Concert Review: Roger Waters, June 28, 2007, Winnipeg, MTS Centre
Published July 03, 2007
This was the first appearance of 62 year-old Roger Waters as a solo artist in Winnipeg and 13 years after the Water-less Pink Floyd played to a huge audience at the football stadium. Waters brought a rather large band with three guitarists, two keyboardists, three back-up singers, as well a drummer and sax player, all of whom wowed 11,000 mostly Pink Floyd fans at the MTS Centre.
This show was even more of a visual spectacle than I expected. The band utilized a gigantic screen that was as wide as the stage and about 30 feet tall to show constant video footage throughout the entire show. Only in one of the songs, however, the solo number "Leaving Beirut," did the screen show any lyrics.
The song was introduced as Waters was stuck in Lebanon as a 17 year-old and was taken in for supper and a bed for the night by a very poor but extremely gracious Arab family. The cab driver husband had one leg and the wife appeared to be a hunchback, who gave up her supper for Waters. The experience never left him and he finally wrote a song about it, that, like several of the songs this evening, had an anti-war angle to it.
There was ample shadowy footage of former band member and group founder, Sid Barrett, who died in July, 2006.
There was quite a bit of anti-war imagery, including footage of the new wall being erected in Israel. Waters spray-painted the wall during his last trip to Israel and also played another show in the region, in a town where the Israelis and Palestinians actually get along peacefully.
An inflatable astronaut appeared during "Perfect Sense 1 & 2." In one video sequence, Earth is seen from space and then an open air stadium gets zoomed in on. Instead of two competing teams, however, the stadium playing field was shown as being a deep body of water with a oil rig at one end and submarine approaching at the other end. Gun fire erupted from the platform but it was destroyed in an enormous explosion after being hit by the sub's torpedoes. Not surprisingly, an inflatable pig appeared during "Sheep," with more anti-war and anti-Bush slogans spray painted on.
- Concert Review: Roger Waters, June 28, 2007, Winnipeg, MTS Centre
- Published: July 03, 2007
- Type: Review
- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Music: Classic Rock and Oldies, Music: Live Concerts, Music: Progressive Rock
- Writer: Triniman
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Almost weekly, Triniman catches new movies, and adds one or two CDs to his collection. Due to time constraints, he blogs about only 5% of the CDs, books and DVDs that he purchases. Holed up in the geographic centre of North America, the cultural mecca of Canada, and the sunniest city north of the 49th, Winnipeg, Triniman blogs a bit when he's not swatting mosquitoes, shovelling snow or golfing.
