrenalized the crowd out of the gate, as Waters and his band launched into "In the Flesh," first in a nearly 2-1/2 hour set of songs. From there it was a wow-inducing onslaught of stunning visuals, massive inflatable characters and crystalline audio delivered through a precisely calibrated surround setup.
Most impressive was the wall itself - a vast stack of "bricks" methodically layered by stagehands, one by one, through the show's opening half. It was half built when Waters' vocal quartet unfurled the rich harmonies of "Goodbye Blue Sky." By the time he reached his show's intermission to the sounds of "Goodbye Cruel World," the 35-foot-tall wall imposed itself across the entire stage vista.
The evening closely followed the album's template, though some numbers were enhanced with extended grooves and instrumental breaks. Singing and chanting along, the Palace audience locked in with Waters and the familiar "Wall" story. As he reached a key line in "Mother" - "Should I trust the government?" - the crowd broke out with a resounding "Noooo!"
Released at the turn of the '80s, "The Wall" was more than a Pink Floyd classic. It was a benchmark for rock itself: In the face of punk and new wave, it was defiantly epic; in its elaborate visuals and lucid, ice-blue sonics, it marked the evolution from rock's shaggy haired, blue-jeaned 1970s.
In that way, it remains a thoroughly modern work, and Sunday drove home the point. This was a high-definition show from top to bottom, and aside from aged animated segments extracted from the old "Wall" film, there was almost nothing retro about it.
The 67-year-old Waters used the chance to graft new symbolism onto the album's larger themes, weaving corporate logos and modern political faces into the story's scathing indictment of authority and repression. "The Wall" is ultimately a celebration of the self, and by placing it in a live setting Waters has nailed rock's most virtuous and enduring quality: the power in coming together to exalt individualism.
For his part, Waters was a proficient showman, often at center stage alone with a microphone, though discerning between live and lip-synched vocals wasn't always easy. There was little chatter between songs, and only Waters' ill-advised mugging to the crowd during "Comfortably Numb" pulled the performance away from the story. The concert's second half found him donning sunglasses and trench coat, his crisply uniformed band behind him as the show pulsed to its climax.
No Pink Floyd work belongs to Waters more than "The Wall." But there's no denying the album's debt to David Gilmour, whose distinct vocals and guitar work are part of the record's fabric, including a "Comfortably Numb" solo widely regarded as one of rock's all-time best. Waters' touring band was up to the task: That song, in particular, featured classy performances from singer Robbie Wyckoff and guitarist Dave Kilminster, appearing atop the wall.
Sound effects whizzed across the arena. Multicolored tears streaked down the wall. Pink Floyd's familiar airborne pig, scorched black for this show, floated overhead. Video clips were stirring - scenes of soldiers greeting their families - and stark, including photos of children battered by hunger and war.
The sensory crush made for potent storytelling, the stuff of thrill and surprise even for those familiar with every nook and cranny of the album, who knew the twists and turns ahead. The show's most-awaited visual moment - the massive wall crashing down into a heap just feet away from the front row - was as jarring as it was magnificent.
It's rare that a concert works so effectively at so many levels: musically, visually, intellectually, physically, emotionally. Waters and "The Wall" pulled it off, in one of the most intense and riveting rock spectacles we're apt to experience for years to come.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Value City Arena Oct 22, 2010
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Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Columbus Dispatch
by Gary Budzak
The Wall: Waters rebuilds iconic Pink Floyd event brick by brick
Roger Waters celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Wall tour by bringing it to life in a memorable concert Friday night in Value City Arena.
The Wall was the chart-topping Pink Floyd double album that was made into a movie.
Floyd bassist-singer Waters wrote the album, based loosely on his life, particularly around an incident where he spat on fans during a concert.
In The Wall, protagonist Pink builds a wall around himself as teachers and society turn him into an isolated introvert. He finally tears down the wall after judging himself.
Pink Floyd, during what may be the high point of the band's career, performed The Wall in its entirety a couple of times. The band was starting to unravel at the time and the quintet did one more album together before a bitter parting.
Now Waters, with a full backing band, is pulling out all the stops by doing The Wall in its entirety, complete with all the props, puppets, extra film lyrics and Gerald Scarfe animation, including those scary marching hammers. It sounded and looked great.
The star, of course, was the wall itself. Made of 12 rows of white bricks stretched across the stage, it stood 40 feet high. As the first half of the show played out, workers kept adding bricks, eventually walling up the band.
During a half-hour intermission, pictures and words of fallen heroes filled the wall.
Waters opened the second half by poking out one of the bricks to sing. A hotel room then slid out of the wall as Waters sang Nobody Home.
Then on Comfortably Numb, Robbie Wyckoff sang the David Gilmour parts on top of the wall. As a guitar solo rained from atop the wall, a stage was set up in front of the wall.
Waters was clearly enjoying himself, especially as real kids mocked a gigantic puppet of a teacher during Another Brick in the Wall.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Bell Centre Montreal QC Oct 19, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Montreal Gazette
by Bernard Perusse
Concert Review Roger Waters at The Bell Centre
Fireworks were going off everywhere, performers were waving flags, scaffolds were rising and vocal cords were shredding with enthusiasm as a plane crossed the Bell Centre to crash into the central prop.
