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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.
As promised, above is another photo of Built To Spill playing at the Historic Ashland Armory a couple nights ago.
Here is a video from that live performance of “Stop The Show” off “Perfect From Now On,” not the most accessible Built to Spill, but it’s the only one I had the camera running for.
The green shows are gone until things warm up next year, but here are a couple more songs from Mitsuki Dazai.
The first is a curious version of “Sakura, Sakura.” First she sang the song without the koto. Unfortunately, my camera wasn’t running when she sang as she sounded great. Then she played the song you see below. This video has not been clipped and I didn’t miss any of the song. She performed the song, which usually clocks in at over 5 minutes, in just 40 seconds. I’m not sure why she didn’t do a fuller version.
This next song was really cool. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it was more than 9 minutes in length. My SD card filled up after about 4 minutes. For the full version you’ll need to buy her CD. It’s really good.
I didn’t know which blog this would be most fitting to post on so I’m doing so, with different photos, on both.
This past Sunday, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was having its “Culture Fest.” At noon a matinée Green Show featured Mitsuki Dazai on the Japanese koto. Ms. Dazai was lots of fun between songs, telling stories and enchanting the crowd.
Here she is performing Shaei (斜影 or Diagonal Shadows) by Hikaru Sawai (沢井 比河流). Sawai was in a heavy metal band before writing this piece for the koto.
As mentioned yesterday, Days of the New were the headliners at the show at the Rogue Theatre in Grants Pass. I never really got into grunge or post-grunge so I knew nothing about Days of the New. Like most people in attendance, I went to the show to see Floater.
Today’s pic is of Travis Meeks who is basically the whole band. I thought the guy was in his late 40s, but it turns out he was only 31. Moral of the story: don’t do meth.
Meeks is an amazing musician, but he seemed to treat his hired guns (bass and drums) like dirt.
Anyway, here is another Floater video for you. This time they are doing a song that sounds more like Primus than typical Floater IMO.
Last night I went to see Floater (again) at the Rogue Theatre. This show was very different from my prior two experiences at the same place. The crowd, this time, was tiny as Floater was the opening band (for Days of the New). If Floater was the headliner the place would have been packed. Many, of the few concert goers, left after Floater’s short set of only about six or seven songs.
The pic above I took from my car at midnight. Rob Wynia, of Floater, is standing under the marquee and talking with some other guys. Floater is playing an acoustic set tonight, but I will pass since it will probably be another mini set list.
Here is a video I took of them doing “Weightless” off their “Stone by Stone” CD. The lighting in the Rogue Theatre (in Grants Pass, almost an hour north of Ashland on I-5) was really bad, but the audio is pretty good (on this song anyway). There were many audio problems during the night including Rob’s mic not working for half of one song and annoying feedback during much of Days of the New’s performance.
Before the Deftones began their set I went up to the Medford Armory’s “beer garden” on the second floor. There was a grand total of one beer to choose from, Coors Light. I decided to hang out upstairs for the first couple songs. I took a video from there of the second song they played, “Rocket Skates” off their new CD “Diamond Eyes” which you can view below.
Notice how much sweat Chino Moreno is covered with at this point in the show compared to yesterday’s photo later in the evening.
Normally I post concert pics and video on my other blog, but I think I will post local shows here from now on. Actually, I posted Floater here as well.
Few bands come through Southern Oregon, given the small population, but last night the Deftones made their first appearance. The crowd at the Medford Armory was not as large as it was for Black Label Society or Static-X, but they are about the only two bands who never miss the area so it makes sense that they have built up a strong fan base here.
More photos and HD video will be coming soon. For now, I’ll leave you with a video I took of the song “My Own Summer.” Even though cameras were “not allowed” you can see that the rules were not enforced. The two large guys that walk in front of the video (from left to right at 3:16) near the end are actually security guards.