| The above will search Ashland Daily Photo. |
@rogerwaters
Today’s photo comes from a soccer game I was shooting in Ashland earlier this month. The title has nothing to do with soccer though.
In a few weeks, Roger Waters’ beautiful movie, The Wall, will be available for home consumption. I want it even though I’ve seen it in the theater, and I have seen the live version (twice). It’s that good.
Roger Waters - The Wall Tour 2012 - AT&T Park - San Francisco, California
Roger Waters will be on 60 Minutes tonight (5/20/12) to talk about his current tour in which The Wall is performed in its entirety. I’m hoping they have some high quality footage from the San Francisco show at AT&T Park I went to last week.
Since seeing Roger Waters perform The Wall in San Jose back in 2010 I’ve been longing to experience it again. This time around the wall was twice as big, running nearly foul pole to foul pole. Some things had changed and things were bigger and better in nearly every way. This was Roger’s first massive outdoor stadium performance in North America on the tour. After hitting some smaller venues he will eventually be bringing it to places like Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and Yankee Stadium. If you can get to any of those venues you will not be sorry.
I’ll post some more photos on my other blog.
On May 11, 2012 Roger Waters will be performing The Wall Live in San Francisco in front of probably 60,000 people. I have seen Roger three times on his prior solo tours, and they are not to be missed. In fact, I saw him on this very tour in 2010 in San Jose. However, I was close to the stage for that one and now need to take in this show again from a different perspective. My view will be the one pictured above. Imagine The Wall being built in shallow center field, and you’ll be getting the picture.
Tickets go on sale tomorrow (11/18/11), but I bought mine during the presale.
Time to wrap up this series on Roger Waters performing The Wall Live last week. I can’t get the show out of my head even though a week has almost past, but I will put those of you who couldn’t care less out of your misery with today’s final post on the topic. Tomorrow we will be back to our regularly scheduled program.
I will end this with a video I took of “In The Flesh.” Notice the flying pig. Also take note of Roger pointing at me when he says “There’s one smoking a joint… and that one’s got spots!”. Speaking of pot, I haven’t seen so much weed at a concert since the 1980s. With the decriminalization of marijuana in California, (many people have cards and even those without are only charged with a misdemeanor for a first offense) there was no search upon entry and security didn’t seem to care that people were openly getting high all over the place.
Another interesting turn of events is that not only were cameras tolerated (as they usually are these days), but an announcement was made just prior to the show to turn off your flash while taking pictures.
And finally, speaking of the pre-show, the warm up songs were some old Neil Young tunes and John Lennon’s “Imagine”. Lennon was killed just a few hours shy of 30 years to when this performance of The Wall took place.
Today’s video is of the end of “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” (complete with helicopter beginning at 2:06) and the very beginning of one of Pink Floyd’s more famous tunes. You’ll get to see the appearance of the “schoolmaster” near the end. He was one of several puppets employed during the show. You can see another one in the “Mother” video.
The moment of today’s photo was during the first song of the evening, “In The Flesh?”. Roger Waters was making his first appearance through the fireworks.
And today’s video is of his last appearance before the intermission, “Goodbye Cruel World,” in which the final brick is placed in the wall.
Today’s photo is from “Waiting for the Worms.” During the second half of the show, the wall served as a giant movie screen, only much, much wider with the “Surrogate Band” performing on the audience side of the wall.
The video below is from “Is There Anybody Out There?” and features Dave Kilminster and G.E. Smith performing through a crack in the wall. The song before this (“Hey You”) was performed completely on the other side of the wall. If G.E. Smith looks familiar it may be because of his role on Saturday Night Live during the 80s and 90s.
The Wall was phenomenal. I’ll share a few pictures and videos over the next several days. The photos and video don’t do justice to the actual experience so you’ll have to use your imagination too. This was well beyond any typical concert experience. The Wall was like a play, movie, and concert wrapped into one. Actually, it was more than that too. Tough to explain…
We had seats in Row 14. The photo, above, is the view looking back from that row about a minute before the show began. Given the size of the wall, there wasn’t a seat in the house without a good view. I was imagining the wall to fill the stage. Actually, it was much bigger. The wall went through the seats too, filling the arena from one side completely to the other. Even with my camera on the widest angle, I could only capture less than half of it with any single shot as you will see.
Let’s kick things off with “Mother.” Roger performed a duet with himself. The projected self was from 30 years in the past.
I’m heading south tomorrow morning to see Roger Waters’ The Wall Live in San Jose. It will be my third Roger Waters show, each more amazing than I ever dream possible. Anyway, there won’t be any updates for a few days because of this road trip, but hopefully I’ll have some decent photos and video from The Wall to share soon.
Copyright © 2024 Ashland Daily Photo - All Rights Reserved
|
Photos processed with Topaz DeNoise |
