*Thanks to Flickr user julep67, Miss Emily and my friend Trish for these photos.
The last few weeks have had me surrounded by The Wall. Listening to the live album, watching the film for the first time and to cap it all off…seeing Roger Waters perform The Wall at the Scotiabank Place.
The Wall is Pink Floyd’s opus from 1980 which outlines the story of a rock star gone mad…building up an alienating wall only to tear it down again. It’s hard to convey a story through music only as there is not a lot of room for dialogue…hence (probably) the reasons of making a film and an epic tour to accompany the album.
The tour originally only lasted 29 dates as it was so freaking expensive to tour around with. The sheer theatrics were unheard of back in the day…building an actual wall on stage in between the band and the audience. There is no footage available (or if there is, I have not seen it) so I can only go by the tales of it’s epicness.
Sunday night, we headed out to the Scotiabank Place to catch the show. I was curious as to whether or not it would updated 30 years later…as in solely relying on video screens. I was pleasantly surprised to see an actual wall half set up on stage when we took our seats! This was the real deal!
There was a big crew of us…Jean-Francois, Marie-Claude, Vero, Mike, Benoit, Michael and Alvaro were with us back in Section 228. While I usually hate sitting so far away, I was content with it this time around as it allowed us to see the entire stadium. We stared in awe at the majestic set that awaited us.
The show started in with In The Flesh? And started off strong. Fireworks, planes crashing into the wall, crazy spotlights going everywhere…what a great entrance! From our vantage point, all we could see is Roger Waters dressed all in black other than his white sneakers which I had a good laugh at. They were brighter than the spotlights!
The entire concert was like nothing I’ve seen before. I was truly amazed at some of the visual effects they used and I loved, loved, LOVED the building of the Wall during the first half of the show. They would have stagehands placing bricks into the wall while the band played on. I can only imagine the choreography of this entire concert. It was like they never missed a beat.
Some highlights:
– There were rumours that David Gilmour would show up on one date of the tour. Of course, ours was not the one he would show up at. However, during Comfortably Numb, the guitarist playing the solo could not be seen by us as there was a giant spotlight DIRECTLY IN OUR EYES! I had a giggle fit imaging David Gilmour actually showing up in Ottawa and us unable to see it because of a spotlight!
– Videos were being projected onto the wall. When an additional brick was placed in, video appeared onto the new brick. It was quite interesting to see this happen.
– My favourite part of the night was near the end of the first set when they were placing the final bricks into the wall. They started playing with video projection and making it look like there were holes in the wall (black projected onto some bricks) which allowed the stagehands to put in the final bricks without the audience really noticing (unless they were paying close attention). In the end, at the end of the song, BAM! The entire wall sans one was built and then the final brick placed in after Goodbye Cruel World played.
– The band was quite excellent. Benoit mentioned how he didn’t think the co-singer next to Roger didn’t cut it, but I felt differently. I thought the band did a stellar job of playing The Wall for us.
– It was interesting to have the band play behind the wall for us for awhile in the second half. Thankfully they only did it for one song!
– The Wall exploding at the end was definitely a plus!
There is so much to talk about…the giant inflatable puppets, the projections of fallen loved ones over time, the kids from Manotick singing Another Brick in a Wall (which Vero didn’t believe they were singing. Come on!)…all in all, it was an amazing night. I also managed to score a poster on my way out but had to wait quite a bit to get it. Luckily they were not sold out on the bottom level as they were on the upper when I went to get one.