Roger Waters World Tour 2007
Southern Hemisphere
Tour Reviews

From: Ehtesham Huda
Hi,
This is a long review about me and four of my friends going to (Pink Floyd's) Roger Waters concert in Mumbai on 18th Feb. 2007. It tells you in details of my experience. If you don't want to read so much, at least go to the 2 links at the end of the message to see what Roger Waters said about me and my friends. Also see the pictures his saxophone player Ian Ritchie took of us. Any way, if you find time, hope you will read the whole thing.

I can now conclude that after listening to Pink Floyd & Roger Waters for the last 27 years, it has finally paid off. It doesn't seem such a long time since I first heard the sound of the chopper & 'we don't need no education' (ABITW Part-II) on The Wall at my friend Tarek's place in Rd.21, back in 1980. I was in grade six. It all started from those mesmerizing sound effects and the amazing song compositions of that album that got me hooked onto Floyd. Now 27 years on, it still sounds just as great, but in the beginning it took a few years to slowly understand the driving force behind Pink Floyd, i.e. Roger Waters writings and music composition with the rest of the three, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright.Back in the early days of my Floyd experience, all I had was a Panasonic mono cassette player, people called it a "two-in-one". Then after a couple of years a blue Sony Walkman WM-1 was given to me by my cousin Fuad before he left for The Netherlands. Anyway, the story goes on till such time as I managed to get hold of all the Pink Floyd albums by 1983. By that time, it was the Floyd's last album, when The FinalCut was released, in their original band line up.

Now, I'm coming straight to the story of the Roger Waters concert that I went to see in Mumbai on 18th Feb 2007. About two weeks back, on 12th Feb, late at night, my friend Montu (Tarek's younger brother) called to say that there will be a Waters show in Mumbai on the 18th of Feb, and what should we do? I looked it up on the net to get confirmation, and where to get the tickets. The next morning Montu, Arshad (another Floyd pagol (nut)since school days) and I made all preparations to go. However, Montu ended up going to KL on a more urgent matter. Arshad invited three other Waters/Floyd fans to join us, Syed, Moni & Russell. We all got tickets for the front of the area.

We arrived Mumbai on 17th in the afternoon, and went to the concert site that night to see the work in progress with the aim of getting connected for back stage access, and also to see if the band members were present at the site? Well nothing good transpired, neither could we make any connection for back stage, nor were any of the band members present. There was only the crew working overnight, tons of equipment, and a row of generators. The stage was more or less already set up.

On the day of the concert, the gates were to open up at 5:30, and the concert was to kick-off at 7:30 pm. I convinced my friends that in order to stay close to the stage, we must queue up as early as possible. So, we went to the gate at 2:00 pm. There were already four or five guys in the line in front of us, and more and more people kept on coming, of all ages. Around 3:30 pm, the sound checks started with some guitar strumming and percussion. Then, all of a sudden, Waters sang "Mother do you think they'll like the song". The crowd of about two thousand at the gate went berserk. There were a few more songs he did for the sound checks including "shine on you crazy diamond". Every single person sang along, almost overpowering the speakers.

Then when the gates opened up at 5:30, all five of us sprinted to the left side of the stage and secured the first row. Between us and the stage was only the security railing and a six foot empty space for the TV reporters and camera crews. There were only a few lanky dudes in black polo shirts as security. The ramp where Waters would come down was just two to three feet away.

It was still quite bright in the late afternoon, with more and more people gathering, and an occasional smell of weed in the air. The sound engineers checked on the equipment every now and then toensure nothing failed or there would be no glitches. The huge screen, four projectors, lasers and lights that I've never seen before were alltoo exciting.About 150 feet behind us, the sound & multimedia mixing unit was set up which also had powerful spot lights. There were giant TV screens as usual.

As the sun began to set, slowly a faint image of a WW-II bomber began to emerge on the big screen, and there was also a Johnny Walker whisky bottle on the screen. Before anyone noticed, I told my friends, 'hey guys that's a plane' and they all had a laugh realizing it. As it got darker, I noticed not only was it a plane, but I figured out it was Waters' toy RAF WW-II bomber that Pink was playing with in the Wall movie while his mom was busy praying. It was kept on top ofhis dad'sradiogram.My friend Arshad told me "man, dost tui na bujhle ke bujhbo bol?" (friend, if not you, then who would understand?) He he J.

Then a few other important things happened. Two VIP card holderswho were traveling with the band, came to the stage taking pictures. By that time I had already made two hand written flyers on a simple A4 size paper. One was "FANS FOR 27 YRS - BANGLADESH"that I was holding, and I had made one more for my friend Arshad that said; "ALL THE WAY FROM BANGLADESH FOR YOU". You'll know the significance of this flyer later in the story! The guys on the stage with the camera took pictures of us holding the flyers, thenwent back stage where the band was having an Indian dinner(as we were informed by a sound engineer that I spoke to). In the meantime, we grabbed a couple of RW t-shirts, bloody cut throat expensive! The grounds were still not quite full.

