Usually, it is not hard for me to find a person to fill a “Plus One” ticket on a concert, especially one as noted as the one who graced the T-Mobile Center on September 3rd. I had a particular person in mind when I requested the plus one, but was told “I love Pink Floyd, but don’t like how political Roger Waters has become…” by a few different people, including the one that I thought was going to go with me originally. However, the plus one was filled, and we were both in one amazing night.
Before the show even started, Mr. Waters, seemingly aware of the political criticism that has formed around his tours, started off with a huge video monitor (the size of billboards) that covered the stage and a booming voice over the PA system that simply stated (both vocally and on the screen) “Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats. The Show is about to begin. Before it does, two public announcements: Firstly, out of consideration for your fellow patrons, please turn off your cell phones. And secondly, if you’re one of those ‘I love Pink Floyd, but I can’t stand Roger’s politics’ people, you might do well to fuck off to the bar right now. Thank you. Please sit back and enjoy the show.” And with that, the show was off…
The first song was a very somber “Comfortably Numb”, with the video screen still resting on the stage, a few members of Water’s band in complete silhouette, standing up against the video screen, as dystopia video, created to look like a cross between real life and the animation that one would imagine George Orwell would have lived for, playing for first nine minutes of the concert, before the screen started to move, slowly, and rise toward the ceiling. When it stopped, at what appeared to be 18 feet or so above the already tall stage, in its absence sat Roger’s band, eight people in total, with backup singers included, and the transition to “The Happiest Days of our Lives” and the appearance of Mr. Waters himself.
The show, which was set up in two acts, was really two different shows in one, where the first half Roger told a few stories of the beginnings of Pink Floyd, from when in their teenage years, Syd and Roger vowed to start a band together when they went to college in London to when in Los Angeles, Syd and Roger were driving in a car down Hollywood Ave. when Syd looked over at Roger and stated what he thought about the city they were in, claiming it was Los Vegas, not LA, among other stories. The second set was much more political than the first, at least in reference to the video boards. While the first set didn’t lack any political references, with “Is This The Life You Really Want”, “Money”, and “Us and Them” back to back to back, the message was overtly clear; Rogers was showing his true thoughts on the current state of affairs not only in the songs, but also on the video boards, and by having two huge inflatables in the shapes of a sheep and a pig float around the arena, the at the end of the first set and the pig to start off the second set.
Waters also started the second set coming back on stage in a dark, military style trench coat with a red arm band on his left arm, similar that to the certain political movements currently seen in the US and around the world for the past sixty years to today, while the song “In The Flesh” played, and faux military/empire banners fell from the tops of the video board. Two storm-trooper bodyguards fallowed him as he made his rounds on stage, only to end holding a toy machine gun which he fired towards the ceiling as the song ended.
Throughout the night, Waters’ (who is a vocal Bernie Sanders supporter in the past) video board paid tribute to human rights, and called for several different groups to be able to have the same rights as others, which included Indigenous groups, Reproductive Rights, Palestine, Yemen, and Refugees among others. There was also a flash of different presidents’ names over the past 40 years and what Roger considered to be their war crimes, from George HW Bush to Biden, and not skipping over any one president. He also called out his support for the “Black Lives Matter” movement while remembering people like Philando Castile Rashan Charles,and George Floyd, flashing on the video monitors that their “crimes” were “being black” and their “punishment” was “death”, and others like D’Andre Campbell, with the “crime” of being “mentally ill”, and the “punishment” was “death” and others during the song “The Powers That Be”.
The 24-song set list that equated to an about two hour show, which each song seamlessly transitioning from one to another, and made the night enjoyable and really feeling like the concert didn’t take two hours to complete. All in all, it was just another amazing show by the former Pink Floyd founder, Mr. Roger Waters.
