Get Your Filthy Hands Of My Desert/Southampton Dock

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Set List:

1. In The Flesh 2. Happiest Days Of Our Lives 3. Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 4. Mother 5. Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert 6. Southhampton Dock 7. Pigs On The Wing Part 1 8. Dogs 9. Wish You Were Here 10. Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part 1-5 w/o Sax solo and Parts 6 and 7

Intermission

1. Set The Controls for the Heart Of The Sun 2. Speak To Me 3. Breathe 4. Time 5. Money 6. Every Strangers Eyes 7. Perfect Sense Part 1 8. Perfect Sense Part 2 9. The Bravery Of Being Out Of Range 10. It’s A Miracle 11. Amused To Death 12. Brain Damage 13. Eclipse 14. Comfortably Numb 15. Each Small Candle

I had waited my whole life for the opportunity to see Roger. No one knows what his and Pink Floyd’s music has done for me. Show was outstanding and I knew every word. Roger came on about 8:15. Every song was very well arranged especially Set The Controls. It had an excellent 90’s remade feel to it complete with sax solo. Wish You Were Here and Shine On were very touching as pictures of Syd were shown on the screen. Roger was in top form in vocals and bass. He also played guitar on several songs. His solo stuff was very well received and I’m glad people actually seemed to listen. Perfect Sense Part 2 even had the audience up and cheering. Each Small Candle was beautiful and has been reworked since last tour. Roger even told the story behind it and incredibly… people were quiet and listened. On to the tour stuff. I bought the litho at $75, and the tour program. Also got a black and white tour shirt, one for me and one for my girlfriend.

Now for the musicians:

Graham did very well on drums. I’ve never been impressed with his work on Roger’s other stuff but live he is very good. Overall Grade A

John was superior on keyboards and covered Rick’s parts exceptionally. His vocals and guitar work on Dogs were just as brilliant. Overall Grade A

Andy didn’t have a very big role in this show, mainly staying to the back. He did do bass when Rog was on guitar and I have no complaints. Overall Grade B+

Doyle and Snowy did the best I felt they could do for covering the parts they had to. Dogs is particularly difficult but they did well. Doyle is a bit to choppy and not very emotional as is Snowy. They did not come close to Gilmour, but then again, no one does. Overall Grade B+

The Three vocalists were exceptional, especially P.P. Arnold. Her delivery on Perfect Sense Part 1 was top notch. Overall Grade A

The concert as a whole gave me that whole teary eyed, goose bump, lump in the throat feeling. Roger is a brilliant man and I am just glad I was there to see him in all of his glory. Well, it’s now about 3 in the morning and before I start to ramble I’ll go.

Thanks to Ben Klenke PnkFlyd51@aol.com

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Vegas review…..17June, 2000 My eyes…..are baked potatoes.

That’s what they felt like, anyway, as I found myself driving through the Mojave heat toward a dream 13 years in the waiting. Vegas loomed ahead of me, unseen, but felt. I had spent the last year reading post after post of the great experiences at the 99 leg of the ITF tour, of the gathering in Atlanta of the Amused To Death mesage board people (www.ingsoc/waters.com), and now…… it was my turn.

I passed some little town with a self proclaimed ‘world’s tallest thermometer’ which proudly proclaimed a balmy 116 degrees F. pheeeeeewwwww! My eyelids scraped each time I blinked. I drove on.

I found my hotel room and collapsed in air-conditioned comfort, relaxing for the next few hours. Eventually, I ventured over to the Las Vegas Hilton and checked out the Star Trek Experience, part museum, part ride. If you even remotely like Star Trek, or are the hardest-core Trekker, you must check this out…very cool. The next day found me wandering in to the MGM Grand to check things out. Just as I entered the lobby I saw Roger’s face being televised over this huge 20′ x 100′ video screen mounted above the check-in desk; I mean the screen is just massive! He was flying a helicopter screaming “YOU! Yes! YOU!…” I took it as an omen. I saw some other event posters around the place of Roger sitting with his guitar by the pool(you know the one), except they had made his eyes a strange metallic blue color and his guitar had a watery face that blended with the pool in the background. Someone got happy with Photoshop 5.0. I killed the 6 hours I had left before the gathering at Ricardo’s wandering around, gambling. Finally, 4:00PM came and it was time to meet the ATD folks. I strolled into Ricardo’s and before I knew it I was having a great time hanging with Simon, Ben, Phil, Patsie, DB, Billy from Toronto and Co., Wiltwatcher(LOVE the story behind the name) and Andie(sp?), Gary and wife from FLA, PLS and Jeanine(who both win Best Dressed; very cool cats, those two), Sgith, FP, Dr. Who, Pam, Roger V. and Heather(who un-ashamedly hiked up her dress to show us her killer Floyd-themed tattoos), and everyone else I’m forgetting. We talked and we drank until the church bells rang….and the burning in our hearts….the memory smolders on…..Suffice it to say, it was great to put faces with handles. PLS then invited all of us to his room for some more pre-show festivities. After our first beers, the good Doctor proposed a toast to all those who couldn’t make it, and we listed off quite a few names. We downed our drinks and soon it was time to go to the show. Security at the Garden was…nonexistent. We strolled in and Sgith and I found our seats. I was very excited being we had floor seats about 25 rows back. Then….