As it got darker, around 7:10 pm, to everyone's surprise the picture of the toy plane sitting on the radiogram and a whisky bottle on a table came to life, as we noticed some cigarette smoke rising from below the screen. At the time on the distant speakers, songs by Neil Youngwere being played. Suddenly, a giant hand appeared from the bottom of the screenturning the tuning knob of the radio. Immediately, the Neil Young song was changed to a new one, a woman singing. It was played on the main speakers. Once again, I told my buddies; 'guys this is Vera Lynn singing "we will meet again some sunny day"...' it was an amazing feeling. Just a few minutes before 7:30, as I remember, the band filed in. Oh no, I forgot to tell you that the drummer, Graham, had appeared while it was still sunlightfrom behind the stage, and it was again I who noticed him before anyone and screamed "yeah" at the top of my voice. In a split of a second, the whole crowd was screaming with me. Graham gave a big smile and then went back stage.

It was so incredible to see Roger Waters as he slowly walked in after rest of the band members had taken their places, including the three girls. Everyone was in black. Roger was in a jet black suit and black tee-shirt and a thick navy blue leather belt which appeared really expensive. He had a ear phone plugged into his left ear and his digital transmitter was on his belt. He was carrying his old black and maple Fender Precision bass guitar as he walked onto the stage.

He kicked off the show with "In the Flesh, Part II". It was incredible, with rear stage fireworks and the all new digitally composed graphics of marching hammers. Then he sang Mother. On the third song, A Saucerful of Secrets, one of the Indian TV channel reporters, who was in front of me turned towards me and said "I just arrived, can you tell me so far which songs he played ? I told her, and also handed her my email address so she could send me some of the pictures she was taking. She suddenly turned toward me again with her microphone and cameraman to interview me. I was so thrilled, and completely taken in by surprise. Well, it lasted for about a minute, and I know what I told her was all good stuff, so it just came with the flow. Not realizing for a second that I was live on the tv all over India, and on the big screen. Only after the end of the show did people start coming to us saying "so you are the guys from Bangladesh" The guy in charge of the show's multimedia projection (a member of the RW team) told me "man save that little paper you have, we all saw it on the screen" when I went to check the mixing unit after the show.

I won't go too much into the details of all the graphics, but I can tell you this much, that the video projection was far superior to what we have seen on the Pink Floyd Pulse video, or even on the recent Roger Waters "In the Flesh" 2002 world tour DVD. In a song from Amused to Death, he used flammable pyrotechnics when a submarine blew up an oil rig. The blast effect and heat wave went right through us. There were images of Bush being fired upon by machine guns. The same pig that he flew in Washington D.C. saying Impeach Bush was here as well, with other sayings on it such as "cut along the dotted line" along the pigs throat, saab jaati ek hai, kafka rules, get rid of the caste system, free at last etc etc. The sound quality was exceptionally good and there were no glitches in any of the songs.

The show was supposed to be in two parts. In the first part, he did his some of his singles from various Pink Floyd albums, and a couple from his own solo album, Amused to Death. Then he said he was gonna take a fifteen minute break and come back to do The Dark Side of the Moon. This concert is called the Roger Waters "The Dark Side of the Moon" World Tour.

Throughout the performance, he walked right in front of us at least five times. I made sure he read my flyer. He read it carefully and said to me "thank you" and smiled. This was the only direct contact I had with him. Another time, Arshad wanted to shake hands with him, but it was bit difficult to lean down forward with the heavy guitar on his neck. Failing to reach forward to him he told him very politely "I can't".

So, when Dark Side came to an end with Eclipse, we knew it was all over. No matter how much we break our heads for an encore, we didn't know of any precedence where PF or RW reappeared for an encore. To all our surprise, he returned to the stage with the full band, the crowd going completely mad. I screamed so much, I couldn't scream anymore. So he comes back, and this is what he said on the mike "Thank you. You've been a brilliant crowd. I'm very grateful. On to my left are a group of guys who have been fans for 27 years and came a long way from Bangladesh, and I know many of you have traveled from far away places to be here tonight. So, you want to hear some more?, Why don't you say so?" I was speechless. Then he started off with ABINTW-II, Vera Lynn, Bring the Boys Back Home and finished it off with Comfortably Numb. I was more than satisfied, nothing more to ask for. I couldn't believe that I would come into his notice and make such an impression that he would mention me to the audience like that.

After the show we went to the Taj Land's Inn hotel where he was staying, but no luck, we didn't get to meet him. But there was a big poster of The Wall with people writing on it. We took a couple of pictures in front of it.

Cheers

Ehtesham.