In The Flesh
Tour Reviews

The setlist was just like in Milwaukee. The show itself was well worth the wait (and money....I ended picking tickets through one of Roger's friends, a ticket broker). My seat was unfortunately off to the far left, so my view of the projections was obscured, but I could see the stage all right. The stage had a few sofas on it, with some lamps and a TV. The stage looked like a living room with band and the screen being the TV. The Rosemont Theater was packed, with a few empty spaces (heh heh) here and there, which were eventually filled as the show progressed. Some (irritating) people behind me arrived during the third song,,causing one of them to complain What?!? No opening act?. Like in Milwaukee, Roger started promptly at 8:00.

The opening song, appropriately enough, was In the Flesh (part 2 as Jim Ladd refers to it). The performance reminded me of Roger's Seville set at the Guitar Legends show (1991). The audience erupted in applause, with some people waving their arms in the cross-fisted hammer pose (RonToon's phrase). In the Flesh segued into a whole Wall-medley with The Thin Ice, Another Brick in the Wall (part 1) and finally Mother. This performace by far out classes The Wall Live in Berlin(IMHO). It's like Ron was saying in his Milwaukee review, he really stuck to the original (Floyd) arrangements for most of the show.

I have to say that I also agree with Ron's comments about Roger's voice. He sounded excellent throughout and in some cases I thought that he sounded BETTER than on the studio versions of some songs.

He followed up the Wall material with a his standard medley of songs from The Final Cut:Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert/South Hampton Dock. Pretty straight forward performance. The crowd yelled/applauded/whistled every time Roger paused to catch his breath in between lines.

The show was arranged in mini-sets organized by album. Nexy came the Animals set represented by Pigs on the Wing (part 1) and Dogs. I unfortunatey couldn' t hear PotW due to a steady stream of screaming by me, but Dogs was ASTOUNDING!. The use of quad was done real nice with all the barking coming from all over the place. Also some of the keyboards were projected around the room. This was the first (and not the last) time that I really noticed the quad sound. To me, this song was a personal highlight (of many). Jon Carin (the name is familiar. Wasn't he in another band....) did a great job on the vocals for the first couple of verses with Roger finishing the song.

The Wish You Were Here set was represented by Waters' standards Welcome to the Machine and Wish You Were Here. It was during this part that the lat comers decided to start up a (rather loud) conversation amongst themselves. I don't get it. Roger complaints about the later Floyd shows awas that people would show up expecting the hits. Here, Roger was performing them and they weren't listening....

Again the arrangements were pretty much true to the originals with WYWH having an extra repeat of the chorus (like both of his previous tours). The real surprise was Shine On You Crazy Diamond. The arrangement was similar to the edit on A Collection of Great Dance Songs with the two halves combined together. Roger's vocals were fantastic, and better than Dave's (during the 94 tour) IMHO. It's nice to hear Roger sing this. The transition from the first half to the second half was rough just as the night before, but with the crowd roaring as loudly as they were you could barely hear it.

After the intermission (of 20 minutes) the started off with a medley of somgs from Dark Side of the Moon. Doyle Bramhall II (who did a fantastic job on both vocals and guiatr) sang lead on Breathe/Time/Breathe (reprise). His vocals sound like a cross between Dave Gilmour and Paul Carrack. The DSotM medley carried on with the intro of The Great Gig in the Sky and finished with the obligatory Money with Doyle on vox again. The solo featured both Snowy White and Doyle. The crowd seemed to react the strongest to the DSotM material.

Finally we get into some solo material. Money ended with a collage of samples from the various voices on DSotM (I've been mad for fucking years, etc....) . These give way to a truck door slamming, then driving off (across the theater). We hear the dialgue from the waitress on Pros and Cons echo off into the distance (again, the quad sound was fantastic) as Roger breaks into Every Stranger's Eyes. Incredible. He hit every note perfectly and the crowd seemed to enjoy it.