So much for the first four minutes of The Wall.
And you thought Dark Side of the Moon looked impressive when Roger Waters brought it to the same venue in 2006 and 2007? That was minimalism compared to the eye-popping spectacle that is Waters's stage adaptation of Pink Floyd's 1979 double album, which might be his masterpiece. Last night's performance, the first of two sold-out shows, was so visually dazzling, profoundly deafening and breathtakingly over the top that it was almost a giddy experience, in spite of the work's grim subject matter. Giant inflatable puppets, inventive animation, the inevitable floating pig and, of course, the giant wall between artist and audience - completed by the end of the first half of the show and dismantled in the second - dwarfed everything.
The music was absolutely secondary, which is fitting, in a way. The album is one of the best-produced recordings in all of British rock and the Bell Centre acoustics, while a notch better than usual for this show, couldn't convey the album's sonic subtleties.
Wisely, Waters has downplayed the trials of the poor millionaire rock star in this adaptation and emphasized its antiwar aspects. After a photo of his father, who died in the Second World War, appears in the circular backdrop during The Thin Ice, photos and names of soldiers who were killed in Iraq - sent in pursuant to a request on Waters's Web site - follow in dignified succession. Bring the Boys Home drew one of the loudest and most emotional reactions of the night.
Oppressive authority and corruption, another theme of the work, was represented by a 30-foot inflatable teacher puppet as Waters, backed by the local Children of Light Choir, sang the anthem Another Brick In the Wall, Part 2.
There was even irony, intended or unintended: when you consider that The Wall was born out of contempt for Pink Floyd's rowdy audience, how strange was it to see the older, gentler Waters leading 14,500 fans in a swaying singalong of Comfortably Numb?
In the end, what really screamed out was that The Wall, as a spectacle, is far bigger than both Pink Floyd and Waters, its creator. In fact, there were many points during this dazzling assault on the senses when it was easy to forget that Waters was even in the room.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Scotiabank Center Ottawa ON Sep 17, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Ottawa Citizen
by Lynn Saxberg
Still relevant, still rocking
The Wall proves a well-written song stands test of time
Pink Floyd's creative genius, Roger Waters, rebuilt the Wall at Scotiabank Place on Sunday, bringing to life a bloated, but forward-thinking masterpiece three decades after its creation.
With its anti-authoritarian underpinning, the themes driving Waters' tale of isolation and madness still work well, while the music is so familiar that it seems ingrained in our collective psyche. Still relevant and still rocking, there was no way Rogers could strike out in front of a sold-out audience of 15,500 devotees.
On top of that foundation of familiarity, Waters had the benefit of state-of-the-art technology, including surround sound, dazzling lights, slick video images and an array of gigantic props, from puppets to bricks to a flying pig. What's more, his band had no shortage of top-notch musicians willing to do the superstar bassist's bidding.
In some ways, it seemed the times have caught up to the Wall -- what was prohibitively expensive to stage 30 years ago is possible now, thanks in part to the technological advances of the concert industry.
However, what seemed sloppy and self-indulgent about the Wall 30 years ago hasn't changed much either. At one point, early in the concert, Waters introduced the song, Mother, noting that he would be singing along with vintage video footage of himself. "Through a feat of time travel that might seem somewhat narcissistic," he said, "I'm going to sing with miserable Roger from all those years ago."
Well, narcissistic was certainly one word to describe the proceedings, but we'll forgive it because it was also massively entertaining. The concert was divided into two halves, not unlike the format of the original double vinyl release, giving Waters plenty of time to construct his fantasy world.
The 67-year-old British rocker, dressed all in black except for his brilliant white runners, looked rather ordinary amid the trappings of the large-scale production, but his singing voice was strong (aided by no less than four backing vocalists) and his bass work was flawless. One early highlight was the participation of a 22-member student choir made up of Ottawa-area children from St. Mark and Saint Leonard Catholic Schools in Manotick. Their enthusiastic singing on Another Brick in the Wall gave the vast production a much-needed human touch.
Another standout was Comfortably Numb, which featured Waters striding in front of the imposing wall while the band played from somewhere behind the bricks. The wall came down with spectacular video images of falling bricks, but it wasn't the staging or effects that made it memorable. In the end, it was proof that a well-written song will stand the test of time.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review XL Center Hartford CT Oct 15, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Hartford Courant
by Eric R Danton
Review: Roger Waters in Hartford
When Pink Floyd released "The Wall" in 1979, it was an album largely about bassist and lyricist Roger Waters.
Thirty-one years later in Hartford, it was about all of us.
Waters has broadened the scope of the album -- which he performed in its entirety, in order, Friday at XL Center -- from the story of a fatherless rock star grappling with his demons to a cautionary tale for a world in thrall to its own, riven by avarice, sectarian strife both religious and secular, and the deeply cynical machinations of power-hungry narcissists.
It was a more political show, for a more politcal time, and Waters gave no quarter, building a 40-foot tall, 200-foot wide wall on stage that was more symbolic this time of the divisions among people than the attempts he once made to hide from himself.
