Last Wednesday, in June 13th, 2012, my husband and
I went to see the show of former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters. It was The
Wall Live show, which is touring the world from September 2010. It was the
second time I witnessed this outstanding high-tech visual music performance.
The first one was in Moscow, Russia, in April 2011.
Like the most of The Wall Live shows, Atlanta
show was held in a huge sports venue – Philips Arena. The tremendous white wall
was partly built across the venue’s width before the show. The concert started
slightly later than stated, but the delay was hardly noticeable. The venue
looked almost full.
The show’s start with “In The Flesh?” was as
always spectacular. In its culmination the stage was illuminated by intense
pyrotechnic effects and the fire from the airplane crash into the side of the
Wall.
Photo. In The Flesh?
During the first part of the show The Wall has
been slowly built by construction crew, more and more separating the band on
the stage from the audience. The last brick was laid by the end of the “Goodbye
Cruel World” song with the last words by Roger Waters: “Good Bye”. The
intermission then followed.
Photo. During “The Last Few Bricks”
instrumental medley, when The Wall was almost complete.
The Wall, being a perfect plane for various
visual content, embodied by modern projection technology, was the main
character of the show. It was reflecting not only what was happening on the
stage, but also the video of 1980 Pink Floyd show in London with Roger Waters
singing “Mother”, fragments of 1982 The Wall movie, documentaries, multiple
text and graphic messages to the audience. However, various high-edge 3D
projections The Wall was a canvas for were the most impressive. The Wall was
transforming into the building with columns, into the TV-set, into cities and
streets. It was surrounded by flying birds or wriggling worms. It was rotating
around its axis and exploding surrounded by bright colors of the sunny sky. Its
bricks were detaching and flying into abyss…
The whole show was carrying important social
messages from Roger Waters. Being a pacifist, Waters delivers an anti-war
message in his show projecting documentary war pictures and videos on The Wall,
which remind us of all the horrors wars bring. On his web site he asks people
to send photographs of the loved ones who died in any war, and then projects
these photographs with names and other short information on The Wall during the
show to commemorate “the fallen ones”. The performance of songs “Vera” and
“Bring The Boys Back Home” emphasize anti-war message of the show most of all.
The other message from Roger Waters is unity of
people against controlling governments and corporations. This message appears
in the song “Hey You” with words “Together we stand, divided we fall”. Various
graphics on The Wall – starting from images of tyrannical leaders of the
world’s history to the logos of corporations and currency symbols falling from
the bomber plane like bombs – strongly support this message too. When singing
the song “Mother” Roger Waters asked “Mother, should I trust the government?”,
the answer “No F*cking Way” appeared on The Wall, which was immediately
approved by the crowd in Atlanta and impressed us a lot, because it was not
expected.
Photo. Mother
The show as always ended with an impressive
destruction of The Wall along with the repeating “Tear down the wall!”
exclamations from “The Trial” song. As the Wall was destroyed the images of
happy girls waiving at the crowd appeared.
Photo. The Trial
Some moments after all 12
people from the band, including Roger Waters, appeared on the stage in front of
the destroyed Wall. They played and sang, and Waters introduced each musician
as they were leaving the stage one by one. By the way, one of them was Roger’s
son Harry who is playing Hammond organ, keyboards and accordion at The Wall Live
show and who is a wonderful jazz pianist outside The Wall.
The Wall Live tour 2012
is going to have its last show on the 21st of July in Quebec,
Canada. However, the tour might return to Europe in 2013 according to the Roger Waters
interview for Rolling Stone magazine in 2011. Well, let’s hope
more people get to see one of the most spectacular and powerful performances on
Earth! By the way, forgot to mention, the sound in Atlanta was just perfect
– my huge respect to engineers who worked on it!
Photo. Happy me after the show.
Until the next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment