Venue: Sportarena (Laszlo Papp) / Budapest / Hungary
Concert date: 13.04.2007
Attendance: 20
Ticket price: 130.00€ (standing & second-category seating), 165.00€ (first-category seating)
Three years and nine months after I first stepped through the doors of Sport Arena (June 18, 2003, to be exact, the Yes concert), I finally got another chance to visit. It’s a magnificent hall that seats 12,500 people (not counting the floor!) and looks like a flying saucer that just touched down in the middle of Budapest, wedged between buildings in various states of decay from the recent past. From seductive, charming but ancient villas from the days of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to real-socialist minimalism of Lego-brick blocks, with facades bruised by fungal rot and a coat of carbon monoxide. What a fascinating backdrop for this futuristic building!
8 p.m.! People are pouring into the hall from every direction. I’m standing on the floor, 30 meters from the stage and a few meters ahead of the mixing desk. We wait. Just as expected! The moment we walked in, we were treated to a madhouse of projections on the screen. The basic motif that everything revolved around before and during the show was the old room where Roger Waters spent his youth, grew into a person, grew up into a musician who earns his bread with music, and gradually builds a wall around himself as a victim of the music business and the rock artist’s way of life! In short, the bulk of the story is of course the old tale of the legacy of “The Wall”. So the first thing we could lay eyes on upon entering the hall was a huge screen. Most of it was taken up by an old radio from the 1940s! On the radio sits a lead soldier, next to it a plane (a Lockheed, Marauder, Mitchell type?), then a glass of whiskey and the indispensable ashtray. Suddenly cigarette smoke appears on the screen, along with a hand searching for radio stations. Then comes the tapping of ashes, the pouring of whiskey,… This “Roger’s” hand is really something… all this seemingly bored activity takes place in the room where Roger spent his teenage days, and the actor this time wasn’t Bob Geldof. In short, my eyes were glued to that screen. The trail of cigarette smoke was downright hypnotic.
A “academic” 15 minutes went by! People were still streaming into the hall en masse well after 8 p.m.! And then the lights went down, silhouettes on stage, the main spotlight hit Roger Waters, who raised his fist high in the air, strapped into his bass guitar, greeting the crowd for the first time. The hall erupted. Booooom! There’s no better way to start than In The Flesh! One, two, three, four, and the screen turned into gigantic hammers marching in an assault, and just like that we’re in the middle of the iconography of the album “The Wall”. An explosive start to the show. Even from a good 30 meters back from the stage, I felt the wave of heat that blasted out when the pyrotechnic flames went off. An extremely intense opening! Waters instantly nailing the dictator role, and the film The Wall really came to life at that moment!
That intensity calmed down afterwards, replaced by emotional warmth and softness with Mother. Roger on acoustic guitar. The crowd sings along to the verses with enthusiasm. And at the spot where Gilmour’s vocal originally comes in, this time the role of the mother was taken by Carol Kenyon, one of three devilishly good soul singers! The third song was one of the treats of the night. It’s the prehistoric Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun. Old Pink Floyd films with Syd Barrett front and center in the background. It’s no longer so psychedelically creepy, with more hard classic rock moves in it, especially in the outro, which is practically a metallized riff, with the drums crashing in an eerily rising crescendo toward the end, accompanied by the exceptional harmonies of a vocal choir of three women. Magic!
Next came a trip to the album “Wish You Were Here”. It started with Shine On You Crazy Diamond, dedicated to Syd Barrett. In the background, the screen again flashed glimpses of Syd’s being and his unique, but mad, genius. What bothered me was the shortened opening guitar solo and the shortened closing section. Somehow the tune didn’t manage to create the atmosphere that visiting Gilmour’s two concerts last year brought. So overall a less convincing performance in Waters’ hands, but largely because he simply cut it short for no reason.
Have A Cigar was a welcome wake-up call from the dreamy mood left behind by Shine On You Crazy Diamond. This is where Dave Kilminster (the guitarist who worked on the project Quango and on tours with John Wetton and Ken Hensley) finally shone properly for the first time, after it somehow wasn’t meant to be in Shine On You Crazy Diamond. He nailed David Gilmour’s soloing “to a T” overall. And for the first time, the crowd showed more signs of life, as expected, during Wish You Were Here.