Waters used segments of the wall, which a crew of builders had completed by the end of the first act, to project animated sequences (frequently by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, who contributed to the 1982 film version of the album), photographs and video footage -- including on "Run Like Hell" a clip of American soldiers in a helicopter shooting a pair of camera-toting journalists in Iraq. The images often served as rebukes to political leaders, corporations and religion, though the wall also served as a projection-screen requiem for those killed in armed conflicts.
That's a subject that cuts particularly close for Waters, whose own father died in 1944 during World War II, when the singer was just 4 months old. A sepia-toned photo of his father flashed on the wall alongside a brief biographical note, followed by others who died as a result of war: a U.S. Marine, a young Iranian woman, an Iraqi child, a firefighter killed on 9/11. Waters' message was clear, and powerful: each of their deaths was senseless.
It wasn't all politics, however. There was a healthy does of theater, too -- including, in the second act, a giant inflatable pig branded with Big Brother-esque slogans and corporate logos, that floated over the crowd.
As the opening song, "In the Flesh?" built to a towering finale, sprays of sparks rained down on the stage from the rigging, and a fighter plane secreted in the rafters at the back of the venue came racing down a cable to crash through a piece of the wall in a burst of flames.
A group of local kids joined Waters on stage to dance during the children's chorus portion of "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2," and the once-grouchy singer beamed at them as he plucked out the bassline to the propulsive, disco-laced song. Then, during the fluid, spot-on guitar solo that ends the song, Waters and the children together vanquished a 30-foot-tall teacher puppet that had descended from the ceiling a song earlier to leer over the proceedings.
In the second act, a giant inflatable pig branded with corporate logos (some of which were fake) floated over the audience on "In the Flesh."
Waters assembled a first-rate band to re-create the songs. Singer Robbie Wyckoff gracefully handled the vocal parts Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour sang on the album, though it took a squadron of guitarists -- Dave Kilminster, G.E. Smith and Snowy White -- to nail down Gilmour's licks and solos in note-perfect (and, impressively, tone-perfect) fashion.
Along with the wall itself, Waters and the band kept some touches from the original stage performances 30 years ago, including a pair of searing guitar solos atop the stack of bricks on "Comfortably Numb." Waters paid more literal homage to the old days on the wrenching acoustic song "Mother," when he sang a duet with a video image of himself performing the song in London in 1980.
At the end, after Waters narrated the action on "The Trial" while Scarfe's animation loomed large, the wall came down, and the singer and his band emerged from beneath the cardboard rubble to close the show with the slightly hopeful "Outside the Wall," as confetti drifted down from the ceiling.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Nassau Coliseum Uniondale NY Oct 12, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review:
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Verizon Center Washington DC Oct 10, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Washington Post
by Aaron Leitko
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters at Verizon Center
When Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters wrote "The Wall" -- the band's mega-selling double album -- back in the late '70s, he pined for a barrier that would isolate him from his fans, whom he then considered to be boorish and goony. But times have changed.
On Sunday night at the Verizon Center, Waters tried to put a more positive spin on the whole thing. Accompanied by a backing band of hired guns, the bassist/guitarist played the 1979 record in its entirety, as written, spare a few extra solos. Even the stage show was a throwback, modeled after Pink Floyd's 1980 "The Wall" tour -- complete with bizarro animation by illustrator Gerald Scarfe, and, of course, a giant cardboard wall.
But this time around, the message was antiwar rather than antisocial. A stage crew projected photos of war casualties, many of which were solicited from audience members via the Internet. Teenagers arrived onstage to chant "We don't need no education," the refrain from "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)," wearing T-shirts that read, "Fear builds walls." The jaded sentiments that inspired the original record were, for the most part, painted over.
The inflatable puppets remain, though. Thank God. Forget the Blu-ray, the DVD, the planetarium laser-light show -- the arena is the superior format for "The Wall." On record, it's an imperfect, sometimes boring work. The extra bombast helps, though -- an inflatable flying pig or two does wonders to pad the hit-less terrain between "Hey You" and "Comfortably Numb." For Waters, as it was with Pink Floyd, more is always more.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review HSBC Arena Buffalo NY Oct 8, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Buffalo News
by Jeff Miers
Waters goes to 'The Wall' for thrilled fans
Modern pop wisdom suggests that a performer courts his audience, begs for that audience's approval, dances, shimmies and shakes, smiling all the while like a politician during a high-profile photo-op, or acting for all the world like a jilted sweetheart desperate for his lover's touch. Roger Waters isn't having any of that nonsense. He doesn't approach his audience on bended knee. He's not there to be a pop star. He expects only that you open your mind, heart, ears and eyes, and let the music and the story take you away.
Like an anti-pop prophet, Waters builds a wall between himself, his band and the audience, and then tears it down at the show's conclusion in an act of violent, heartrending and exhilarating catharsis. The symbolism is tough to miss.
On Friday, a sold-out, packed-to- the-rafters HSBC Arena bore witness to the full performance of Waters' masterpiece, "The Wall." This was not a mere concert. It was an audiovisual play set to music. That music towers, like the wall itself, above its contemporaries as one of the greatest pieces of rock art to have emerged from the 20th century.
