This Is Not A Drill!
This Is Not A Drill!
This is not a drill…it’s reality!
After two years of waiting, Roger Waters brought his tour to Madison Square Garden last night.
But, we have to go back to January 2020. I had a Ticketmaster gift card from my birthday in December 2019, I hadn’t found a reason to use it. Then, this tour was announced.
By the time January 2020 wrapped up, I signed up for Made To Do This, booked my trip to Italy and had a ticket for this show. Life was in a positive place.
Then, the pandemic arrived. Both Italy and the concert would be put on hold at the start of the summer and so was the trip. I was given the option to get the money back onto my gift card. But I opted to hold onto the ticket. I couldn’t help but have flashbacks to March 2019. At that time, I had a ticket to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine XXI tour at Radio City Music Hall. But the show was rescheduled from March to September 2019 and I couldn’t go as the new dates coincided with my trip to France. Lying in bed that night in Bayeux, I wished I could be in NYC.
The rescheduled dates for his tour were set, August 30th and 31st.
The months went by as the last days of summer arrived. At long last, the end of August arrived.
I had a bit of apprehension, though. This would be the first time that I would be in a large room with people since before the pandemic began. All of my events in the last two years have either been virtual or in intimate rooms.
As I walked towards 7th Avenue, I couldn’t find the Garden. I was walking in the right direction but the marquee was missing. And so was the rest of the buildings exterior. But not to worry, I had to keep walking to find the entrance as Penn Plaza is being rebuilt. Once inside, it was the garden that I knew and loved.
The sun set and day turned to night.
At 8:25pm, the lights went down. On the screen, a message from Roger:
“If your one of those people: I love Pink Floyd but I can’t stand Roger’s politics, you would do well to f*** off to the bar right now”.
With formalities out of the way, the show began with a mellowed out rendition of “Comfortably Numb” from the 1979 Pink Floyd album, The Wall.
As the set went along, the confrontational nature of Mr. Waters was on full display. Images of brutality that humanity endures played on screen, during his solo tracks. But when “Wish You Were Here” was played, the entire room sang along as memories of Pink Floyd’s original frontman Syd Barrett splashed on the screen. Act I ended with a performance of the track “Sheep” from the 1977 Pink Floyd album, “Animals”, with a inflatable sheep floating above the crowd.
After a brief intermission, Act II began. And an inflatable pig joined the show, Algie’s rebellious descendant. His laser eyes set the tone as “In The Flesh” and “Run Like Hell” opened the second set.
For the Dark Side fans in the crowd, “Us & Them” and “Money” took us back to 1973. At the conclusion of “Brain Damage/Eclipse”, the lights on stage came together to form the album’s cover.
The night end with one more twist. Normally, “Outside The Wall”concludes The Wall with a flourish as the wall that was built on stage and lyrically came tumbling down. But on this night, the song became a meditative piece. A moment of calm for a world that has us banging our heads against some mad bugger’s wall. The band took a lap around the stage playing the song before the lights went out one last time.
As I made my way home, I felt overjoyed and overwhelmed by the night’s events. Two years of waiting had come and gone in 2 1/2 hours.
August has sailed into the sunset.
September is on the horizon and so is the forthcoming voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.
This is not a drill…life is returning in this, the new normal that we’re living in.
