I don’t know why the gods favored me to see two stunning performances of Roger Waters “The Wall”, at the Staples Center, but I will forever offer thanks, light candles and incense, and be forever filled with the power of life and love that was shared by Waters that washed away the parts of me that had become jaded, and restored my youth and my dreams, and my hopes not only for me, but more so for the world we exist in today.
Roger Waters reproduction of the Pink Floyd masterpiece he wrote, “The Wall.” is more than brilliant, it is a staggering production that includes perhaps the finest music ever played in music history, along with a phenomenal and spectacular story shared with the audience through use of outrageous digital film effects exploding across The Wall, two stunning enormous inflatables, of a schoolteacher and a seductress, a kamikaze plane shooting down from the rafters and crashing into The Wall causing a massive explosion onstage, accompanied by pictures of servicemen who gave their lives for the country from both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. And that is barely the beginning. The masterful musicianship done by Waters, and supported with three outrageous solos by Snowy White, G.E. Smith, and David Gilminster, all played loudly and with skill thought only to reside in Heaven, through the finest sound system ever assembled.
Waters is more than a genius, he is a master, perhaps a god, and his humility, facing the audience and dispensing with the acerbic attitude he possessed as a youthful musician, brings an immense heart of value to this show beyond any demonstrated by any contemporary musician. There are no comparisons. This work is beyond categorizing, if you have any money, scramble and scrape to get a ticket at the Honda Center, or the last of the three at the Staples Center.
You will never ever see such a spectacle of worth. But “The Wall” will forever be relative, and always solid, whereas such wannabees as Kanye West will quickly fade forever into the still night.
How does a musician become such a giant? How is he more than ever so relevant at age 67? How does he pack audiences of all ages in huge arenas across the world whenever he plays?
His music of this story is more valid today than when it was written and performed for a world in turmoil back in the late 70’s, as the tone of demagoguery in the world today, and the ever watchful almost totalitarian state have become as close to a bleak ending as man has experienced in his history.
Cultural observer, Ben Wener stated, “This is still unquestionably The Ultimate Wall. Its technological marvel and choreographed precision, reshaping Waters’ vision into a supremely humane anti-war statement,” and his words are so true.
For anyone creative, especially writers, to see such a magnificent and anointed work will surely make you not only question your own personal worth, but also challenge you to conquer the world with eager anger, born of the realization that the world is an awful place at present, with so much death and destruction that anger becomes natural.
And all of this is presented in a story of a young man, and his life and friends and desires, told through the skillful and oh so talented hands of fantastic and amazing musicians, each rising to the challenge and the top,
lick after lick, soaring to the stars and lingering there as we sing, as we gasp, as we are dazzled.
This is, perhaps, the greatest story ever told, and Roger Waters has presented us with something so priceless and special, something that touches every nerve and cell, that stuns our vision, and sets our hearing shooting as stars into worlds far above and beyond our existence, all played out against a backdrop of horror and the end of human compassion and the beginning of totalitarian control. All this is also overseen by a huge closed circuit camera that scopes the musicians and terrifies the audience.
And all of this actually comes together so perfectly with an acoustic conclusion that somehow shares a small glimmer of hope after an evening that has drained the audience as well as the musician, for it is emotions played by a score, and wrenched by what Wener called “gargantuan grandeur.”
But we are also taken to small places within our hearts, as well as giant canvases, when Waters, in a melancholy tribute to late Pink Floyd partner and closest friend, Syd Barrett, sits in a room that appears out of the wall, watching the World War II channel on television, singing “nobody’s home,” which was how Barrett ended up coping with the breakdown of civilization.
The story begins with a child facing the world alone after his father is killed in a war, and it takes us all along on a stupendous journey to manhood, where we are all almost waylaid by feeling and singing, “Comfortably Numb,” along with perhaps the longest guitar solo ever heard, and played so sweet and yet tight by Gilminster, a guitar virtuoso who has backed and played with so many, but here he shines and comes out of the shadows and not only steps into the light, but his skill bursts forth with a brilliance that places him in the company of the Best, so grand that we were all mesmerized and hoped it would never end, and go on for centuries as we listened and allowed each note to fill our senses beyond measure, enrapturing and enslaving in a wickedly joyful manner that made us forget the world, and be comfortably numb.
Every writer should and must see this work of genius, your senses will be dazzled, your mind will be overwhelmed, and your heart, yes your heart, however, hidden or encrusted in stone, will shatter and never be as it was before.
For here before you, is the opus of the century, a work that will ever be recalled, that will be heralded and written about, for it is something that special.
It will enchant, it will anger, it will move, and it will change you.
It is, it has to be, there is no other way something this great could come about, but as a work of Heaven, given with grace, to a suffering world starving for hope.
Everything and anything compared is but as a grain of sand compared with the enormity of “The Wall.”
And though the Tower of Babel collapsed, it has been rebuilt, with music beyond any previous human achievement, and it soars to the skies, touching the hem of the garment of heaven.
Can a story get any better than this?