When Pink Floyd released "The Wall" in 1980, it represented the culmination of the ideas Waters had been wrestling with for a decade. It's principal themes include alienation, from society and self; the psychological torment of schooling and its violently clumsy attempts at socializing children; the pure dread (and wretched political underpinnings) of war; the dark underbelly of sexuality, and thereby, the inner workings of guilt, betrayal and shame; the black heart of fascism; and the ingenuous dog-and-pony show that is pop stardom. Not exactly a nice night out with your date to hear the hits.
As the lights went down, and a troop of jackbooted, generic fascist types arrived onstage waving
flags, an air of titillated dread filled the Arena, one that came to an immediate climax as a massive explosion heralded the arrival of the band. "Do I have your attention now?" seemed to be the unspoken subtext. Waters appeared, dressed all in black, wielding his black Fender Precision Bass like a blunt instrument he fully intended to bludgeon someone with before night's end, that half sneer, half smile adorning his still-striking features.
"So you thought you might like to go to the show," he began.
Bit by bit, as the band performed - "The Thin Ice," then the thrilling gut-punch of "Another Brick In the Wall," "The Happiest Days of Our Lives," "Another Brick In the Wall Part II" and finally a resolution of sorts into the aching "Mother" - a massive wall was erected across the front of the stage. By intermission time, it would completely obscure the band from view, acting as an enormous video screen, playground for a variety of enormous inflatable puppets representing characters from the libretto - the cynical, abusive schoolmaster, the sneering, praying mantis-like wife, the smothering Mother- and metaphorical signifier of man's fear-based desire to create a world of "us" and "them."
The band Waters assembled to perform his magnum opus could not have been finer, unless the Floyd's David Gilmour was along for the ride. That's no dis on guitarists Snowy White, Dave Kilminster and G. E. Smith, who gracefully inhabited Gilmour's achingly melodic signature motifs, bringing their own personalities to bear on them, but sticking close enough to the script to serve the music's original intention. Waters' son Harry played keyboards along with veteran Jon Carin; Graham Broad thumped the tubs with dignity; newcomer Robbie Wyckoff handled the bits of the album that Gilmour had originally assumed lead vocal duties for; and the members of vocal group Venice (Jon Joyce, Mark Lennon, Michael Lennon and Kipp Lennon) handled backing vocals and harmonies. The sound, like the performance itself, was simply outstanding and beyond reproach throughout.
Waters acted as ringmaster, a conduit to the thwarted, battle-weary but still doggedly determined idealism that acts as cornerstone of "The Wall." A central thread throughout the piece leads back to the death of Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, when the future Pink Floyd co-founder was still a baby. It is likely this pivotal event, coupled with the leftist leanings of the intellectually vibrant mother who raised him, that later solidified into Waters' moral outrage at what he sees as the senselessness of war.
During intermission, names and descriptions of lost loved ones submitted by fans via Waters' Web site - victims in any and all wars, as per the man's instructions - scrolled across the wall. The effect was chilling, the point - that lives are routinely wasted in the pursuit of wall-building between nations - impossible to miss.
Waters and the band performed "The Wall" in its entirety, and nothing else. The collapse of the wall at the show's emotional coda acted as encore. This seemed wholly appropriate. What was there left to say? Anything more would've felt superfluous.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Madison Square Garden New York NY Oct 5, 2010
Roger Waters The Wall North America Tickets
Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: New York Times
by Jon Pareles
Same Words, Different 'Wall'
Roger Waters exorcised personal, and just partly fictionalized, traumas when he wrote "The Wall," the rock opera his band, Pink Floyd, released in 1979. Now, 30 years after the group first toured with "The Wall," Mr. Waters is leading his own band, building and (spoiler alert) knocking down a wall again onstage.
The music (some written by Pink Floyd's guitarist, David Gilmour) has barely changed, give or take a few more guitar solos onstage. But with three decades of added perspective Mr. Waters has moved "The Wall" away from personal confession and toward its other theme: an indictment of power and authority misused.
"The Wall" tells the story of a rock star, Mr. Pink Floyd. It touches on the death of his father (in World War II), vicious schoolmasters, a clinging mother, infidelity, divorce, rock-star excesses and the hollowness, paranoia and demagoguery of fame. Fears and drugs combine to wall him away from the world, until, after a surreal trial, the wall crumbles to both expose him and restore his humanity.
"I was a miserable young man all those years ago," Mr. Waters told the audience on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. "I'm happier now," he added, to moderate applause.
As in 1980, but with newer technology, "The Wall" has animations, giant marionettes and a physical wall that goes up, brick by white brick, in front of the band (and doubles as a video screen). The musicians spend much of the second act performing above and in front of it. The band was dressed in self-effacing black, the better not to distract from the visuals, from animated goose-stepping pairs of hammers to Mr. Waters singing "Goodbye Cruel World" through the last chink in the wall; there was also an inflatable pig, black and with tusks. For one song, "Mother," Mr. Waters sang along with himself on film from the 1980 tour. True to Pink Floyd's standards, the audio was a spectacle in itself: a remarkably clear surround-sound system had people looking overhead as the sounds of warplanes buzzed across the arena.
