As stated in the previous issue of REG, Music Choice (which is a Digital audio music service) runs a video concert series each month spotlighting a different artist. And for the month of February they had spotlighted Roger Waters. I was sent a pre-release tape of the video. It was a one hour edited version of the new Live In the Flesh DVD which I reveiwed in the last REG issue for our members.
In addition to the 1 hour video concert excerpts, there was also a separate broadcast of a Roger Waters audio interview. It was a 1/2 hour audio interview/music program carried on all cable and satellite systems that have Music Choice. There are two Digital music services; Music Choice, and DMX. DMX did not have this audio program. So if you have digital Music Choice music available to you, you might have heard this interview program using your local access channels.
The 1/2 hour audio special and interview with Roger Waters, is done by DJ Pat St. John for Music Choice Premiers, and has Pat as narrator and interviewer, giving the listeners the appropriate background and history and a description of what Roger has been doing recently. The show amounts to a half an hour of cuts off Roger's live in the Flesh album interspersed with short comments from Roger about life and his music and what it all means to him.
So as promised, here, for our wonderful REG Fan Club members, I have transcribed the show.
Music Choice: Roger Waters In the Flesh Special Audio Broadcast
(The beginning of the live version of In The Flesh is played)
Pat:
Roger:
Pat:
Roger:
Pat:
(The beginning of the live version of Time is played from the Live In the Flesh CD)
Roger:
(The live version of Time continues.)
Roger:
(Time concludes, after which there is a commercial for the new CD to be purchased on the Music Choice web site)
(The beginning of the live version of Bravery of Being Out of Range is played)
Pat:
(The beginning of the live version of Perfect Sense Part 1 is played)
Roger:
(Perfect Sense Part 1 continues)
Roger:
(The live version of Perfect Sense Part 2 is played after which another commercial for the CD)
Pat:
(The beginning of Each Small Candle is played)
Roger:
(Each Small Candle continues)
Roger:
(Each Small Candle completes after which another commercial for the CD)
(A part of the live version of The Happiest Days of Our Lives is played)
Pat:
Roger:
(The live version of Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2 is played)
Thanks for listening to Music Choice. The End
Hi, I'm Pat St. John, welcoming you to Music Choice Premiers. For the next half hour, we'll be talking with Roger Waters. Roger's latest release called In The Flesh is a live set that spans the length of his legendary influential career in Rock and Roll. From his early work in Pink Floyd...
The audience seemed to have discovered more about who I am, and what I did when I was in Pink Floyd than for some time. When it starts, they're all singing the words... it's a good song...
...to brand new solo material...
I was quite taken aback at the depth of affection and appreciation that there was out there. It's great that the new songs have found that resonance.
After co-founding Pink Floyd in 1966, Roger Waters quickly emerged as leading creative force. Bringing increasingly sophisticated songs and production techniques to each album. Then in 1973 came Dark Side of the Moon. A musical and sonic masterpiece that explores themes like insanity, materialism, and mortality through a Rock and Roll sensibility. The album was a phenomenon, shooting straight to number one. And staying on the charts for nearly 15 years. It remains a legendary chapter in the history of modern Rock and Roll.
In some places there are tons and tons of 16 year olds and 20 year olds and maybe 30 year olds or whatever, but "Time" when it starts, they're all singing the words. I mean... It's a good song... It absolutely describes that sense of foreboding that we all feel from time to time, that life is going by, and something more ought to be happening and we need to somehow grasp the mantle and take control of it.
It was describing my life when I wrote it. I was 29 years old... I was 29 before I realized I'd missed the starting gun. That I was no longer preparing for something, that this was it. It happened to me very suddenly, one day I suddenly went; this is it, now I get it! I'm living now. I'm not in school any longer. And I try always to tell my kids... at whatever age they are you know, that it's started... this is it. It's not going to suddenly start somewhere down the line. Your living it now!
With the success of Dark Side of the Moon, Roger Waters solidified his stature as one of Rock's most innovative and influential song writers. A few years after writing yet another masterpiece, Pink Floyd's The Wall, Roger left the band to pursue a solo career. While Roger's songs are intensely personal, they deal with matters that are universal to the human experience. Political and social concerns also find their way into Roger's music. The title of his last album is inspired by the book Amusing Ourselves To Death, (by Neil Postman) which investigates the effects of mass media on the individual and on society. Roger Waters finds that his newer material strikes a deep cord with his audience.
I was quite taken aback at the depth of affection and appreciation that there was out there. It's great that the new songs have found that resonance. ....who knows at some point... we might find a tipping point for Amused to Death. And it may certainly... like hushpuppies go: QUIIIIOOOOOO... where every kid on the block will want a copy of Amused to Death, like Dark Side of the Moon. I'd love it to spread... it's a great record.
The way that the audience has responded to Perfect Sense has been a big surprise to me. It's a very kind of simple satirical piece. It's the same kind.... you see, it all makes perfect sense reduced to dollars and cents, pounds, shillings and pence... you know it's quite cleat that it doesn't make sense at all. And yet that is what we're expected to accept. And on some level it does as well, to us. And so there's a paradox in there that's hard to grasp. But there's something essentially gripping about the song that people respond to.
In the Flesh celebrates Rogers Waters long overdue return to the Rock and Roll stage, as well as a musical career that has spanned nearly 35 years. While taking a long look back, In the Flesh also features the brand new song, "Each Small Candle."
Yeah, Each Small Candle is the new song that we did on the tour. It came from a contact that I had with an Italian journalist. This Italian journalist had a stanza of poetry that had been written by a victim of torture from South America. And he sent that to me. And he was sort of trying to get me involved I think in a concert, in Florence or somewhere, for the Initiative Against Torture. And I didn't do that, but I did set this poem to music. And then later, I wrote two verses about Kosovo, having read a story in the London Times about a Serbian soldier who breaks ranks and crosses over to the other side to help an ethnic Albanian woman who was wounded. And I found that a rather moving retelling of the story of the Good Samaritan.
I sense what's important. And I suppose within the context of talking about my songs, so do a lot of my fans. People who like listening to my songs who find some substance in them. ...when I stand there in front of a blank canvas, I'm not quite sure what it is I'm trying to paint or why I'm trying to paint it. But I know it's important to me. I know it has something to do with trying to touch the essence of what it is to be human and to make the most of life.
Roger's return to the stage comes at a time when all new audiences are finding his music.
The audience seemed to have discovered more about who I am and what I did when I was in Pink Floyd and so on and so forth. They're all ages that's what's great about it. I get letters from 80 year olds and 8 year olds. Not many 8 year olds I have to say (laughs), but one or two. Successive generations seem to have discovered the songs kind of when they hit puberty. Or when they start thinking about things, or when they start feeling about things. When they discover that they're individuals, that they have a life. And that they need to take responsibility for and think about them.