It's very difficult to sit and write this because something really exciting happened on Sunday night when I was browsing around the Internet.
People may remember how excited I was when I got tickets to two consecutive nights to see David Gilmour, the lead guitarist, lyricist and singer of Pink Floyd for the last 20 years of that band's existence, perform his "On an Island" solo tour at the Kodak Theater and Universal Amphitheater, both up in Hollywood several months ago.
It seemed as though Roger Waters, legendary creator and mastermind of concept albums "The Wall" (1980) and "Dark Side of the Moon" (1974) and bassist of Pink Floyd, "retaliated" and shortly after Gilmour's tour dates were set, Waters set his own dates, announcing that as part of his solo tour he was going to perform DSOM in it's entirety as one half of the show. Truly a masterpiece of a concert. One of these "can't miss" shows in my opinion.
There were real ticket snares trying to get a seat for Waters' show. All this American Express pre-sale stuff, presales passwords, presales auctions, then the usual on sale date. Not to mention the EXHORBITANT price of admission, which I won't even mention because it's just too much to think about. Suffice to say that Page and Plant's $95 ticket price for their first reunion tour in 1994, followed by Rush's performance at Radio City Music Hall in 2004 at $150 a pop is chump change in comparison. The on sale date came and went and me and my friend Charles just blew it off because of all the ticket bullshit. Plus, the money was an issue as well, to me a bit of a turn off.
But last night I took into consideration that I have not been to too many concerts in the last year or so. My latest experience, though, was sitting at a fourth row table at Embarcadero Marina Park bayside downtown, under the gorgeous, clear, summer, star-lit San Diego night sky, sipping a Jack Daniel's tall double in a sports jacket, and listening to the (tired and understaffed and unexciting) San Diego Symphony come to life when they were joined by 80s rocker Randy Johnson (of Zebra fame) and his six piece nationally touring troupe that performed an evening of Led Zeppelin tunes. Suffice to say that it was an extremely enjoyable evening and the reproduction of the ageless tunes of the Mighty Zep were outstandingly close to the original works. You could barely hear the orchestra, which in fact, was a blessing. It was a very, very nice way to spend a Thursday evening, especially when I got to meet the entire six member entourage, talk to them, and get all their autographs after the almost three hour long collaboration. Interestingly, I was well overdressed, and hilariously, one of the youngest audience members! Watching 50 and 60 year olds dance around and sing 25 year old lyrics - well - made me feel young!
Oh, but back to Waters. I regularly receive email updates from a variety of sources announcing upcoming concerts "in my area" because of the Donald Trump like fortune I have spent with ticket agents and services since I turned 14 or so. And then it hit me. "Isn't that Waters concert coming up here in October?" I cocked my head in saying so out loud, and surfed out of the email program and on to the Ticketmaster website, where of course I have an account on a credit card with a balance and a credit limit that garners a small mortgage payment each month. It's just one of those things in my life that's just there, and will remain there, probably until the day I die. Which might be soon. Like maybe this Thursday night. I have a rough draft of my will, it's somewhere on my computer.
The single ticket request I put in came up at about 9 p.m. Pacific Standard Time as a 7th row center seat in what is called the "Pool Circle" at Hollywood Bowl, the first of three nights Waters is playing L.A. I just about had a coronary right there, with the combination of a serious score and of course, the ticket subtotal about to be charged to my Concert Credit Card. I actually didn't believe it because of all the previous crapola regarding getting some of these tickets, and I was in shock. I didn't actually believe what I was seeing.
So I quickly surfed to my Rush website to actually look at the ticket that I got in a similar situation with Rush at that venue. At 11 a.m. of the DAY of that show, I did the same thing, and came up with two front row seats, Pool D, Row 1. I didn't stop shaking for six months after that one.
Then I immediately called Charles. Like maybe in 10 seconds. I routinely purchase two tickets at a time to take people with me. But have learned that people bail, don't want to pay, make excuses, can't get away, etc., even for the most stellar of performances. But not Charles. He went with me to Gilmour, and is also a pretty big Floyd fan. All I needed to hear him say was the "FUCK YEAH I'M GOING, DO IT!" and I went back in and queried two tickets, came up with the same one plus one next to it, and history was made. The most expensive pair of concert tickets ever, plus an evening listening that will feature the ENTIRE "Dark Side of the Moon" album played as the second half of the show. Just like Rush, the tickets are currently at the Will Call window. In the 20 seconds it took me to buy them, Charles concluded that I have some type of Ticket Karma for Hollywood Bowl, and that we should go see EVERYTHING there. Not a bad idea!
