Bank Atlantic Center, Sunrise
Friday, June 15, 2012
Better than: Watching a Pink Floyd tribute band.
Few concerts nowadays have a rhetorical agenda or offer a commentary on
the way we live. Even when Roger Waters first wrote 99 percent of The Wall
for his former band Pink Floyd in 1978, he was not thinking social
commentary. On the landmark double album and in subsequent live shows, he
bitched about fame, whined about mommy issues, and hated on stadium
concert audiences. His idea to build a wall on stage came from a
misanthropic desire to separate the band from its audience.
Waters' acrimonious split with the rest of Pink Floyd in the early eighties,
involving lawyers, money, and rights to perform material, has become
legendary. He kept the rights to The Wall. Only in recent years has he brought the stage show to life in a tour that has barely stopped roaming since 2010. This time, however, he re-framed The Wall with visuals that imply a lashing out against authority and war.
It was a grand start to an evening featuring a massively coordinated production. Massive white bricks gradually found their places onstage around the band by scurrying stagehands. Meanwhile, the expanse of the wall featured projected images illuminating text and lyrics along with photos of war, and animation made famous by The Wall's early production and its subsequent film. There were also puppets that looked to be three stories tall with eyes that lit up -- probably the most famous of which is the teacher who dances around at the side of the stage during "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2." Some local school kids joined the band on stage to sing the famed chorus "We don't need no education/We don't need no thought control" and wagged their fingers at the giant teacher.
After "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" seemed to end, Waters reprised the song on just his acoustic guitar with new lyrics. He dedicated it to one Jean Charles de Menezes and explained of the man that he was unarmed and shot in the head seven times by London police in a tube station, back in 2005. He ran from them after they profiled him as someone "suspicious." This came just two weeks after the London train bombings on July 11, 2005, which killed 52.
Of course, the new version of The Wall, has grown to imply something far beyond rebelling against a school teacher. The song "Mother" featured an animated surveillance camera over the band and the not so subtle graffiti, "BIG M
Critic's Notebook
Personal bias: I first heard The Wall at the age of 12. It gave me nightmares.
Overheard in the crowd: "Wooo!! Yeah!"
Follow Hans Morgenstern on Twitter @indieethos
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