The music echoes the plot's timeline. Mr. Waters was born in 1943, and when he sang about his youth or longed to regress, the chords came from doo-wop. But when he put on a leather trench coat and sunglasses to become Mr. Floyd the rock star, the music was booming 1970s arena-rock.
The recurring theme in "The Wall" is a rising and falling three-note melody, which in one iteration - "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)," with a chorus beginning "We don't need no education" - became a hit single for Pink Floyd in 1979. Members of the Boys' Club of New York joined the band onstage for that song, wearing T-shirts that read "Fear Builds Walls."
The 2010 version of "The Wall" had those larger concepts in mind. It showed bombers dropping ideologically charged signs: the star of David, the crescent moon of Islam, the Christian crucifix, the logos of Mercedes-Benz and Shell. (Why not BP?) In the extended, ominous version of "Run Like Hell," which Mr. Waters as Mr. Floyd introduced with a German accent and a red armband, the screen showed iPod-style phrases like "iLead," "iHate," "iKill" and "iPay" (with a graveyard) to suggest the processes of war and terrorism.
During intermission the screen showed the faces and stories of men and women killed in wars and terrorist acts, sent by request to Mr. Waters's Web site. Over the decades Mr. Waters has realized that his own miserable moments were utterly dwarfed by the sorrows of countless victims of violence.
The tour continues on Friday at HSBC Arena in Buffalo; Sunday at Verizon Center in Washington; Tuesday and Wednesday at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y.; and Oct. 15 at XL Center in Hartford; www.rogerwaters.com.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review TD Garden Boston MA Sep 30, 2010
Roger Waters The Wall North America Tickets
Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Boston Herald
by Jed Gottlieb
Roger Waters masterfully rebuilds 'The Wall'
All and all, there's always another reason to build a wall.
With this sad sentiment Pink Floyd-mastermind Roger Waters brings The Wall back on tour --- last night's sellout was the first stop at the TD Garden, there are also shows tonight and Sunday.
The Floyd epic is maudlin and overwrought. It's also enduringly awesome and appropriate in the face of fresh walls --- border fences in Israel and between the United States and Mexico, divisions created by staring at rectangular screens 14 hours a day.
Roger sees this, and Roger urges us to tear down the walls.
Much of the show was faithful to the original tour and film --- roadies used bricks the size of Frigidaires to construct an actual wall while Waters' 12-piece band played the 23-times platinum opus from front to back. But the show from the past constantly referenced the present.
Sometimes the references were vague. During "Goodbye Blue Sky" projections depicted planes dropping bombs shaped as crosses, Muslim crescents, stars of David, dollar signs and Shell and Mercedes Benz logos.
Sometimes they were brutally specific. Early on "The Thin Ice" gave us real faces of the dead from Iraq, Iran, Sept. 11 and dozens of other decades old conflicts. Later "Bring the Boys Back Home" was spiked with legitimately devastating scenes --- a weeping girl reuniting with her soldier father, an emaciated east African refuge.
The story and images were meant to hammer home the themes of "The Wall": war is hell, isolation is hell, neither are going away and we mostly have intolerant governments and indifferent corporations running to thank for that.
But the irony of the themes was everywhere: the venue, the soda choices, the sticker shock of the T-shirts. It's hard to be anti-establishment when you charge $100 a seat and need 20 trucks to haul your equipment around.
And yet, between the symbolism and irony, was a hell of show.
The three guitarists (including GE Smith) still can't get David Gilmour's tone and Waters just isn't a great frontman (or actor, something needed in this rock opera). But these are bloody brilliant songs augmented with old-school spectacle.
One of the best moments was Waters intimately dueting on "Mother" with a shimmering, black-and-white version of his young self pulled from a show on the original 1980 tour. But the rest of the best was rock coupled with visceral effects: lots of explosions, a flying pig the size of Hummer, a nearly-life sized plane crashing through the wall, the whole wall itself.
It's a great Broadway show powered by rock 'n' roll. But when it gets too preachy, too anti-capitalistic it struggles. Thankfully, there's always a flying pig or mammoth marionette school master or 30-foot wall crashing down to distract from the incongruities.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Quicken Loans Arena Cleveland PA Sep 28, 2010
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Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Cleveland Plain Dealer
by Jon Soeder
Roger Waters rebuilds 'The Wall' at The Q, with spectacular results
All in all, it wasn't just another concert.
When Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters revisited his 1979 masterpiece "The Wall" on Tuesday night at The Q, it was nothing short of spectacular.
As a 35-foot-high, 240-foot-wide wall took shape around him, Waters constructed an elaborate metaphor for shutting yourself off - from your feelings, from other people and from the world at large. In the process, he set a new standard for rock 'n' roll theater.
The opening number alone, "In the Flesh?," involved more pyrotechnics than Lady Gaga probably ignites over the course of an entire show.
"If you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes / You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise," Waters sang.