The moments where Roger Waters sounded most convincing as a performer, an interpreter and a preacher of his own personal pacifist philosophy hit one of the definite peaks in his personal confessions, starting with Southampton Dock. The song, which ends with the line …the final cut…, didn’t flow into the title track of the album “The Final Cut” (1983), but went on into Waters’ deeply felt and lived-in interpretation of The Fletcher Memorial Home, from the same album, which was given an atmospheric lift in the instrumental part toward the end by another excellent contribution from Kilminster on a guitar solo.
For the first time the hall meets a vessel during the show. It was an inflatable astronaut, computer remote-controlled of course. Accompanied by the words: “Da-ve,… I’m… Af-ra-id…Da-ve…, My… mi-nd… is… go-ing,…” Whoa, that’s the moaning of the computer HAL as it’s being shut down by the only surviving crew member in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. That computer was “planted” on the crew headed for Jupiter by NASA, dictated by the political top of the USA, in order to destroy the mission, because it was too close to revealing the “universal truth” (?). Creepy atmosphere, the hair on my neck stood up properly. Perfect Sense! The magic here was created especially by the little choir of backing singers. Living Beirut follows, where Roger Waters took a minute for the very first time to introduce the song and his unforgettable experience with a Palestinian family he stayed with for a few days as a 17-year-old. In the background, an animated comic-book display of black-and-white frames. Details emphasized in a bizarre way, trying to show the contrasts even more vividly! Alongside all the poverty of the Palestinian world, there is also a contrast between that poverty (the one-legged owner of the house, a baby daughter just a few months old with a disfigured face, serving Waters sea urchins for lunch,…) and the inner richness of the Palestinian people’s spirit (a sparkling laugh you never hide, pride, exuberant hospitality where going without for the good of your neighbor becomes one of your personal privileges…). A few times during the show, an image of George Bush appeared in the background, and the crowd in the hall greeted those moments with arms raised high, with only the middle fingers sticking out! With his sermon, Waters managed to coax an “obey me” out of the people. With this kind of gear and theater, it’s really not hard to play the role of an autocratic leader leading his little sheep to a “brighter” tomorrow. That was a special “Waters land”, created for an hour and 15 minutes! And it ended in top style! The band included the song Sheep (Animals, 1977). Personally, I wanted most of all to experience one of the three leading songs from that legendary Pink Floyd album! Dream come true! The whole performance was spiced up by an inflatable pig with an angry glare and a filthy snout (thank God, since a snout is a pig’s thing, after all) in zeppelin form, flying from one end of the hall to the other during the song. Sheep may have sounded the most real of all the songs, if you combine the audio-visual effect with the band’s solid approach on stage.
15-minute break! The screen shows a full Moon!
A great overture to the second half of the show was the effect of an approaching satellite on the screen, which kept coming closer and closer, until it finally covered the whole screen! I almost panicked! Is it going to blow up in the crowd in the middle of the hall?
In the second half of the show, Kilminster again successfully channeled Gilmour on guitar!
This time Waters handed off the lead vocals on individual songs of the second part and split them between Jon Carin, Kilminster and himself. So Kilminster sang Breathe and Money, and Jon Carin sang Us And Them. Waters interestingly picked Time for himself and left his standard, unmistakable stamp with his vocal contribution on Brain Damage and at the close with Eclipse.
Speaking of lead vocals, the biggest crown during the performance of the album “Dark Side Of The Moon” went to Carol Kenyon in the song A Great Gig In The Sky. She sang the extremely difficult vocal part in full, completely alone and without a shred of help. A moment that has to get under your skin. Whether you like it or not. And as always, a moment that sometimes makes me afraid to put on “Dark Side Of The Moon”, that’s how intensely I experience it. This time too, I got goosebumps. By the way, on the 1994 tour Pink Floyd needed three singers who split this otherwise majestic vocal part among themselves, in three sections. Here, one single singer handled all of it with flawless mastery. Definitely one of the peaks of the show!