The lights dimmed. The crowd roared. Thirteen years of waiting was over. The dark silhouette of Roger walked across the screen….Eins! Zwei! Drei!…a rush swept over me; it was actually happening….I was in awe. As the concert progressed, I quickly became impressed with how the band sounded. They were very tight. When Roger got to Mother, I was moved to tears. Katie Kissoon sang Dave’s vocal parts, she completely added a new dimension to the song, and singing the last line..”healthy and cleeeeeeeaaan…” uh…it killed me. The set then moved on to Filthy Hands/Southampton Dock, two great songs, both of which were cut short and stuck together and over before you knew it. That was kind of a downer. But the band more than redeemed itself with “Dogs”. WOW! The Animals album has always been stuck in the back of my Floyd/Waters listening rotation; but that has definitaley changed. The live “Dogs” absolutely knocked my socks off, so much so that over the next subsequent shows I was to see it become a favorite. Jon Carin did an awesome job. The card game was a cool theatrical touch. I think Roger put it in, partly, as a way to maybe peel down one more layer between Rock Icon and fan; saying, hey! we’re just regular blokes with our whiskey and card game, like you, who enjoy the company of friends above most everything, like you. That’s my take. So they ended Dogs to rousing applause and moved into proven warhorses from Wish You Were Here. Now, I love that album. It’s the best one in the whole Floyd canon. So I was very judgmental when it came time for Doylie to hit those notes. He killed. Doyle is a perfect choice. There is no way I would expect him to be a Gilmour clone, and he’s not. But both he and Dave have blues roots and Doyle had no trouble hitting the “important” Floyd notes we all know and love and then interspersing his own Texas/Blues style in the mix once in a while. It freshened up some of the classic songs and it was treat to hear. The repeated ending verse they added to “Wish You Were Here”, sung by the girls, was a nice touch.

As the band moved toward the end of Shine On, up came the swirling, mirror-encrusted-Jiffy-Pop-popcorn-rock-show-prop. Please. I’m sorry, it was kinda cool, but I couldn’t help thinking it would’ve been much more effective if the great homage to Syd that Shine On is ended without the disco prop and just had the girls singing the word “Shiiiine” to slowly changing pictures of Syd in his more joyful days with The Floyd. I also must say that I enjoyed the backdrop/lightshow up to this point. It was simple, effective, and the heated, bubbling acid-trip like projector cell was a cool throwback to when the Floyd made a name for themselves with their psychedelic light shows in places like San Francisco. In fact, there are a couple of satellite shots of the San Francisco/Bay area that show up on the screen during a later song. But anyway…

Well, the first intermission came and Sgith and I went up to join Doc and Church in the side seats since Sgith is three feet tall and couldn’t see much on the floor. We hung out and chitchatted. I was glad to actually be in seats where you could something in seated comfort. If you’re not in the first 10 rows on the floor, then floor seats blow.

The second set started with Set the Controls and moved into Breathe, Time/Breathe reprise, and Money. Graham Broad added a little excitement with his Time drum solo, which was very well done, and Doyle’s vocals on Breathe reprise were great. All throughout Snowy was providing excellent accompaniment with Doyle on lead and mild-mannered-in-the-shadows Andy Fairweather Low did his rock star solo on Money, along with the essential sax played by a local talent. I must say that Roger’s band did an excellent job with all the Floyd material.

I was awed. The show then moved through Every Stranger’s Eyes and into the Amused To Death material. I wasn’t paying attention to the Every Stranger’s Eyes controversial lip-synching moment, and thus have no comment on it (though in a later show the question came up). I would have loved to have seen something more from P+C and maybe Four Minutes/Tide is Turning from KAOS, bet the set list is in stone, I guess. The ATD material floored me. It was obvious that not a lot of people new this material intimately, like us, and I sang along with P.P. Arnold on Perfect Sense part I and was in heaven. Was anyone not moved as she sang her heart out?…”and they gave him command, of a nuclear submarine, and sent him out, in search of the Gaarrden of Eeeeeddeeeeeeeeeen……”. Wow. A definite highlight. Bravery absolutely rocked and It’s a Miracle, though not my favorite, had a great theatrical impact at the end when Jon and Andy Wallace laid out this great sonic angel-like choir while Snowy finely held those last great guitar notes just as the background screen slowly brightened from dark to light with the image of the sun’s glow, seen from space, coming over the edge of the earth in a new dawn. Wooooooohoooooo. All of us were on our feet. When the song Amused to Death came on, I was psyched! Absolutely one of my favorite songs. The taped dialogue of the guy from one of the home-shopping networks is such a brilliant idea on Roger’s part…”rock bottom…get em out of here…not 170.75….One..sixtynine..seventyfive.” I felt like I was the only one there who knew the lyrics, and when the “keen-eyed look out” line came and the girls sang “Our last hurraaaaaaaaah!”, my heart was in my throat. God, what a great song.