At 67, the wiry British grandfather of rock grandeur made a lean yet not-so-mean frontman. Waters often smiled and waved to the 12,000-strong crowd, despite the darkly autobiographical subject matter of his magnum opus.
Thirty-odd years on, not every song held up as well as "Mother" (done as a virtual duet between Waters and a video of his younger self), "Young Lust" or "Run like Hell," although there was plenty to take in, even when the score dragged in spots.
Fans raised on midnight screenings of the 1982 film "Pink Floyd The Wall" sat wide-eyed anew as artist Gerald Scarfe's surreal images of copulating flowers and marching hammers were projected on the massive bulwark. Pictures of soldiers and civilians killed in battles past and present also were shown, driving home an anti-war message.
The sensory overload also entailed surround-sound effects and giant inflatables, including a pig that flew over the audience and menacing balloon versions of Mother, the Teacher and the Wife.
Waters' 11-piece band included his son Harry on keyboards and former "Saturday Night Live" bandleader G.E. Smith on guitar. Robbie Wyckoff faithfully re-created the vocal parts of Waters' estranged Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour, while four backing singers (including members of the group Venice) provided tight harmonies.
In a nice touch, Waters also had local outreach group ROAM (Roots of American Music) select 20 Northeast Ohio teens and tweens to join him in the spotlight for "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2," sporting "FEAR BUILDS WALLS" T-shirts.
And let's hear it for the unsung stagehands who built the wall, cardboard brick by cardboard brick, during the first of two acts, each approximately 1 hour long.
"Goodbye Cruel World" found a backlit Waters only partly visible through a small gap, before the final brick was dramatically put in place.
The second half of the show commenced with "Hey You," performed entirely behind the wall, with nary a glimpse of the musicians.
During "Nobody Home," part of the rampart opened to reveal Waters slumped in a chair amid a trashed hotel room. For a soaring "Comfortably Numb," he was front and center.
At the end of "The Trial," concertgoers chanted on cue: "Tear down the wall!" When it finally came tumbling down, it sent a small shockwave through the arena.
"Thank you so much, from the bottom of all our hearts," Waters said. "You've been a fantastic audience, and it means a lot to us."
Like a latter-day Joshua fresh from the battle of Jericho, Waters played trumpet on the triumphant finale, "Outside the Wall," joined by his bandmates amid the rubble.
In more ways than one, the production was a smashing success.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Consol Energy Center Pittsburgh PA Sep 26, 2010
The Wall Live Setlist & Review Consol Energy Center Pittsburgh PA Sep 26, 2010
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Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Pittsburgh Post Gazette
by Scott Mervis
Waters makes 'Wall' totally spectacular
The Consol Energy Center is only a month old, and already there are renovations taking place.
Last night, for instance, a bunch of guys built a wall right across the rink, and then decided to tear it down. Throughout the evening, the crowd was transfixed by this work of construction and deconstruction, backed, of course, by a loud, compelling soundtrack.
Pink Floyd mastermind Roger Waters, embarking on what he's called his last tour, has pulled the 30-year-old rock opera "The Wall" out of mothballs, and given it a technological upgrade.
"The Wall," as most people who came of age in the '80s know, tells the semi-autobiographical tale of rock star Pink, who is driven to madness by personal tragedy and the suffocating pressures of society.
The left-leaning Mr. Waters' clearly has an anti-war, anti-institutional agenda to deliver, but the Floyd faithful, who come in all political shapes and sizes, were able to take what they wanted from "The Wall."
It could be enjoyed on a purely musical level, with a meticulous band executing songs still in heavy rotation on classic-rock radio. Fans could rally around the message of not trusting war-happy governments. On the level of grand spectacle, well, it was spectacular. I was seated one row away from caution tape and signs that said "Please Keep Out: Pyro Zone," so I could relate to Pink's paranoia.
The first few minutes were arresting, with flag-waving storm troopers, Roman candles and a fiery plane crash. The wall-building, using hydraulic risers, started with "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," complete with Pittsburgh Boys and Girls Club kids in "Fear Builds Walls" T-shirts shaking their fists at a giant inflatable teacher.
"Mother" was a beautiful and harrowing fear ballad with Mr. Waters on acoustic guitar and G.E. Smith playing the searing solo in front of a projection of the singer from 30 years ago. Somehow his voice is just as commanding and sinister at 67. Not surprisingly, the line "Mother, should I trust the government?" provoked a hearty jeer.
Robbie Wyckoff proved to be a capable vocal stand-in for David Gilmour on "Young Lust" and parts of "Mother."
Toward the end of the first set, the wall had obscured the band and Mr. Waters, in all black with white sneakers, sat in front of it singing the songs of Pink's dreary descent. The last brick hit right at the end of "Goodbye Cruel World," marking Pink's fall and the audience's beer break.
The second half was a buildup toward the Pink's redemption and the wall's destruction, starting with a Wyckoff vocal on "Hey You" and a Waters cheer of "Bring the Boys Back Home."
The sometimes caustic set was also highlighted by a dramatic "Comfortably Numb" (with Mr. Waters at the base of the wall and Mr. Wyckoff on top), the heart-pounding "Run Like Hell" (complete with signature Floyd pig) and a grand finale, with tumbling wall, that was more visually than musically rousing.
