ROGER WATERS: THE WALL- MONDAY NIGHT! HOLY SHIT!

Founding member of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, has successfully held on to his dream of sharing his  masterpiece with the world, again .  The Wall is a double album and feature length film born from the creative mind of Waters with assistance from guitarist David Gilmore and the rest of Pink Floyd band in the late 1970's.    The film and it's songs follow a story line which parallels one man's struggle through stardom, insanity and being a demigod with the slow construction of a mental wall which separates himself from the normal, functioning world. Horrific flashbacks, some in cartoon form, from his troubled childhood are woven  throughout the picture which are now household symbols to anyone who's ever heard of Pink Floyd or The Wall.   The child grows up to rock star and full on  Hitleresque  leader who spews racist and fascist propaganda  to his adoring fans and followers.  The music is spectacular and the film stands today as an enigmatic projection of musical and cinematic brilliance.


    

Roger Waters left the band with The Wall in his pocket, shopping it all over the world with whatever financing he could scrape together while Pink Floyd continued on selling out stadiums.  It was stated on a recent episode of 60 Minutes regarding Waters' new tour that, at one point, he was performing The Wall (among other solo efforts) to audiences of less than 2,000 while Pink Floyd was selling out Giants Stadium.  Admittedly, a healthy dose of Schadenfreude fills me here as Waters was and is a raging egomaniac who essentially dismantled one of the greatest bands to ever exist. However, in 1990 he put together a truly spectacular event at which The Wall was presented most majestically and timed perfectly  in accord with the world climate.  It was 1989 and the Berlin Wall had fallen, freeing East Germany and everyone else suffering behind the soul crushing oppression of the Iron Curtain.  Waters was approached by rock merchandising persona, Mick Worwood about performing The Wall to benefit the  Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief.  Hesitantly, he agreed under the condition that this performance was in no way associated with Pink Floyd.  And so The Wall: Live in Berlin was on track to come alive in 1990 at Potzdamer Platz , a no mans land on the East side of the crumbled Berlin Wall.   The show was pure magic.




The likes of Van Morrison, Cyndi Lauper, Marianne Faithful, Brian Adams, members of The Band ( and among others) offered their voices. Several actors including Albert Finney and Tim Curry took on the characters, perfectly filling the empty spaces where the original Pink Floyd once played and the  film actors appeared.  The stage production for The Wall: Live in Berlin was like nothing ever seen before, bursting with animation, pyrotechnics and props. History was made with more than 200,000 people in attendance.

Something along those lines is going down at The PNC Center Monday night. I'm not expecting Van the man to be there or anything.