This past Sunday (Oct 10, 2010), I was fortunate enough to have a ticket to see Roger Water's perform his masterpiece, "The Wall", in Washington DC's Verizon Center. For those of you that don't know, Roger Waters was the bass player and primary song writer for the band Pink Floyd. I have to assume that you have heard of them before because they are one of the greatest bands in history. Even if you don't like them, you know their music. Chants of "we don't need no education" probably sound familiar. Some other songs that you may know are "Wish You Were Here", "Comfortably Numb," and "Money". At least, those are the songs you'd hear on the radio. For a Floyd fan, those are merely "old standards".
In 1980, Pink Floyd went on their last tour, which only covered 4 cities I believe. This was the original "The Wall" tour. The production was so expensive and so massive that it almost put the band incredibly in debt just to put the show on. That's why it was limited to only 4 cities.
30 years later, Roger Waters has taken "The Wall" on a world tour and he has done an amazing job of it. He has world class musicians with him like GE Smith, who used to play guitar on Saturday Night Live in the 80s and 90s. I was fortunate to meet GE walking around on the street just before the show. He has the largest digital projector in the world. Now that I think about it, he probably has the largest mobile projector screen in the world as well, the Wall itself.
Being a huge Pink Floyd fan, the Wall was never one of my favorite albums. I guess because I was always just more into the long solos by David Gilmour and the Wall just always lacked a lot of those. But now, after I have seen the production myself, The Wall is a masterpiece. It was nothing short of epic and simply beautiful to watch.
The wall spanned the length of the entire arena. Throughout the show bricks are gradually added until, at the end of the first half, the entire wall is complete. The second part of the show is played primarily from behind the wall, which separates the band from the audience. During this time Roger Waters strolls in front of the wall singing his songs to the audience. The ending of the concert concludes with the destruction of the wall.The visuals shown throughout the show were stunning and mostly geared towards anti-government and anti-war. The song "Vera" showed video clips of soldiers returning home to their children. It was very touching to watch and somehow very fitting with the music.
Here is a link to all of the videos that I shot during the show. My favorites are "Comfortably Numb", Vera", and "Hey You". Or you can just watch them on my website or right below.