All told, "The Wall" doesn't make for the most upbeat or coherent evening of musical theater -- I liked the recent "Dark Side of the Moon" tour better, just because of the music -- but it certainly doesn't lack dazzle or bite.
This tour is likely the last chance to experience it with the man himself -- and he's matched the intense album with yet another startling visual epic.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10270/1090697-388.stm#ixzz10lsa7ygV
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review United Centre Chicago Sep 20, 2010
The Wall Live Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Chicago 2010
Roger Waters The Wall North America Tickets
Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Chicago Tribune
by Greg Kot
Roger Waters performs 'The Wall' at United Center
Roger Waters showed up Monday to begin a four-night residency at the United Center, but the lean, silver-haired former Pink Floyd mastermind was no match for the spectacle he created.
Waters took second billing to "The Wall," the soundtrack, and the wall, the edifice that was built fabricated brick by fabricated brick until it towered over the performance, sealed off the performers, and then - spoiler alert! -- collapsed during the finale. Who needs "Wicked"? This was mega-Broadway staging with a stadium-rock score.
But how well has it aged? As multimedia extravaganza, it was in many ways a spectacular update, rather than an overly faithful replication of the original stage show. But parts of "The Wall's" soundtrack came off as a period piece, an overwrought relic of a rock era when size mattered. There's enough filler in this wall to make its eventual collapse seem inevitable. But for a work about madness, excess is to be expected and "The Wall" creates its own world convincingly. Its musical high points are still stirring, whether it's the plaintive cry of "Mother," the alternately desperate and menacing "Hey You," the paranoid gallop of "Run Like Hell" or the epic, stately descent into madness that is "Comfortably Numb."
Waters brought a 12-piece band with him (including his son Harry on keyboards) to replicate the 1979 Pink Floyd classic, which has since sold more than 23 million copies in the U.S. The work had previously been performed only 31 times, in part because it was such an expensive and elaborate undertaking, until Waters reclaimed it for his current tour. In terms of scale and ambition it dwarfs his 2006 solo tour, in which he performed another Floyd landmark, "The Dark Side of the Moon," in its entirety.
But "The Wall" is also a more problematic work than the fat-free "Dark Side," with its bombastic production and heavy handed narrative. Its place in pop-culture history is assured, however; after "The Wall," everything else in rock seemed puny, probably for the best. Once you go this high -- this gonzo, really -- it's probably a good idea to back away slowly. Indeed, a few years after its creation, Waters and the Floyd parted ways forever (except for a brief reunion at Live Aid in 2005).
For the 2010 incarnation, Waters put a bigger geo-political twist on the narrative, freshening up some of the visuals to emphasize current events as much as the internal psychodrama of the rock opera's protagonist. "The Wall" as originally presented came across as a highly personal work - essentially a Waters solo album with the rest of Floyd reduced to his backing band. It focused on the narrator's insecurities and paranoia: the death of his father in World War II, the smothering attention of his mother, the betrayal of his wife, the brow-beatings of various authority figures, until he becomes isolated from society - literally walling himself off from the world. In its new telling, Waters uses the wall as a symbol of the cultural, political and racial barriers that divide nations. Images of Iraqi war victims merged with those of earlier conflicts; bombs became corporate logos; and flags of an imagined dictatorship were marched on and off stage at various intervals.
The wall constructed through the first half of the show becomes a massive canvas for Waters and his visual collaborators to splash a sensory overload of images, slogans and garish cartoons. Monstrous inflatable puppets - domineering mother, ominous schoolteacher, carnivorous lover as half-woman, half-praying mantis - descended from the rafters to loom over and terrorize Waters. The sounds of birds-turned-bombers, helicopters, trains and cars zoomed around the arena, thanks to an elaborate array of speakers.
Waters dueted with the stark black-and-white version of his younger self performing "Mother" in England in 1980 -- an oddly moving and effective moment in a song where childhood dreams give way to a desperate search for answers. For "Comfortably Numb," the dramatic lighting used for David Gilmour's original showstopping moment -- his giant silhouette spilling across the balconies as he soloed -- was replicated, right down to the solo itself. Waters spread his hands overhead, glorying in the moment with the audience.
When the bassist assumed the guise of a dictator complete with trench coat and arm band, the show became a commentary on despotism of all kinds, including the rock concert itself. Big Brother cameras watched the audience's every move and insisted on passivity -- "Trust Us," "Everything Will be OK." As Waters and some of his musicians gave a cross-armed fascist salute, many audience members responded in kind -- as if to prove Waters' point that a strong-willed leader can manipulate a crowd to do his bidding. Rock concerts are trumpeted as celebrations of individuality and rebellion, but Waters pointedly saw them as just another type of political rally. That's not necessarily a new idea, but rarely has it been illustrated as chillingly.
For at least one listener, "The Wall" makes its most moving statement amid the rubble of its finale. In front of the toppled wall, the musicians assembled as a ragtag Salvation Army band, with stringed instruments, accordion and Waters on trumpet. They paid tribute to "the bleeding hearts and the artists," the outcasts who can't help "banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall." One senses that for the Roger Waters who created "The Wall," the bleeding-heart artists and mad buggers had a lot in common.