As Roger wound the show to a close with Brain Damage/Eclipse and Comfortably Numb, I again was impressed with Doyle’s guitar and vocals. His voice is different enough from Dave’s to make the old songs take on a slightly new face, but he sang with heart and his voice is good and strong. It was fun watching Doyle and Snowy trading licks on Comfortably Numb up on the platform behind the band.

The crowd was quiet enough to allow Roger to explain ESC’s birth as a song when they came out for the encore. All except for one thoroughly inebriated fan who kept screaming incoherently..”uuuuuggggghhhhhhhh!” over and over. Only when I looked up toward him did I realize he was screaming “Vera! Vera!” and then he just stood there cackling a very drunk laugh. I just shook my head in amazement. C of P was equally amazed at the professional display of drunkenness. Anyway, I think ESC has come a long way and am really interested to hear the studio version when it comes out. The barbed wire motif on the screen with the blood red lyrics was simple but effective, especially, I think, that it forced everyone to read Roger’s meshing of the original poem from South America and his added parts. It was very powerful. And when he held up the single flame in his hand right as the stage went dark, the entire audience was focused on the light that Roger was holding up, further drawing everyone to connect with him and the message. It was so simple it was genius.

The lights went up, the show was over, and I was dazed. Somewhere in my head I thought this evening couldn’t get better.

Little did I know that it was about to.

We congregated back at Ricardo’s and hung out for a couple of hours. Two beers later I was twisting Ben’s ear (one of the lads from England) about politics when someone told me that Graham Broad and Snowy White had just walked by us on their way from the venue to the casino. HUH?! I think everyone was too dazed to actually know to go up to them, say thanks, and may be get an autograph. Well, the ATD crowd didn’t have to told a second time, no. A short while later someone spotted more people coming out and we recognized Doyle. I noticed the ATD girls react with extra vigor and we all walked up to Doyle and Co. Some bouncer guy told us to get in a line, which we did, and one by one we thanked Doyle. Some told him he performed great, others were asking him what it was like to play with Clapton and BB King. He seemed kinda aloof, but maybe he was just tired. All his replies were one-word answers. Oh well. Doyle’s wife, Susannah, was there and probably got the biggest compliment of her life from Sgith, who proudly declared that she had the best legs of all the backup singers. Susannah cracked up. Soon, the session was over and they went on their way. We hung out for quite a bit longer, but finally decided to head out of the casino. We bid goodbye to the others and about six of us straggled along out of the covered strip mall within the casino when someone spotted more people coming from the venue toward us. “Hey, that’s Jon Carin!” We pounced.

Jon was walking with another gentleman and as we approached, I couldn’t help thinking that this other guy looked very familiar. It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t put my finger on who he was. Jon, in the meantime was being bombarded with questions all at once. He had this whimsical, overwhelmed look on his face as if he was trying to answer all these questions but didn’t know where to begin. Someone asked him who he liked playing with the most, Roger or the new Pink Floyd. He quite tactfully answered that he would take one from this band and three from the other. someone else asked him about the new tracks on the upcoming new album, to which he answered that there is just simply some really incredible, amazing stuff on it. That got me psyched! At this point Steve(WI) got the other gentleman to introduce himself. When he said James Guthrie, a momentary hush fell on us. I thought “F*CK!”. I had planned on bringing my vinyl version of the Wall with me to Vegas in case I got a chance at an autograph, but I left it at home. Now, here I was, and against all the odds, I run into someone who had a part in the legendary Wall album! I swear. Sgith, in the meantime has slowly been advancing on poor Jon, who backs up a couple of steps every minute or so until Sgith has him literally up against the wall. She invites both Jon and James to Thanksgiving dinner at her house (!!!!!!…everyone was cracking up) to which James replied that he’d like to but he had a deadline to keep. When asked for what, he told us the tour was being recorded in Phoenix(whom he said were very loud, which was great for atmospherics on the recordings), Las Vegas, Portland, and Seattle. He also mentioned that he had to have it wrapped up in time for Christmas. I don’t know if that meant the finished CD would be in the stores by then, although that would make perfect cents, or he just had to be done with his end of it. We’ll see. All in all, these two were extremely gracious and spent a good 15 minutes us. We gushed and thanked them up and down. Jon took a picture of us for his own collection, someone handed him the ATD website address and he said he would try to post(!), and finally Church gave Jon an ESC shirt to give to Roger. We ended it all with a picture of us, thank you Church, and Sgith couldn’t let them get away with out screaming “Kisses!” and gave a stunned Jon Carin and James Guthrie a peck on the check each! We all waved goodbye as did they. Wow. The evening ended at that point and I bid my farewells to those that I wasn’t seeing later in the week in Southern California.

It was an absolutely unbelievable night. Magic. My only regret is that I didn’t get a chance to talk with everyone at Ricardo’s more. My thanks go to Gary in FLA for organizing the gathering, PLS for allowing us to re-enact the TV through the window scene from the Wall movie up in his hotel room(ok, not really, but thanks for the impromptu party) and everyone else I met and talked to and got to know. We must do a gathering like this again on the next tour. Thank you all for providing your parts to an awesome night and a fantastic memory.

Lycurgus

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