![]() ![]() ![]() He very much reminds me of Gordon Haskell in King Crimson – just kind of a bland, languid singer. Sorry to say it, I’m not trying to be mean, but there is no power behind his vocals whatsoever. However as a vocalist he is surprisingly weak – weak as water. Competent is a good word to describe him as a guitarist, not Gilmour-level, but competent. Wilson comes across as a competent guitarist, but as a fill-in for David Gilmour he falls hopelessly short. Frequently guitarist/vocalist Jonathan Wilson is handling the lead vocals, with Roger prowling around the stage with his bass guitar singing along mic-lessly. And he does it to great effect on Us + Them – when he does sing, that is. He was never a technically impressive vocalist, although he knew how to channel anger and outrage and bile better than about any vocalist anywhere. And it’s not that he doesn’t have a competent band – but given that Roger doesn’t even sing on a lot of the songs, in some ways it is really like listening to a Pink Floyd cover band.Īnd about that – when Roger Waters sings, he sounds pretty much like you’d expect. The selection of Pink Floyd songs is pretty solid. Not that they aren’t great songs – the bulk of Dark Side of the Moon and Animals is performed, and a couple of songs from Wish You Were Here, and at each stop a local children’s choir helped out with “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”, which was pretty cool. The powerful images flying at you in tandem with the music are what really makes the experience, the music is just one component, and all by itself it isn’t half so compelling. Don’t waste your time on the album from the tour, if you are only using your ears you are missing most of what the experience is all about. I would like to think it still has an impact if you didn’t see it in person.īut as a mere listening experience, it would inevitably be a disappointment. While I am not sure the Us + Them concert film has the same impact if you didn’t see the tour, seeing it onscreen is still impressive, and for me it brought back some of the emotionally wallop of having actually been there. A David Gilmour show transports you to another world, it is all wrapped in fantasy, the music takes you away someplace else – a Roger Waters show is wrapped in grim reality and grounds you firmly in the crappiness of the crappy world we live in. ![]() A David Gilmour concert is a dreamy, heavenly, otherwordly experience – a Roger Waters show is earthy and coarse and in-your-face. The Us + Them shows were full of moments that really hit you, that made you stop and think for a minute, that kind of whacked you on the side of the head and made you pay a little attention to what is going on in the world around you. Roger Waters’ shows are less impressive for the musicianship, but far more impressive in terms of powerful visuals that really shake you up. Not necessarily phenomenal in the same way as when I saw David Gilmour in 2016 – that was an orgy of excellent musicianship. But I wasn’t nearly as excited as I ought to have been – that show was phenomenal. I’d already seen David Gilmour, how could Roger Waters possibly top that? When my wife surprised me with Roger Waters tickets for Christmas, I tried to act more excited than I really was. Probably a better way of saying it is a Roger Waters concert is a multi-sensory experience.Īfter seeing the film from The Wall tour from 2015, I kind of wished I had seen it – but not enough to buy tickets when the Us + Them tour came along a couple of years later. A Roger Waters concert is a spectacle – and I don’t mean that is a cheap, gimmicky sort of way. He knows Pink Floyd songs are a strong draw, but for him the music is only one piece of the experience. He understands no one is going to buy a ticket just to watch him play bass. Roger Waters is fully aware he doesn’t have a great voice. It wasn’t until I saw the concert film from The Wall tour that I understood. And I kind of thought it was cheesy to tour an album you’d recorded 35 years earlier – I mean, come on, talk about resting on your laurels and recycling past glories. I didn’t see what he brought to the table that would induce me to go see him. Unlike former bandmate David Gilmour, he isn’t a brilliant musician. The way I figured it, sure there would be some amazing songs sung by the guy who wrote them, but Roger Waters doesn’t have the greatest voice in rock, and he’s not the most proficient of bass virtuosos. ![]() When he toured The Wall in 2015, I had no interest whatsoever in going. I honestly don’t know why anyone would want to listen to a Roger Waters live album. OVERALL (OUT OF 10): JUST WATCH IT FIRST CHANCE YOU GET ![]()
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