Roger Waters World Tour 2007
Northern Hemisphere
Tour Reviews

Another brick in the fanstastic wall of the creative genius of Pink Floyd... Mr. Roger Waters of course! Last nights concert was an amazing 3 hour extravaganza... we had a fantastic crowd, great sound, a perfect band and some great new surprises! Yes, even if the set list remained the same as the 2006 gigs, the visual effects are totally different, and most of the backdrop films have changed.

In addition, there was also a 3D multicolor prism shining over your head during "Any Colour You Like." There was an inflatable astronaut and pig during Perfect Sense and Sheep, flying all around the forum. And, there was a band that, after all these shows, play with total confidence and... well there is that "animal" on stage, that is Roger Waters... with his energy and an elegance that catches your eye, your heart and your soul. And when the show reaches an end, you come away with joy in our heart and exploding images and colours still in your eyes. It was a great show Roger, thanks again... Italy loves (and will always love) you!

Alberto Durgante
http://www.heyou.it

PS - The set list was:

First half: In The Flesh, Mother, Set The Controls For the Heart Of The Sun, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Have A Cigar, Wish You Were Here, Southampton Dock, The Fletcher Memorial Home, Perfect Sense parts 1 and 2, Leaving Beirut, Sheep.

Second half: Dark Side of the Moon.

Encores: The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, Another Brick In The Wall (Pt 2), Vera, Bring the Boys back Home, Comfortably Numb.

Anyway, I always said no matter where or when Roger played in Italy again (especially in Milan) I'd be there no matter what. When the tour was announced and Milan was on the list I immediately started to make my plans for this show. I booked the flight from Manchester to Bergamo (about 45 minutes out of Milan) and paid the £39 (approx $70!!) roundtrip airfare without hesitation. I was to fly out the morning of the show and retun the morning after. I booked the bus from the airport to Milan central and a cheap hotel by the central station for the night. I think within 12 hours of the show bieng confirmed I was all booked up and I've bssn sooooo looking forward to the show ever since!

Monday 23rd April (yesterday), I awoke at 3:45am and took the 45 minute drive to Manchester airport for my 6.30am flight. The only 'downside' to the cheap flights to Europe from the UK is the early time a lot of them depart, it could have left at 3am for all I care, lol.

9.30am I arrived in Bergamo, I'd looked online the night before at the weather forecast for Milan and it was forecasting a high of 78' during the day! This was great for me coming from a cold, damp morning in England! The humidity hit me as soon I stepped off the plane, you could tell it was gonna be a hot day.

The transfer bus was waiting outside the terminal, and 15 minutes later I was on my way! The route the bus took was lined with thousands upon thousands of wild red poppies along the roadside!! Seeing these gave me goose bumps and certainly made me smile (with thoughts of The Final Cut tracks to come that evening :>).

I sent my friend Kevin a text message to say I was on the bus, Kevin had been to the Barcelona show 2 nights before and I knew he was getting the night train to Milan but wasn't sure where he was at this present time. 30 minutes later I got off the bus at Milan central station and spotted Kevin by one of his 'famous' bootlegg t-shirts.

We walked the 5 minute walk to the hotel and checked in, crashed in the room for an hour or so, then went across the street for breakfast at a typical Italian street side cafe bar. Yes in Europe you can order a beer with your morning crossiont. However, orange juice was my drink of choice,lol.

I got a text from one of my two Italian friends (Tizziano & Stefano) I was meeting. Tiziano wanted to know if I'd like to see a few sites in Milan, and to let him know ASAP as, if so, he'd have to borrow his fathers car and leave his Porche at home as it only seated 2 people,lol and Stefano was with him. I told him to leave Stefano behind and pick me up in the Porche, well it was worth a try,lol :> .

We saw a few sights, had a couple of Coffee stops and then started to make our way to the gig, stopping at the hotel first to pick Kevin and his bag of gear up. I had met Stefano & Tizziano at the Gilmour shows in 2000, and had kept in touch by email ever since. We'd met up at a couple of gigs over the last 5 years or so, and more recently, a couple of weeks ago at Rogers Zurich show. But due to them arriving late we'd not had much chance to chat. Tizziano is a dentist and works just outside of Milan. He met Stefano through Floyd related things about 15 years ago. Stefano has written over a dozen books about Pink Floyd, sadly only ever published in Italian. The two of them are good friends with Nick Mason and only a couple of years ago had arranged for Nick to do a book signing in Milan. They picked Nick up on his arrival, drove him around, arranged and paid for his hotel and had also shown him some sites in Milan while he was there! As I said, Italian fans are VERY passionate about anything Floyd related and will go to any lengths to see their 'heroes'.