Two hours are up. We wait for the encore! Of course, a return to the start of the show and the album “The Wall”. The now-obligatory Another Brick In The Wall (pt. II) and the “fillers” Vera and Bring The Boys Back Home, and then a somewhat clumsily executed transition on keyboards into the beginning of the song that should have brought another one of the peaks of the show. Of course I’m talking about Comfortably Numb. Here Waters allowed himself a blunder, letting Snowy White jump into the solo for a moment during the atmospherically soaring ending that only this song can conjure up. That’s exactly that part of the song, the last three minutes, which is how long the guitar solo lasts! Just for this part alone it’s worth experiencing it live. Kilminster opened it respectfully and masterfully followed in David Gilmour’s footsteps. But then, right before the atmospheric “crescendo” of the solo itself, White jumps into it. With no idea, with a thoroughly average choice of notes, predictable noodling that wrecked the building of that unique magic. Luckily, Kilminster somehow fixed that impression again afterwards. Well, a pretty awkward thing for the close of a show that should otherwise be 100%. Here, Gilmour’s solo simply stayed the winner against Waters. The same goes for the comparison on Shine On You Crazy Diamond….
That said, I can say that Waters’ concert is more convincing than Gilmour’s last tour, if only because we got a two-hour dose of Pink Floyd music. While Gilmour can sleep soundly at night and use the Pink Floyd name without a care whenever he feels like it (which is also why he could afford to play the whole solo album “On An Island” on his last solo tour), Waters visibly puts in more effort and grind to convince the people who does Pink Floyd songs better.
Sadly, since 1985 all of it has turned into a pure farce of two roosters fighting over who’ll play Pink Floyd better live. Both of them, Waters and Gilmour, are shamelessly milking money out of people, and for that reason alone a reunion of the two in Pink Floyd is impossible. So if you want to relive a relevant approximation of the seventies Pink Floyd in this day and age, you absolutely have to go to both concerts. Gilmour’s and Waters’. If only because of the wildly different repertoires. And yet. Neither solo Gilmour nor solo Waters can give you what only Pink Floyd in the Gilmour/Waters/Mason/Wright lineup can. Sadly, I never saw them with Waters in the band, but even so, whether you only watch Gilmour live or only Waters, it’s worth keeping in mind that what you’re watching isn’t Pink Floyd. In short. Waters without Gilmour, and the reverse holds too! When you go see Waters, you miss Gilmour, and when you go see Gilmour, you miss Waters. It will always be that way, despite the praise that snippets from both of their concerts bring, the peculiar stage attractions and spectacle created by a gigantic machinery of light and sound effects and a hiring of musicians and a technical crew that doesn’t make mistakes. Money can buy everything, while the soul stays unsatisfied.
Let me cut off the “lament” in the previous paragraph and say that Roger Waters’ concert is, however I turn it over, something you absolutely have to treat yourself to. At least once in your life. Even if you’re a total layman, you’ll easily be charmed by a reality that, over the course of the show, lets you feel firsthand what money can buy and what kind of concert spectacle such money can bring. The impressions you get at a concert with this much heritage behind it stay with you for a good, long while afterwards. Whether you’re just a “curious bystander” or a die-hard Pink Floyd fan.
Setlist
1. In the Flesh
2. Mother
3. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
4. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts I. – V.)
5. Have A Cigar
6. Wish You Were Here
7. Southampton Dock
8. The Fletcher Memorial Home
9. Perfect Sense (pt. I. & pt. II.)
10. Leaving Beirut
11. Sheep
—15 min. break—
12. Speak To Me
13. Breathe
14. On The Run
15. Time
16. Great Gig In The Sky
17. Money
18. Us And Them
19. Any Colour You Like
20. Brain Damage
21. Eclipse
—encore—
22. The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
23. Another Brick In The Wall (pt. II)
24. Vera
25. Bring The Boys Back Home
26. Comfortably Numb
LINEUP:
Roger Waters – bass guitar, vocals
Andy Fairweather Low – guitar
Snowy White – guitar
Dave Kilminster – guitar, vocals
Graham Broad – drums
Jon Carin – keyboards
Harry Waters – Hammond organ
Ian Ritchie – saxophone
Carol Kenyon – vocals, backing vocals
Katie Kissoon – backing vocals
PP Arnold – backing vocals
