Thanks to Ivo Linssen
This was my first Roger Waters-concert and I am left speechless! Great sound, great musicians, great gig. The movies in the background were very impressive, especially Welcome To The Machine and the film of the pig floating above Battersea Power Station. Chester handled Dogs very well. We simply need to forget the Doyle/Carin-parts on this one. No complaints. Chester also played one truly amazing slide-solo on Shine On…really amazing! The quad-sound was brilliant with the dogs barking, the aeroplane crashing, the helicopter, the screams…Comfortably Numb was one of the highlights, and Flickering Flame was a perfect choice for an encore. Really great and relaxing to go home to. Never heard such a great sound in such a venue. I can only hope Ahoy Rotterdam will sound just the same (the acoustics are usually not great in there). Will post a review on that one too.
Roger was in a great mood yesterday, as was the rest of the band. Harry Waters’ playing is EXCELLENT!!!! Talented guy, really. Andy Fairweather-Low played a really LOUD solo during Money. It’s A Miracle is truly wonderful to hear during the show. There is so much to say… Just go and see Roger if you get the chance.
I’m glad he’s touring again. Roger RULES!!!! He’s even become a more competent musician than ever before, and he is truly an amazing person. It all makes Perfect Sense! Greetings, Dan.
Thanks Danny Kroonen
Thanks to Dieter Vanmarcke
Caught a train to antwerpen (antwerp,belgium, to us american sorts!) Beautiuful day, sunny, upper 60’s with a nice cool breeze.just about perfect! the train ride was only about 2 hours down there, and we went to get a hotel…..got one for 60 bucks….2 people, right next to the train station. We then rode a tram 5 stops over to the sports palais of antwerp belgium….where a certain pink floyd genius named ROGER WATERS was going to play to a sold out crowd of 15,000. The place reminded me of any hockey rink i have ever been to. We were gonna hunt down tickets when a line began to form to the left of the internet ticket line……and we jumped on it early. So what happened was they had extra seats that had become available to the right of the board on the floor. 45 euros later……we were in 36th row dead fuckin center on the floor!!!!!!!!! And thru my dat heads and other tapers sites on the net i HEARD waters was almost “allowing” recording…..and i quickly noticed the signs saying….no video, no flash cameras….but no where did it say no recording! So across the street was a old timey bar with 1 dollar (i should say euro, but its basically the same!) beers! So they started letting people in, and i watched the security….or should I say LACK OF IT!!!!!!!!!!!! People walking in with backpacks on completely untouched!!!!! So me and candice quickly filed in….me with my whole taping rig intact in my backpack! So we went to our seats, which could not have been much better (prolly 10-15 rows behind the primo FOB taper area….the sound ended up being exquisite. So heres what he did……………………… IN THE FLESH PT II…………what an opener! the crowd was extremely into it, but remained unbelievably quiet, even thru the “theres one SMOKING A JOINT!” part!;) Taper paradise….in fact, they didnt stand till the last song, so i sat in my seat with the schoeps in my hat the whole time….right about 20 feet from the soundboard. Awesome! Lots of gesturing from roger, sound was good at the start, but just got better!
HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES…..cut the thin ice and another brick from the last setlist i had seen in 99…..but that was ok…he almost made up for it later!!
ANOTHER BRICK PT II……what can you say about this one, the crowd obviously liked it. Great vocals from roger….the childrens choir was piped in for the “we dont need no….” part, but while this was going on, roger was walking all over the stage, visibly singing to the crowd and gesturing with his arms and bass guitar….lots of smiles. I guess roger has really grown to love his fans as much as weve always loved him! Candice cruised up front, told me later he looked like richard gere up close………….hahahah!
MOTHER….great choice, the day before being mothers day and my birthday (just like it was when i was born!)….great version….funny, the crowd was DEAD QUIET for this….roger playing acoustic guitar and singing perfectly. On the part “….break….my BALLS…..”part he stopped strumming abruptly and then launched right back into it. Funny, in the USA everyone woulda screamed bloody murder at that line (you know how WE can be!)…in antwerp it was quiet as sin! Awesome for the tapes, crystal clear….the schoeps kicking ass like i knew they would!
GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY DESERT>SOUTHHAMPTON DOCK…..the only songs from final cut….and i must say the older i get, the more i like that stuff. When i was younger i went more for the gilmour-y stuff, but right now, roger is king! then the factory scene with the flying pig appeared on the 60 foot video screens…..and they launced into the 1st 30 minutes of animals!!!
PIGS ON THE WING I>DOGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!………….this was siiiiiiiiiiiiiick stuff. Rog seemed to play pigs a little faster than normal, but it was ok. The bomb was the dogs…..more than likely one of the 3 or 4 super intense parts of the show!!! The only person who can even come close on this one is les and the frogs!! Great solos….when harry waters took the long keys solo that comes in the middle of dogs, roger, andy fairweather lowe, and snowy white sat down at a poker table onstage and they all played a quick hand……wonder who won (rog??????????????????/!!!)
then the suprise (for me anyway!)
SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!….PLAYED ALL 60’S-ED OUT true pink floyd at its earliest best….in my face in 2002…..wow. Gotta love it!
Sounded just like a 60s version other than the really cool sax solo in the middle of it. The traveling sax guy they got this year is really great!
then to close the 1st set(!!!!!!!!!!)….he played wish you were here in its entirety except for have a cigar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SHINE ON YOU PTS 1-4>WELCOME TO THE MACHINE>WISH YOU WERE HERE>SHINE ON PTS 5-9……harry waters, rogers dreadlocked son, really kicked ass on these ones….really impressive! I guess its in the blood! All the inflections were perfect, roger put a lot of passion to this part…extremely cool to see him sing shine on and wish you were….both songs david gilmour would normally sing! Great way to end the set…..what a sick 79 minute 30 second set it was….perfect cd#1 for all you bullboarders who care!(are you printing this yet, nana????????)