Next came the total make-over song of the night: The Powers That Be. It was considerably faster with a jazzy, xylophone sounding, morse code sound throughout. I thought it was better than the original arrangement. I wonder if anyone in the theater thought it was a new song ;)

Finally, we get to songs from Amused to Death. Only five songs were performed. I would've liked to see more (perhaps he could've dropped Money and Another Brick...2).What God Wants, Part 1 is first. Roger messes up a verse, and Snowy messes up the guitar intro, but otherwise the song is, do I dare say, on the money. Perfect Sense I had incredible vocal performances by both Roger and P.P. Arnold. I swear Roger sounded better on the ATD tracks live than on the album, this song in particular. Perfect Sense II had the live telecast by Marv coming to you again in full quad. Roger seemed to really enjoy himself this set. He even tried to get the crowd to sing the global anthem, waving his arms around. Roger held his hands in prayer during the first verse of It's a Miracle. He cowers and covers his ears during the bit about ALW (which got some applause). He finsihed the medley with Amused to Death which featured both the home shopping dialogue at the beginning, and the Alf Razzell monolgue during the end.

The Happiest Days of our Lives and Another Brick in the Wall (part 2) finished the set and got the crowd on it's feet. Roger played Another Brick... pretty faithful to the original with a third verse thrown in for good measure. Snowy and Doyle shared solos again.

The encore kicked off with Brain Damage/Eclipse. BD sounded like it had a bit of a country feel to it. After band intro, the group broke into Comfrotably Numb and judging by the crowds reaction, it was one of the most popular songs that evening. Doyle handled Dave's vocal parts and shared solos with Snowy. A great performance and a welcome addition to Roger's set.

My only complaint would for more songs from Amused to Death (and his other solo albums for that matter). I would like to see a few songs go (Money, Another Brick 2) in favor of some more deserving songs (Sheep or Free Four). Still, the show exceded my expectations. Roger is really in good form. See the show if you can.

by Sean Zloch

When I was in high school, in the southwest suburbs of Chicago in the late 1970's, there were really only three bands one could reasonably expect to be able to swear allegiance to: Led Zeppelin, Boston (yes, remember Boston?) and Pink Floyd. Drab green army fatigues cast off from older brothers served as the billboards of the day, and the very location where such allegiances were proclaimed – a black marker and a fair rendering of a pig and Battersea Power Station could get you a certain cache at parties back then—and the ability to pronounce theories about the meanings of either Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here was sometimes all it took to impress a fellow party-goer with your wisdom and understanding of the world.

In many respects, the subsequent decades were not very kind to such sensibilities. My love for Pink Floyd was sometimes hidden away or admitted to only with a shrug in the face of scornful New-Wavers and Pre-New-Brit-Popsters. When the subject came up, it was often in reference to the highly-publicized battles of the various band members, and not to the increasing sophisticated and prescient world-view Roger was forming in his work, nor the subsequent responsibilities such observations foisted on the listener. I remember writing a letter to the school newspaper in defense of The Final Cut, savaged as pretentious and boring by a loyal follower of the New Guard at a mediocre Midwestern university I was attending, only to be hooted at in the cafeteria by the very same people who would, no doubt, fork over a couple of hundred dollars a ticket a decade later to see the reconstituted Floyd in a stadium awash in lighters and shouts of encore and devoid of any and all knowledge or understanding or appreciation for irony. Socialists and other worriers, in or out of rock-and-roll, often suffer the same fate when tangling with courses for horses and market forces.

Those same people were on my mind last night as I sat in attendance at the Chicago stop of the Roger Waters In The Flesh tour. (In fact, the word that came to mind time and again was actually punters, for those of you with an English sensibility). From at least Welcome to the Machine onwards, Roger has explicitly spoken to the yawning gap between understanding and mindless obedience in all forms, up to and including his own work. Build a wall across the stage to separate the band and its followers, you say? Why not? When the explosions happen, they won't be watching us anyway. All they need are the chimes of the clock and the sound of dropping coins, and maybe a guitarist floating over their heads during the solo. Roger had long expressed his disdain the realities of corporate rock and the behaviors and mindsets it spawns, and it has colored most of his career – more so than almost any other performer still standing today. So a concert by such a willful iconoclast is almost an event by its very nature, forgetting the reclusive nature of the artist and the long spell since the live Radio KAOS.