The venue was a large indoor arena about 15 miles west of Milan, and it took about an hour to get there. By the time we did I was glad the Porche had been left at home... due to Tizziano driving like a 'typical' Italian!!

ANY gigs around Italy are well known for the amount of people that go to them just to sell bootleg t-shirts, jackets, hoodies, scarfes etc etc., you name it, and they'll put the words Pink Floyd on it and sell it! Around the edge of the venue was like your typical Saturday market, there were hundreds of things for sale every colour, size and style imaginable!

I left Kevin to go do his 'thing' and went for a wander round the venue to soak up the pre show atmosphere. I'd arranged to meet another friend, Renate who runs Snowy's fan club website and had received a message from her earlier, but couldn't find her around the venue. Tizziano, Stefano and I wandered into the venue as they wanted to set up their 'equipment' in plenty of time, the show wasn't to start untill 9.30pm, which is popular in a lot of the European cities, so I had an hour or so to kill.

I went outside and met up with Kevin at about 8:30 and we made our way back into the venue to take up our positions for the show. It was standing on the floor, and two tiers of seats around the arena. We'd decided to stand for this show as the atmosphere is definatly a lot better. But we found a great place to sit that was about 15 feet back from the stage and to the left side. It was on the floor but was elevated up about 10 feet so you could see out over the floor standing crowd. I gave Kevin a leg up, and by the time he'd turned round and got comfy, a lot of other people had spotted this 'unique' place and were clambering up to get a good view, the same thing then happened along the other side of the venue.

At 9.15 the Pyros went off at the start of In The Flesh, and the moment I'd been waiting for was actually here!

Spanish and Italian crowds have this thing they do that I've never experienced anywhere else in the world! Whilst I'm not a huge fan of the crowds singing the songs, the Italians do it not only in perfect time, but all together, in tune and at the right times!! They have this chant like thing that they do as well, similar I believe to what they do at football matches. Between each track you can hear them shouting Roger, Roger, Roger this has to be heard to be believed and really does create an amazing atmosphere.

Roger was helped along by the crowd to the words of 'Mother' and they then went wild to the opening notes of Set The Controls, and seeing the images of Syd and the rest of the guys on the backdrop just got them even more fired up! THIS was what my several months wait was all about, the whole place was buzzing and I was in absolute heaven!!

Snowy did the opening notes to Shine On fine, however he missed a couple of notes after the intro, and this totally threw him off, then missing the next few bars. Roger just smiled over to Snowy and laughed.

I've always thought that when a musician makes a simple mistake like the above they play even better than they would have done for the rest of the show. This was clearly visible by Gilmours guitar playing at some of his shows last year. Gilmour would make a mess of some guitar part early in the show, and his whole attitude and stance could be seen to change for the rest of the gig. His legs would bend more at the knees, he'd go into a crouched like stance and play like never before for the rest of the set. This was EXCATLY the case with Snowy last night as heard in an amazing solo during Fletcher Memorial, it was as though he was teaching the guitar not to fuck with him, and showing it who was in charge, the rest of the night!! Great stuff that you'd have to have been there to see, hear and appreciate.

Rogers emotion during The Final Cut tracks was certainly not lost on the italian fans. Something Roger obviously noticed after his comment to them later in the show. Perfect Sense... and an audience in Milan!! how the hell could it not be a recipe for one of the best versions I've heard! The applause PP got after her vocal solo showed just how much the audience were into this show.

At the end of Perfect Sense the applause and loud continuous chanting of 'Roger, Roger' were enough to make the whole band smile, and for Rogers usual immediate introduction of Leaving Beruit to be put on hold for at least 60 seconds while he stood there and couldn't do anything but to take in the admiration from the audience. His consant shouts of 'gratzi' just set the audience off again and again!! What a buzz he must have got from that! Eventually he managed to get his 'speach' in, and Andy Fairwether Low came to the front of the stage, with his now well known 'Cowboy look' and white strat, and proceeded to show the Italians what he had to offer. Once again Snowy took his Les Paul guitar, that by now I'm pretty sure knew Snowy had control over, but he wasn't leaving it any doubts by playing a blinding solo, you could almost see the sparks coming from the frets and the smoke from Snowys fingers!!! The guy was fucking on fire and loving every minute of it! One thing that always makes me smile is when Roger sings the line 'the bulldog is a poodle...' watch his actions, he crouches down slightly and shakes his arse like a dog crouching and shaking its tail, lol. Also, you won't notice unless your sitting dead centre and towards the rear of the venue, but when the speech bubbles come up onscreen with the lyrics in them, their position relates to whose singing the lines. When Roger sings, the speech bubble is lined up to him, and when the girls sing, or join him in harmonies, the speech bubble above them has 3 spikes pointing down towards each one of them!

