Last night I had the opportunity to attend the performance of Roger Waters at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
For those of you who might not be familiar with Roger Waters, Geeze you’re young, and Roger is the guiding hand behind the generational band Pink Floyd!
When interviewed about the upcoming tour earlier this year, Waters stated:
"We are going to take a new show on the road, the content is very secret. It'll be a mixture of stuff from my long career, stuff from my years with Pink Floyd, some new things. Probably 75% of it will be old material and 25% will be new, but it will be all connected by a general theme. It will be a cool show, I promise you. It'll be spectacular like all my shows have been."
The night certainly lived up to this quote. Old Pink Floyd standards like “Money” “Wish you were here” “Comfortably Numb” “Breather” and “Eclipse” were paired off with Waters’ solo efforts including “When We Were Young” “The Last Refugee”. All performed by Waters’ collection of amazingly talented band, with expert vocals provided by the ladies of “Lucius”. (look them up, I’m listening to their work right now, they are pretty damn amazing).
(Image credit Daniel Ralston on UPROXX)
Rogers switches from guitar to bass to lead vocals with the practiced precision of a man who has been doing this for literally decades. And at 73 shows no signs of being at the end of his rope. When he is in performance mode, he is ON. During the rare moment when you see him without the spotlight while the band plays instrumental segments, you might catch a glimpse of a slouched old guy standing on a stage, but these moments are few and far between.
(Image Credit Wes and Alex/REX/Shutterstock ℅ Rolling Stone)![20170813_200033.jpg]
Anyone familiar with Roger Waters knows, the man has something to say, and he is not afraid to say it. The concert was absolutely no exception. Waters’ has always been at the forefront of embracing the latest technology in his tours and fascinating video walls that make you unsure if you should watch what is going on up on stage or what is playing on the video wall. This tour features repeated video of military drones flying through various scenes, military grade footage of drone bombings, the destruction of war, crying children, laughing children, men, women and children covered in the dust of their destroyed homes. We definitely get the impression that Waters is no fan of military action, but at no point does he stop the music to talk about his political views. These videos could be condemnations of any of the recent US administrations who have endeavored to fight terrorism. But in the second set, things get a lot more pointed.
Before we get to that though. The closer of the first set sees the stage lined with teenagers and younger children in orange jumpsuits. It is time for “Another Brick in the Wall”. The teens march to the song, until halfway through when they take off their jumpsuits to reveal black t-shirts emblazoned with the stark white anthem “RESIST”. The song ends as almost a dance party, and Waters reveals that all of these young performers are Nashville natives, which brings a rousing applause.
The Stage setup from our seats in 309 before the show. Note the white bars with the speaker stacks in the middle of the auditorium.
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The lights darken for the beginning of the second set and alarms begin to go off. The sound is coming from the tour sound rig, and is accompanied by flashing red lights from the massive structure no one has paid attention to in the middle of the theater. But suddenly there is movement, and this enormous truss begins to winch down toward the audience. It keeps coming down further and further and one is led to wonder if Waters has some sort of catwalk stage that will sit over the top of the Main Floor Audience. But no. The structure stops, a few meters above the audience, and four objects begin to rise. My first thought is they are some sort of military turret. But no, they are the smoke stacks of the building that emerges as rolled video screens come up out of the truss.
This new set of monitors soon will let us know exactly what Waters thinks of the current administration with the opening notes of “Pigs” and images of Donald Trump’s face imposed over the body of a pig, the body of a baby, as a child in Putin’s arms. All of these accompanied by a giant inflated pig floating over the audience. The “War Piggy Bank” as it were makes its circle around the audience as “Pigs” condemns the current President in no uncertain terms, to the joy and applause of the majority of the audience.
If the First Set was ambiguous about Waters’ point of view, the Second left nothing to the imagination. Which is alright with this crowd. People had been forewarned about the content of the show, and those who did not agree with Waters position had time to sell the tickets to people who did. Tennessee as a whole is a pretty reliably Red (Republican) state that Trump won easily in the election, but Nashville itself is a pretty Blue (Democratic) area, so the message was well received.
As the Second Set winds into its back half, to the sounds of “Brain Damage” smoke starts pouring out of foggers located in several areas around the stage, the ceiling truss, and inexplicably, two fogger towers hovering about 15 rows back from the stage. The reason becomes apparent as the band opens “Eclipse” and the unmistakable logo of Dark Side of the Moon comes to life in the middle of the venue. As a theatre geek, the amount of gear that has not been utilized at all until the final 20 minutes of the show is mind boggling. This one effect must carry an easy six figure USD budget, and we haven’t seen a lick of it until now.
But it sure is amazing!!!
When Eclipse finishes, Waters is Center stage with his guitar. He lets us know that after this show the band has a three week break, so they are going to do things a little different. The song begins with a question. With that, the opening of “Mother” begins to huge applause, and a building shaking “NO!” when Roger asks, “Mother should I trust the Government?”
The show ends with “Comfortably Numb”, as the entire arena sings along, and confetti begins to descend through the audience. I’m informed later that the papers have Waters’ imploring command “Resist” written on them. What I noticed was that at least some of the falling material was reflective enough to “pop” the lasers that still shone from the stage out into the rafters, which provided a pretty cool lighting effect.
There is no Encore. The band has performed what they are going to play, Waters makes his way down to the floor ad shakes hands with several people in the front row before returning to stage for a final time. All in the show provided about two and a half hours of music, much of which, while originating from the 70’s and 80’s still has meaning today, which is made all the clearer by the video messages Waters offers throughout the evening.
A final note about the audio. This is music producing done RIGHT! You go to a concert expecting not to be able to hear anything when you leave. But that is not how this show is mixed. It is loud, and the subs scattered around the arena make the bass literally vibrate through you, but it isn’t noisy. There is no noise discomfort at all. And no tinnitus after the show ends. I was able to have a regular conversation with people as we walked out of the venue.
All in, this was an amazing show that I am very glad to have had the opportunity to attend. I had previously seen videos of some of Pink Floyd’s tours, but never had a chance to see them, or Waters, live. Us & Them did not disappoint. I can only hope the 73 year old Rogers has it in him to continue to perform and keep the music alive for more generations as they are exposed to these amazing songs.
Thanks, as always, for reading! I will be posting a couple of videos from the concert later, but due to the copyright of the material I did not want to include those in my review so I can keep any upvote income separate and donate anything earned from the videos so that I am not profiting from them.