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Roger Waters Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON September 15, 2010
Roger Waters The Wall Live Tour 2010 Setlist & Review Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON September 15, 2010
Roger Waters The Wall North America Tickets
Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
Setlist:
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside the Wall
Review: Toronto Sun
by Ben Rayner
It's The Wall, not the Roger Waters show
Credit to Roger Waters where credit is due: this 30th anniversary tour in honour of the epochal Pink Floyd opus The Wall is about The Wall, not about Roger Waters.
Waters's previous resurrections of the paranoid double-album song cycle from 1979 that marked the classic, stadium-era Floyd lineup's last moment of real greatness and that had effectively blown the group apart by the time The Final Cut rolled around felt a bit like gratuitous, compensatory grandstanding in the wake of some iffy solo efforts - The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, anyone? - and his old bandmates' slide into the comfortable sterility that would yield A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell. "You might have the name Pink Floyd," they seemed to say, "but I'm still the man in charge of the music that made the people care."
These days, catching Waters alone doing Pink Floyd songs is only one-quarter more "authentic" the experience than one would get if fellow surviving members David Gilmour and Nick Mason bothered to go out on tour again under the Floyd banner. And yet the notoriously self-important Waters himself seems ready to concede that the music he made with Pink Floyd is bigger than him, bigger than petty matters of ego and ownership and worthy of celebration in its own right.
Sure, it's a cash-in. Watching the expensive, state-of-the-art 2010 production of The Wall that Waters brought to the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday night - the first of three hot-ticket gigs at the 20,000-capacity venue - it was hard not to smirk whenever the word "capitalism" or animated dollar signs raining from the sky made au courant appearances amidst the war-scarred fascist iconography of the original work. Capitalism and capitalism alone is the only reason that a rock 'n' roll stage show ambitious enough to completely wall itself off, faux-brick by faux-brick, by the intermission can even exist during one of the shakiest years for the live-music industry in recent memory.
That's the enduring power of The Wall, though, and The Wall was what the doting ACC throng was there to see on Wednesday night. I say "see" rather than "hear" because it was a high-end presentation built on arresting digital animation, ceiling-high marionettes and a requisite, giant, inflatable wild boar emblazoned with the phrase "EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY" unleashed to cheers over the arena bowl after "The Show Must Go On" that made this a memorable night out. The music, professionally recreated by Waters and something like a dozen anonymous side players, was actually kind of drab and heartless, not much different from what you'd hear at one of those Classic Albums Live nights at the Phoenix were it not for the production values that permitted, say, a British fighter jet to crash into the titular wall at stage left at the end of "In the Flesh?" or an enormous, grotesque caricature of Waters's smothering mother to glower at the crowd during "Mother."
"Mother" was a little wobbly, actually, marred by a mix that left Waters's vocals completely inaudible for the first verse. Likewise, the band's attempts to spread out and jam on "Empty Spaces" and "Run Like Hell" sounded more like something you'd hear Paul Schaffer walking the Late Show band through after a commercial break than Pink Floyd at the top of its powers. And the dude Waters has brought in to do Gilmour's parts on "Hey You," "Comfortably Numb" and the like is simply not up to snuff and was audibly flat for at least half of his vocal turns on Wednesday.
Again, however, credit to Waters. The night's most rapturous audience moment - aside from the genuine cheers of anti-war sentiment that erupted during "Vera" when the phrase "BRING THE BOYS BACK HOME" flared up across the backdrop - might have been when the star of the show simply stood alone on a bare stage in front of the aforementioned wall and graciously raised his arms while the audience took Gilmour's verses to "Comfortably Numb." The Gilmour stand-in and another Gilmour stand-in on guitar got spotlights at the top of the all, but the song and the love everybody in attendance obviously felt for it were in charge. Good on Roger Waters for recognizing that, and good on Roger Waters for recognizing - and humbly deferring to - what a massive contribution to the rock canon he made in The Wall.
Toronto Sun Review
Roger Waters The Wall North America Tickets
Roger Waters Tickets UK & Europe 2011
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curated content from YouTube
Roger Waters Tour 2010 Band Members
The Wall Live 2010 Musicians
Who will be backing up Roger on the 2010 tour you ask, well it's a solid lineup of seasoned musicians and singers:
Robbie Wyckoff - Vocals
Graham Broad - drums
Snowy White - guitar
Dave Kilminster-guitar
G.E Smith - Guitar
Jon Carin - Keyboards
Harry Waters - Keyboards
Mark-Venice - vocals
Kipp-Venice - vocals
Michael Lennon - vocals
Robbie Wyckoff - Vocals
Graham Broad - drums
Snowy White - guitar
Dave Kilminster-guitar
G.E Smith - Guitar
Jon Carin - Keyboards
Harry Waters - Keyboards
Mark-Venice - vocals
Kipp-Venice - vocals
Michael Lennon - vocals
curated content from YouTube
Roger Waters News 2010
Roger Waters The Wall Live Tour 2010-2011
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