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Above Photos: Roger Waters ‘The Wall Live’ at the Rose Garden on 5/22/12
by Kevin Tomanka (more at Oregon Music News)

FYI… my PHOTOS of the SHOW at the BOTTOM

The spectacle, the brilliance that is Pink Floyd & The Wall Live… I sadly never got a chance to see Pink Floyd perform together, but seeing Roger Waters bring The Wall to us 30+ years later was still quite the treat.  It’s not my favorite album of theirs… I love Wish You Were Here, Dark Side of the Moon and Meddle a bit better, and before the show you’d have caught me saying things like “The Wall is quite overrated.”  Well, after the show, I still think the album is a bit overrated, but my opinion has definitely appreciated.

And the live show… holy smokes!  Amazing!!!

There was no opener; so the show started fairly promptly (8:15pm).  Wide stage with the start of the wall, a tape intro, then BANG… In the Flesh with fire, sparks, projected graffiti animation on the walls, an airplane flying in from mid-crowd ceiling crashing and bursting into flames just beyond the wall… whoa!  We were in for a SHOW!

The show featured several other blow up accoutrements… an evil schoolmaster during the school children song (local school children were used), a war pig, and another creature.  The imagery from the original The Wall movie was used in addition to a lot of modernized imagery and animations.  For “Mother,” Roger played with himself… a 1980’s Earl’s Court version of himself, that is.

The Wall went up slowly as the band went on… the second set, the band was primarily behind the wall, with Roger coming out to sing for a few tunes.  At the end… huge explosion and down it came!  They played The Wall in its entirety, no encore.

Setlist: just shy of 2 hours total

• Set 1: Outside the Wall [Tape]
• In the Flesh?
• The Thin Ice
• Another Brick in the Wall Part 1
• The Happiest Days of Our Lives
• Another Brick in the Wall Part 2
• Mother
• Goodbye Blue Sky
• Empty Spaces
• What Shall We Do Now?
• Young Lust
• One of My Turns
• Don’t Leave Me Now
• Another Brick in the Wall Part 3
• The Last Few Bricks
• Goodbye Cruel World
  <<25 minute intermission>>
• Set 2: Hey You
• Is There Anybody Out There?
• Nobody Home
• Vera
• Bring the Boys Back Home
• Comfortably Numb
• The Show Must Go On
• In the Flesh
• Run Like Hell
• Waiting for the Worms
• Stop
• The Trial
• Outside the Wall
  No Encore

Brilliant show!  Go go go go if you get the chance!  It’s a brilliant display of excess, but it also has good points about government overreach and the ills of war.  It’s a paradox and dichotomy.

Portland 5/22 The Wall photos:
(iPhone + 2 of Kevin’s pro shots)

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Go to OMN for Kevin Tomanka’s pro shots

The Appropriate Linkage:

• Roger Waters’ Site
• Pink Floyd’s Site
• Roger Waters & Pink Floyd’s Social Media Links (see below)
  
• Rose Garden’s Site / Facebook / Twitter

Next show for me… Beck @ Les Schwab (Bend) 5/27 and Jack White @ Hult (Eugene) 5/28.

~Dan – np: Beck – The Information