Tuesday 12 July 2022

review: Roger Waters - "This Is Not a Drill" at Scotiabank Centre in Toronto


The last time I saw Roger Waters was about a decade ago when he was touring a revamped version of The Wall. That show was brilliant.


This one was otherworldly.


At age 78 he refuses to rest on his laurels and has stepped up his game.


The show was prefaced with Roger delivering a public service announcement on tape—a disclaimer that "if you're one of those 'I love Pink Floyd, but I can't stand Roger's politics' people, you might do well to fuck off to the bar right now" to an enormous roar of approval.


Subtlety is not one Roger's strong points. People used to attend his shows and be surprised at its content. This is no longer the case, as his reputation for being outspoken about things near and dear to him is now solidified. No mountain is too high. No issue is too taboo. Everything is on the table.


The festivities began in dim lighting with a new somber arrangement of "Comfortably Numb," which was pretty appropriate as we are a whole lot more numb to so many things in 2022. The soaring guitar solo was replaced with mournful cries from one of his two backing vocalists. I couldn't tell which one, as she was obscured from my sight. The staging consisted of multiple double-sided video screens in the shape of a cross as seen from above, and at the end of the piece it slowly ascended with a pomp and circumstance not unlike the spacecraft in that iconic scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Before that moment, only half of the stage was visible to each audience member.


By the second song Roger made his appearance in the darkness amidst the familiar helicopter sample from the top of "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" that encircled the arena in surround sound. Floyd were pioneers of quadraphonic sound at their concerts in the early '70s, and it continues to be a staple of Waters' shows well into the 21st century.


Within seconds the scope of the production was clear—the songs we're well accustomed to were going to be about 5% of the experience, and the visuals will be 95%. Like a lot of arena shows, the massive production makes it more like Broadway than rock and roll, as the entire operation has to be automated to ensure everything happens at the exact right moments. But Roger's show takes this concept a step further, as it is a display of the Zeitgeist of our time.


The tour is dubbed "This Is Not a Drill." And this is not a nostalgia show—40 to 50 year old music has been reworked to be relevant to the world today.


In simple and direct language, these red words drew far more attention to the eye than the band:


US
GOOD
THEM
EVIL




At this point it became immediately clear that having a seat near the stage would not be an ideal position to be in. Being at least half way back is optimal so that one can see and process everything in real time.


This set design is undoubtedly the work of Roger, not a third party think tank or designer. This is his brainchild, and he is not a passenger on the bus. During rehearsals, longstanding band member Jon Carin called this show Waters' masterpiece.


There are fans of early Pink Floyd who have bowed out of seeing Roger this time around because he plays nothing from the first six albums. But when you see the overall production, you very quickly understand why. I love early Floyd as much as the next connoisseur, but it's the later material that best translates to this environment, and it's obviously the material most people know. The song selection is about 80% Floyd supplemented with a few tracks from his solo career. But even the less familiar pieces from recent years still resonated with the larger picture and helped create a cohesive piece—particularly "The Bravery of Being Out of Range," an overt commentary on world leaders who send others to fight their wars for them. This new and refreshing take of the Amused to Death track saw it transformed into a ballad, making for an even gloomier version for the lyrics to be front and centre.


Even though it is a Roger Waters show, he is not the star. The message is.


He debuted a new song for this tour called "The Bar." In his heartfelt banter prior to it he likened the room with about 19,000 friends to being like a bar, to create as much intimacy as possible amidst this monolithic production:


"This is not the bar that the drunks fucked off to at the beginning of the show. This is our bar. The bar in my fantasy world is a place where like-minded people can gather. Those of us who believe in truth and liberty and human rights. Where we can feel at home and exchange the love that we have in our hearts with one another."


But that levity was short-lived, as the continued plight of indigenous people in America was his next subject matter to tackle in "The Bar":


The girl who brought you in here is Lakota
From Standing Rock where they made their stand
So from 48's North Dakota here's a message for The Man
Would you kindly get the fuck off our land


It often seemed every second word on the screens and out of his mouth was "fuck," but however crass he may be, he's right about pretty well everything. And it only acted to endear him to the crowd, as we all swear, after all. In his case it adds that extra sense of urgency that otherwise wouldn't be as adequately expressed.


Roger's previous tour was heavily anti-Trump, but his current show is anything but partisan. The orange one was briefly shown once. Waters picked on everyone. He's doing God's work in showing how it isn't left vs. right—it's haves vs. have nots. He sees right through it all with laser precision. Bless him. Anyone and everyone who is part of the problem was in his crosshairs.


Throughout the proceedings Roger used his megaphone to highlight anything from income inequality to the hypocrisy of religion to war crimes (and the whistleblowers who expose them). The central theme of the show was "teach your children well," often reminding the viewer in one way or another to consider who is controlling the narrative of a particular issue at hand, and urging us to not get sucked into the vortex of ignorance compounded by the false sense of security that materialism claims to provide, especially now in this age of end stage capitalism we live in. His aim was to hammer home the (unfortunately still radical) idea that taking care of one another should not be seen as a political statement, but rather a humanitarian one.


For most people with their eyes already open it wasn't necessarily provocative, but nevertheless an extremely powerful experience of having a rock star being so finely attuned to the inequalities of the world, which was unthinkable decades ago. The young read about such issues daily on social media, so most of them don't need the education. But a fair portion of his core base of boomers absolutely do. Roger knows the power he carries.


The show continued with three tracks off Wish You Were Here. The one proper acknowledgement of Roger's previous life in Pink Floyd was a poignant segment dedicated to founding Floyd member Syd Barrett during the iconic title track (which David Gilmour was brushed from entirely). Sadly it seems the Live 8 reunion in 2005 was a small blip in the chronology, as their forty plus year old feud continues.




