photo courtesy of rateyourmusic.com
“The Wall” is coming back. Hundreds of thousands of people will congregate in mammoth auditoriums to see the performance of “The Wall.” It’s not the Berlin wall, not the Wall that divides people in Palestinian occupied territories, but the Pink Floyd epic double-album that is considered to be one of the greatest masterpiece albums by the band.
Three decades after the band’s monumental ninth album sent shock waves through the music world, Roger Waters, the co-founder, bassist, singer and lyricist, is going around America and Canada to revamp the craze of millions of fans of the band.
The iconic psychedelic songs of ‘The Wall’ have spellbounded me like any other Pink Floyd addict ever since I came across the album. Then, the artistic vision of filmmaker Alan Parker and the writing of Waters in ‘Pink Floyd The Wall’ took the visions of the songs to greater heights.
Waters announced last April that the performance will be a theatrical opus like the band’s performances in 1980 and during the fall of Berlin wall in July 1990. It will also include the construction of a massive white brick wall between the audience and performers during the course of the show by using advance projection systems and other technology.
Waters, 66, now a solo performer, performed with the full band (except the late Syd Barrett) in 2005 during Live 8 concert. Keyboardist Richard Wright then passed away in 2008, while guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason have continued working on their solo projects. The tour this year won’t include any of these other original members of the band.
Through the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experiment and innovative album cover art, Pink Floyd’s songs have strong anti-war and peace messages about individuals, societies and countries. The 1990 tour marked the celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany. This time, the tour comes around a time of other wars like those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This album, with messages about isolation and desperation, spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and has been certified 23-time platinum. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording—Non-Classical.
‘The Wall” tour will begin on Sept. 15 in Toronto, Canada, and the show will be performed for 36 dates in North America—including two-night stands in Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The tour will then move on to Europe for another 57 dates beginning in March of 2011.
Whenever I see someone wearing black T-shirt that has a ray of white light dispersing rainbow colors through a prism, with the words, ‘Pink Floyd tour 1973: the Dark Side of the Moon,’ I wish I was born during the ‘60s. But now I don’t have to. I’m going to the band show at the United Center in Chicago in September. All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