Unfortunately, the punters didn't disappoint, but, then again, neither did Roger. I was lucky enough to be the friend of a friend of someone who works in the ticket office of the Rosemont Theatre, and found myself deposited in the middle seat of the third row of the orchestra pit for the evening's festivities – not a bad seat if one is as interested in taking the emotional and psychological temperature of a revered artist and not just pumping the fist into the air. The set list was heavy with some old war-horses – the coins made their appearance, as did barrel-chested shouts against education. Roger energized the crowd from the beginning with that most overt of statements about the relationship between fascism and rock-and-roll, In The Flesh, and looking happy to be doing it. The crowd got into the act by the time Mother came around, booing after the line mother, should I trust the government. Roger looked a bit pained by the obviousness of it all, and thereby set up the gamut of his own responses to the show – obvious pleasure in performing on the one hand sandwiched between battles over the awkwardness of what he was doing on the other – whether it was philosophically-based or not.

The first set was filled only with Floyd numbers – including Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert and Southampton Dock – both profound meditations about the nature of militarism and the human toll it exacts. Not very easy to smoke dope to (the standard concert behavior) or hold a cell phone up to (the latest behavior, one that the guy next to me actually did, no doubt to impress the friend on the other end as opposed to increasing any understanding of what the word cenotaph means). While there were certainly fans in attendance for who such ideas resonate, and who are drawn to Roger for that very reason, there were many others who simply considered the moment to be an interlude between the more recognizable tunes. Let's face it – Brezhnev took Afghanistan, and Begin took Beirut just doesn't kick ass.

And there's no way Roger doesn't recognize that. My show-mate leaned over and asked if I thought Roger was mailing it in. My vote was for no, but it was a fair question. Many were the moment in which Roger stood near-motionless on stage, eyes wide shut, only to open them with what appeared to be a bit of a surprise in where he found himself. What appeared to be grimaces found themselves in attendance as well – uneasy shrugs at what he was doing or little bits of awkwardness over when he should pull out the requisite Rock Star motions. The relationship with the audience was spelled out a bit distinctly when, during the extended instrumental portions of Dogs, Roger and band sat down for a game of cards, either reminding us of the nature of English Gentlemen Artists or the author's current interest in some of the more spacey portions of his earlier work. The mood progressed as the show went on, however, and by the middle of the second set, during Perfect Sense, Part 2, he pumped his fists during certain moments and reminded us just how truly engaged he was in his work emotionally and artistically. The prayerful moments at the beginning of Perfect Sense Part 1, the way he nailed the vocally demanding lines in 5:06 AM (Every Stranger's Eyes), and his tendency to mouth the lyrics to songs he wasn't singing backed up such sentiments in clear and powerful ways.

Now that shit kicked ass.

And that's exactly the point: How do you integrate what you are now with what you once were – even if those things aren't really that far apart? Rock-and rollers of every stripe have struggled with the same issues time and again – Lennon, Dylan, Ray Davies, Joni Mitchell, Kurt Cobain et al. And what if the only way you can get across what you're doing today is by feeding off the trough of what went on yesterday? Just look at Dylan - the master of awkward grimaces. Roger's predicament is that he heaps on extra helpings of irony in his work – pointing out the very nature of that awkwardness, and imploring his listeners to be aware of where the alienation and illusion lie, and, by default, to do something about them-

Will you stand by a passive spectator, Of the market dictators-Or will you take to the hills-

Which paints him into a bit of a corner when it comes to shilling his wares in the marketplace or attempting to reclaim the legacy others have attempted to appropriate. One wishes him all of the luck in the world – and hopes it doesn't in some way challenge or damage the delicate balance of a career built around Important Artistic Statements. I want to hear Roger sing Welcome to the Machine as much as the next guy – I just wouldn't want to do it if I didn't understand it was a bit of cynicism directed right at me and others cheering along in the punter's section.

Mark W. Anderson
July 25, 1999
Manders@xsite.net
Manders@mstar.com