Orchestrating arena rock theater to heights heretofore unknown, Roger Waters dazzled the adoring throng at Fenway Park with a performance of The Wall. His expansive two-year world tour has moved outdoors, making mighty use of sophisticated projections to illuminate a wall that stretched from the Green Monster all the way to the furthest right field corner. In fact, as Waters himself drew up staging plans, the best seats were situated far behind the outfield pit area, back into the upper portions of the ball field. Still, it didn't matter if you were standing 20 rows back with women whose demeanor embodied the titular characters in "Young Lust" (displacing the entirety of a beer cup into my camera bag), or swaying from the outfield deck offering line-by-line accompaniment and hand gestures to help Waters find who should be thrown "up against the wall," or drinking a 40 in a grassy patch next to a Sunoco station, the sound was crazily crisp for such a massive show. In short, this wall managed to make personal that which is empyrean.
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Side Note #1
That last paragraph was a bit much. There's something about Pink Floyd- cuing up Dark Side with Wizard of Oz, playing Wish You Were Here on a record player that repeated the side when it hit the last groove, pretending to understand Ummagumma- that inspires (and excuses?) such excesses. I'll tone it down.
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Easily put, this show hinges on the intermission. As the final brick is placed into a wall that separates audience from band, the audience is allowed to sit, use the rest room, all those things that feel more like a night at the opera rather than rock concert. You need the break, and not just because of how long you've been standing and shouting. Even before Waters takes the stage in some finely fascist black leather, a WWII plane has careened overhead from and slammed into the wall. Later, a Benetton-casted youth chorus pushes back against a ghastly teacher marionette that snarls "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?," and yes, 16 songs have elapsed. It's a powerful opening act, placing Waters in the role of Gandolfian sage: silver hair, bursting grin, and warm stage banter. The turmoil that propelled his initial penning of this music finds a much softer mouthpiece 30 years gone, and it speaks to his own redemption by reprising some old demons. This is captured beautifully on "Mother" as Waters syncs his vocals and guitar with a recording of "poor, miserable, little Roger" from a 1980 Earl's Court show. Haunting in black and white, the flickering concert video is a distant memory of an artist who literally wished to build a wall to hold back the legions of fans, and for him to shield the pain of losing a father.
Sure, we all love seeing the "Comfortably Numb" guitar solo blasting over the wall from an elevated platform, and those marching hammers are a real trip. But the 2nd act of The Wall presses too hard with the original storyline of an alienated rock star, Pink, who gradually constructs said wall. It's a great plotting platform, but it plods since the opening of the show does not smoothly build to the animated jumble that accompanies "The Trial" and brings the show to a rousing climax. If you've seen the film, then it works; for those who are new to the story it's all a technicolor mystery. This is the central danger of The Wall: that the blending of personal and political psychosis creates a sensory overload.
The strongest moments happen in the opening songs. Take "The Thin Ice," a song where Waters details the death of his father while fighting in WWII. The image of his father hovers on the central circular screen, then takes a place as a brick in the larger wall. From this one death, the wall is coated with photos that have been submitted of family or friends who have died in political conflicts. No longer is this a matter of one man's struggle, rather it is as Waters hoped, "the story of my fear and loss with it’s concomitant inevitable residue of ridicule, shame and punishment that provides an allegory for broader concerns.: Nationalism, racism, sexism." His personal triumph rings clear, but the political is not as tight. In using Shepard Fairey's iconic style of guerrilla appropriation, the wall falls victim to a postmodern pastiche that searches for meaningful juxtapositions but settles for iSlogans and President Bush plugged into an iPod.
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Side Note #2
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Evidence of the failed mixture? "Bring the Boys Back Home" presented a clip of an elementary school teacher surprised by her husband who has returned home from military combat. The crowd erupted into huge cheers, an emotive roar for the loving reunion and the nobility of the armed forces. Cut to black, then images of starvation, torched landscapes, the detritus of war made large on the wall. As President Eisenhower's quote is superimposed, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed," the applause falls silent. Fortunately, the claps can return as Waters says we "need to bring the boys back home." Phew. Cue some Lee Greenwood, and let the show go on.
Leaving Fenway all-awash in that post-concert buzz (That warm thrill of confusion/That space cadet glow), I took note of two conversations. One guy emphatically told his friend, "this was gonna be the best thing ever. Then it was, you know, just a wall. Pretty fucking anticlimactic." Contrast this with one of the denizens of the Sunoco seating section, ensconced in a folding camp chair, paper bag coozy for his beer: "I've been doing this for 25 shows, and this night was the best sound I've ever heard. Best show that I've ever heard him put on." I'm not going to build a wall to separate generations or levels of sobriety; no walls. What I will attempt is that Pink Floyd, that The Wall, it all means something. And that something has been the fuel for many dorm room debates, and for some of the greatest rock theater you'll ever experience.
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Please, do it for Mother. See "The Wall" as it concludes this North American leg
07/03
Consol Energy Center (Pittsburgh, PA)
07/06-07
Yankee Stadium (New York, NY)
07/09
PNC Arena (Raleigh, NC)
07/10
Time Warner Cable Arena (Charlotte, NC)
07/12
Verizon Center (Washington, DC)
07/14
Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia, PA)
07/21
Les Plaines D'Abraham (Québec City, QC)
"Mother" as recorded by MatthewZGaskill
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