Mostly I think, as most of you know, this Ticket Karma tends to follow me around most everywhere, with the exception of the PMB Bank Pavilion in St. Louis, where Jill and I got HOSED and settled for lawn tickets for my first of 10 shows on the last Rush tour. I'll never live that one down. Those were the worst seats I've had since I was 15!
It, however, is not the magnitude of hearing and seeing "Dark Side of the Moon" that has me really feeling the love. It's the fact that the set list for the rest of the night is almost exclusively hand picked from "The Wall." Which of course, is probably the record and/or CD that has occupied my life and record players, cassette players and CD players, walkmans and radio interest longer than anything else.
After doing more online research and immediately looking for concert reviews in the post-purchase buzz, I realized that this concert is going to be a phenomenal event. DSOM has occupied Billboard Magazine's Top 200 best selling albums of all time for over 30 years. I never got to see the Wall Tour in 1980, and subsequently again in 1987, although I had a ticket to that show, but not a way to actually GET to it up in LA at the time.
There really is so much information that links all the songs in the nightly set list that it's hard to describe, other than it's completely rebellious and socio-political. Waters is involved in a lot of peace movement activities, and that was part of Pink Floyd's historic reunion at the huge Live 8 concert in Hyde Park on July 2nd, 2005, promoting peace and an end to hunger in Africa when the G-8 Summit went down in England simultaneously.
This tour and the DSOM theme concept and the theme concept of the Wall COMBINED - Greed (song: "Money"), and War (the entire Wall concept, really) is what Waters' focus is on. It's not just some metal band touring around and playing, it's not just some summer tour with 10 bands and teenage kids. It's a political event, brought on by violence and war in Iraq and Israel. And if anyone is familiar with "The Wall," either the movie or the recording, it is truly stunning to see Waters present his concert by combining his two pieces of work, and it makes it look like today we are indeed experiencing World War III.
Just seeing portions of the set list freak me out. Who could have possibly thought that I might ever
hear songs off "The Wall" live, including "Vera," "Bring the Boys Back Home,"
"Another Brick in the Wall part II," "Mother,"
"In the Flesh" and of course, the ever mandatory "Comfortably Numb," which I have seen live with Gilmour just recently, and on the last official Pink Floyd "Division Bell" tour in 1994. Jesus Christ! The lyrical, musical and timeless application of these songs is, in my mind, beyond incredible. Not to mention of course, the accompanying visual effects such as stage lighting and videography that comes with anything Floydian.
The following is an audience member review of the performance at Madison Square Garden Sept. 12th and 13th, which also included members of the Boys and Girls Club of New York performing on Stage as backing vocals. The review comes off one of the best Pink Floyd sites on the Web, called "Brain Damage:" (plus, it's also another "voice" rather than my own showing such...excitement):
"The show started promptly at 8:20. In the Flesh was performed perfectly. The giant screen behind Waters had to be seen to be believed, with loads of new video to accompany the show. There's really no reason to trip anymore at concerts, because the artists have gone to the trouble of filming the hallucinations for you. Fletcher Memorial Home, with its panning shot from a photo of Bin Laden, to Bush, to Reagan, to Stalin, etc, was really even more incendiary than the brilliant new Leaving Beirut. Not to mention the Pig, with Impeach Bush scrawled across his ass.
But all the pomp and spectacle would not have meant anything if the band hadn't played well, but they did, better than well, they played a stunning two and a half hours of some of the best music of the modern age. Floyd music has always been the music of insanity, and a one hundred and sixty minute barrage of mind bending music and video just reached into my soul, tore it apart, and spit it back into my body. I will not be able to shake the concert for a while.
The performance of Dark Side was perfect, with Wish You Were Here dedicated to the victims and survivors of 9/11, if lacking some of the energy of the first set, with Waters turning much of the singing over to his bandmates, and spending a lot of the set in the dark with his back turned to the audience. It takes a great deal of confidence and humility to not have to be the center of attention all the time, which is appreciated.
The encore of Wall material was well played, with Comfortably Numb finishing the show with a building intensity that peaked in fury of pure madness. Of particular note were Southampton Dock, Fletcher Memorial Home, and in a truly astonishing moment, Vera and Bring the Boys Back Home, which was so loud by the end that any audience noise was completely drowned out.