Set 2……….another fat 80 minute chunk of floyd/waters!
Started with a chunk of DARK SIDE!!!!! SPEAK TO ME>BREATHE>MONEY…..ALL with their original 70s videos and sound effects in 4 speaker stereo….wow….from the 36th row the sound effects were right over my left and right ears….sounded extremely intense! Came out crystal clear with the schoeps!!!!! then came the solo stuff….and i just love it!
EVERY STRANGERS EYES…from pros and cons, great version!
PERFECT SENSE PTS 1 AND 2…..NEWER STUFF I AM NOT SUPER FAMILIAR WITH, BUT I REALLY LIKED IT. i MAY HAVE TO BUY AMUSED TO DEATH….A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE loves IT. It is definatly growing on me! then a new tune from 2000…
THE BRAVERY OF BEING OUT OF RANGE….during which he showed a brief shot of george bush on the video screens….most people had no clue who it was! What he is saying is exactly how brave is it for him to be calling the shots while he is safely tucked away hidden. Upbeat song, kinda rockin, not slow like some newer roger can be. I quite like this!
ITS A MIRACLE….another amused to death song, played amazingly well….kinda reminds me of a cross between echoes and saucerful of secrets….killer spacy shit on the screens for this.
AMUSED TO DEATH….with the marv albert lead in….for those of you not familiar, you should check out this album….like an updated the wall with jeff beck on guitar instead of gilmour!
then closed with the end of dark side….
BRAIN DAMAGE>ECLIPSE….well played, gotta love it, rog pulled out the mirrored ball for this one….great effect!
COMFORTABLE NUMB….AFTER A BAND INTRO, THEY launched into this….really nice version, tasty licks by chester kamen, snowy white, and andy fairweather lowe all taking solos on this one….and roger sounded PERFECT on this one. One memory i will take with me is of roger singing along without a mic to that song and when he got to the part “my hands felt just like 2 balloons…” he held up his hands to us and smiled with the funniest look on his face! Great closer. So apparently it is always either every small candle or flickering flame as the encore….it was flickering flame at our show….its a brand new somg they just started doing 2 months ago that roger just wrote this year. He said it was about love. The other song, each small candle he wrote in 99, and maybe he will do it tomorrow night in rotterdam! We will be there, mny friends. Team schoeps euro division is back on!maybe even do tool this weekend in germany……we will see!
So before this gets too long (too late!!!!) i will let you all go. Candice and i say hello and send our love back your way. Thanks also to all the replies on my birthday post…you all really do kick ass! Cant wait to get some of the tapes out.soon my friends…soon!
Peace out, love each other, Jimbo
Thanks Jimbo
NEVER BELIEVE IN A FALLING STAR “Where you here when Pink Floyd performed in 1977?”
Some fans couldn’t be happier last Monday night. Roger Waters, not known as someone who performs a lot, gave an ‘acte de presence’ in the Antwerp Sportpaleis with his In The Flesh show.
In Europe he chooses this time for smaller indoor venues, like the Sportpaleis. Waters was, for years, the motor behind Pink Floyd and the creative mind behind million sellers as DSOTM and The Wall. For Waters the Pink Floyd chapter ended beginning of the Eighties, but his former companions put a knife in his back by using the group’s name for a few, very lucrative tours and a few neglectable records, this time without Waters.
The man took revenge after the fall of the Berlin wall when he did a performance of – the simplest ideas are often the best ones – The Wall. After that, with a few sporadic exceptions, he stayed away from the scene until In The Flesh, named, by the way, after the opening track of The Wall. Although the cd and DVD are available meanwhile (In The Flesh – Live),
Waters brings almost exactly the same show with this European tour. The British musician and singer has only issued four solo albums after his Pink Floyd-period (including the already mentioned live-cd), and so it is understandable that for the production of his set list he nosed mainly in the catalogue of his old band, and, as a matter of fact, a lot of these songs have been written by him.
Waters is a man of order, because on Monday he played different tracks from the same album in the right order. He started with some tracks from The Wall, continued with material from TFC, and then Animals. And so it went on rather nicely in the first and in the second part of the show. Waters also used some solo material. Not that it mattered a lot from what album the songs came, because, as a rule, they were all given the same bombastic treatment.
The drums thundered as a battery of artillery shooting, the keyboards were regularly having a match to be the most slimy (those syrupy synths, those sampled violins, bah!) and if a relatively calm and quiet number started there would always be a guitarist to destroy it with an infinite, complete uninteresting solo, read: a few minutes of note fucking. The three black singers sometimes had the chance to put in some soul, but they were scarcely given space and if there was any, these were limited to soft uninspiring melodies. It is a shame that the big P.P. Arnold has to lower herself into that.
The visual aspect was limited to a giant diamond that went up and down during ‘Shine On You crazy Diamond’ and continuous background projections, full of images that were relating to Pink Floyd’s past. But also these projections were a fake, because when we saw a falling star during ‘Mother’ we made a wish, but alas: it had just been an illusion.
‘Soit’, we will not follow Waters’ example and will make an end – and quick! – to this review. We had a pun in mind, referring to the song ‘Amused To Death’, but we are still not awake after the sleep inducing ‘spectacle’ of Monday evening. One case is clear: in 2027 we will not attend the reunion of Pink Floyd in the Sportpaleis.
Written by Christophe Verbiest, De Morgen, 15 May 2002 Translated by Felix Atagong