Jons fingers on the keys playing the intro to Sheep was next up, and my immediate thought was where the hell did the rest of the first set go!! Its nearly over already! Sheep really is a great track for finishing the first set. Everyone's just dancing about, singing outloud and on such a high, and then the pig comes out, quiets everyone down by making them take pictures and trying to read the writing on the pig while listening to Jon and Harry on the keyboards. Then, its one last chorus to get everyone going again before the end of the set. The band left the stage after Roger telling everyone they'd be back in 15 minuetos to perform DSOTM.

Sure enough the band returned to the heartbeat sound and the image of the satelite onscreen getting bigger & bigger. On the European & USA tour last year, they only used the circle in the middle of the screen for the Dark Side set. But seeing the satelite coming at you on the full size of the screen shows you just how much more effective using the whole screen is. I swear you actually want to duck down when the image gets to full size and flies by!

Grahams drum into to Time got the crowd all hyped up again, and their perfect timing on singing the opening words 'ticking away the moments that make up a dull day' almost drowed Rogers vocals out totally!! The same thing happened with Money as well.

I'm pretty sure from the crowds reaction to Dave Kilminsters solo during Any Colour You Like, that they had accepted him as a suitable replacement for the 'other' Dave! One thing that is easily missed, and you have to watch out for, is Rogers fantastic bass playing during ACYL. This is often missed due to all eyes bieng on Dave, as its the same time as his 'face melting' solo!

I cant remember if its during ACYL or Us & Them, but watch the screens at the side of the stage, the camera guys are the same each night and travelling with the crew, (and its the same guy that's doing the vision mixing each night as well), there's a great 30 second shot that shows Harry on the keys and Roger on Bass mixed together on the screen. I tried to take a still picture so you get the idea but its far superior seeing it on the screen!

I've always liked Us & Them as a track, but seeing it played live shows just how good of a track this is. It's certainly moved a lot higher up on my list of favourite Floyd Tracks. It really does work well live, and involves the whole band in its performance. Brain Damage and Elipse went by as normal with the crowd appreciative of the Laser effect.

This whole show with its effects, pyros, lasers etc., work so much better indoors. If you've only seen the show at an outdoor gig, then try to make an indoor one for a lot better experience. As the band went offstage, before the encore, the whole crowd began to chant... 'whhooooaaaa' it got louder and louder building up untill they came back onstage. Again, something very unique to the Italian audiences.

Ok, imagine hearing 15,000 plus people all singing everyword to Another Brick, and doing the hand motions in the air!, whatever you can imagine is only a fraction of what it's actually like. It has to be seen and heard to be believed.

The same with Vera, the whole audience helping Roger along with the lyrics, it was spine tingling stuff. When the 'bombs' went off during Bring The Boys Back Home,' I don't think the crowd could believe it. The look on their faces was sheer shock, amazement and delight all in one.

Comfy Numb closed a fantastic show, Dave playing an excellent closing solo however Snowy made a couple more mistakes, the Les Paul guitar just managing to get its own back on what was a faultess second half of playing by Snowy.

I'd have to listen to a recording of the show to remember exactly what Roger said to the audience but it was something similar to "you've been a fantastic audience, we need to take some of you up north with us, we always enjoy playing here in the south".

After the gig I managed to find Renate, who'd i'd missed before the show. It was great to meet up and say hi face to face. I was just sorry we didn't have more time. Tizziano drove us back to the hotel and my head hit the pillow at 2am only to be woken again this morning at 6am feeling like all of 60 seconds had gone by.

As you can probably tell from my review above, I had a FANTASTIC 36 hour trip, and Milan lived up to everything I was expecting and more. I'm now sitting on the flight home, just gone over the Swiss alps and the captain just announced that it's 45' in Manchester, windy & raining. Why am I not surprised!!!

Home, home again... well for a week anyway, then its Paris & Holland and then the fun really begins with gigs in my own country!!

Regards
Si

Photo's by Alberto Durgante