I've probably seen a hundred concerts at the Garden alone, including Waters, and this is one that will go down in my book, for its brilliant playing and general vibe. There is no venue quite like the Garden, both because of the building itself, and because New York audiences tend to be loud, vocal, and boisterous. September 12, 2006 at the Garden was no exception. This concert passed the test for all great shows, which is, last night, between 8:20 and 11:00 pm, was there any better place spot on the planet earth to be located? For my money the answer is no."
It has also come to my attention that Pink Floyd's original drummer, Nick Mason is appearing at sporadic shows, including New York (above) and of course, again in Hollywood. This is incredible to me. Because after the Waters show this coming Thursday, I will have seen ALL the original members of Pink Floyd (with the exception of Syd Barrett of course, who passed away this July in his home of Cambridge, England peacefully at home after the ravages of schizophrenia and diabetes took him from us), within the last eight months. Original Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright was on tour with Gilmour.
Which in and of itself, these combinations of band members, tours and songs is nothing short of ASTOUNDING. Quite possibly as psychedelic as the band and the music itself. Gilmour and Wright. Waters and Mason. Unbelievable. I'll have to get a copy of the Gilmour set list and combine it with the Waters set list and put it all together, although I must say Waters is going to be covering a WHOLE lot more Floyd distance than Gilmour. Also, on the Gilmour tour, you know strangely, he played his WHOLE new album, "On an Island" and Waters is doing the entire DSOM (of course, those in the know can associate all this "solo" stuff together - "On an Island" "Dark Side of the Moon" "The Wall" - OMG!).
It's a bit of an overload if you ask me! Definitely Brain Damage material. I mean, Gilmour played "Comfortably Numb" as his last song, and Waters is doing the same. But what better song to end with than THAT? No other band on the face of the planet can finish a night like that. The guitar solo on "Comfortably Numb" is regularly rated as the best ever laid down, anywhere, any band, any time. Gilmour came up with it spontaneously while in the recording studio laying down that track for "The Wall."
Yes, this has been long, but for me, I could keep writing about all this for a very long time, and will probably have a lot more written after the Waters show, now just hours away, it seems, and it's just Monday night.
And here's a special note to Steffen. When I was growing up in Galveston, before he actually lived with us for a while I believe, he used to send me cassette tapes of music. Lynryd Skynard, the Who, Cream, Hendrix, Parliament - the list goes on. I really didn't know much who was playing or what it was, but I know that I really liked it, about age 12 and 13. The cassettes would arrive with cryptic like handwriting on them in the mail in boxes completely taped up with masking tape, small little things, maybe 6x6x3 inches. There was this one that I played over and over and over and over, one that I might still have somewhere within the depths of boxes and boxes of old 8 tracks, cassettes and actual vinyl albums that make up my own version of a vintage music collection. For the longest, longest time, I had no idea of what music this was, but it found a special place in my heart, and it's still there.
My second favorite Floyd album of all time, that's what that cassette became. It was eclipsed by only "The Wall" upon it's release. That album is "Animals." It took me half a lifetime to figure out what band was on that cassette, which was probably Steffen's original intension. And when Waters plays "Pigs" or "Sheep" off the setlist, I'll be thinking alot about my brother Steffen and that cassette. Because those two songs have been making the rounds at the shows. Me hear a song LIVE from "Animals?" You've GOT to be kidding. So that song's for you, bro.
And for my ever-supportive mother who has always loved and embraced my own love of music and concerts and touring, (please send money!), I give her dedication to the song of the same name. Every time I hear that song off "The Wall" ("Mother") I, like millions, if not billions of people, stop and think about how it describes and makes me feel about my own mother. So sometime on Thursday night, at least two people will be receiving telekinetic energy from West to East, between, say, 10:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. your local time. You both might want to be sitting down for that portion of your evenings.
I think maybe the tickets have paid for themselves even before I've set foot inside Hollywood Bowl. What do you think?
But alas, if only I could hear "Hey You" and "Goodbye Blue Sky." That would be my final wish as a Floyd fan.
The 7th row seats cost $283.50 EACH.
The same tix are going for $600 to $1,000 each at assorted brokers, scalpers and Ebay locations. So I guess I got a bargain. Like Waters' music, I guess it's a sign of the times.
- Jordan