"Have a Cigar" was tuned down two steps to C-minor, making it sound even more sinister. Roger can still hit the high notes with authority, but not for two and a half hours. Some songs were detuned to preserve his voice, as the tour is over three months long. It didn't bother me in the least. Well over a decade into retirement age, it's amazing guys like him are doing this at all.


"Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)" was a welcome addition to the repertoire, having been absent for the last 20 years. It was performed with a surgeon's precision.


The first set ended with "Sheep" from the Animals album. A scathing take on people's passiveness to the calamities around them, it was made current by satirizing people who are attached to their Twitter accounts. It was especially effective during the scripture section, as those verses were displayed on the screens in a series of Tweets. This was one of many topical and extremely powerful moments of the evening.





Needless to say, his band and backing vocalists were spotless. During the jam at the end of the song, the band members lumped together and looked at one another with unbridled joy.




During intermission the trademark pig made its rounds, sporting not an inch of subtlety. Anything less would be off brand.



The second set began with a couple more pieces off The Wall, which paved the way for "Déjà Vu," one of his more recent compositions which was home to the next deeply moving segment of the show. Part way through the piece the words "human rights" appeared on the screens. The right side remained stationary while the left screen scrolled through "human," "equal," "refugee," "reproductive," "trans," and finally "Palestinian," each to rapturous applause.






It's probably the only thing Waters and Gilmour agree on these days.



If I had been God
With my staff and my rod
If I had been given the nod
I believe I could have done a better job


He does not mince words.


It takes a real man to say this.



"Is This the Life We Really Want?" is the title track of Waters' latest studio album released in 2017, showing he's still as lyrically sharp as he was in his youth:


The ants don't have enough IQ to differentiate between the pain that other people feel
And well, for instance, cutting leaves
Or crawling across windowsills in search of open treacle tins
So, like the ants, are we just dumb?
Is that why we don't feel or see?
Or are we all just numbed out on reality TV?
So, every time the curtain falls
Every time the curtain falls on some forgotten life
It is because we all stood by, silent and indifferent
It's normal


It's easy to get lost in the anger and frustration of the world on display if all you see is what's on the surface. But Waters smiled between songs far more than anything else. He is clearly a deeply caring, empathetic, and compassionate man, using his star power to do everything he can to make peace and justice a part of people's mental wallpaper. In less capable hands this show could have easily been sensory overload, but the pacing of the show was exquisite, designed to maximize mental and emotional impact in just the right doses.


The second set had a theme of humanizing individuals who have been victims of war, which continued into the Dark Side of the Moon section, which consisted of side two in its entirety. There is some overlap in the material Waters and Gilmour each cover from the Floyd canon in their shows, and in "Us and Them" they both use the same stock footage that they first used for their backdrop on tour in 1974—scenes of drone-like people mindlessly walking down the street in their work attire, at a reduced frame rate. But that's where the comparisons end. Gilmour's show is ethereal and soothing, while Roger's is visceral and challenging.


The stock footage then makes way for black and white images that were illuminated one by one—headshots of people who are ordinarily airbrushed out of the story as we become numb to war, but are instead each given their due. They slowly populate the screens into an eventual collage and cover it entirely, culminating in the transition into "Eclipse" where all the faces are suddenly replaced with a line of the triangular prisms from the iconic album artwork. The electrocardiographic heartbeat from the inside of the gatefold sleeve slowly comes to life one colour at a time, and all those faces soon progressively return as the song approaches its climax. It is performed as an extended version with the verse repeating a second time to double down on its impact. The lyrics of "Eclipse" encompass the range of possibilities in one's life, and juxtaposing these meaningful words with all of those faces and the image of a heartbeat so as to give a name to every one of them was deeply moving. If this spectacle did not reach any one of the 19,000 people on hand, I cannot possibly help them.




1983's The Final Cut was represented with "Two Suns in the Sunset," which Waters explained was about the Doomsday Clock counting down to nuclear Armageddon. It was set to 20 minutes before midnight when it was inaugurated in 1957, and it is now at 90 seconds. The video screen had evocative animations of nuclear war taking place.


A few extra verses of "The Bar" seamlessly blended into "Outside the Wall," where the band members were named on the screen as they prepared for their exit—something I've never before seen at a concert. After circling the stage Waters introduced them one at a time as they walked past him down the stairs. The last shot was of the entire ensemble just inside the corridor to the dressing room while finishing the song, and after Roger conducted the band to the final button, the lights went to black.




Within hours the videos were already being uploaded to YouTube, and as we know by now the comments section is where the cream of the crop of humanity tend to congregate:


"It's a concert for fuck's sake. Enjoy and shut up!!"


This completely misses the point. This isn't a concert. It is an event. And this isn't the kind of event that's merely "enjoyed." It's not throwaway conveyer belt product. It is art, and not all art meets that description. And this is one of those great works of art that transcends mere likes and dislikes to the realm of being interesting and transfixing. Some truths are meant to make us squirm a little in our seats.


"I go to concerts to be entertained and not have politics front and center. I get enough of that every day in the news. I do not need to go to a concert and have politics shoved in my face, whether it be left or right."


This is what Waters is up against—people who think musicians should be limited to providing mere entertainment, as if they are unqualified to do anything but play music.


A lot of Europeans scratch their heads at this breed of Americans and their culturally-driven desire for the media they consume to feel good, be passively enjoyed as a means of escapism, and require a happy ending. A Roger Waters concert is more like an bourgeois French film—a meticulously crafted thought-provoking piece designed to be purposely uncomfortable at times, and doesn't come to some kind of feel-good resolution, leaving the viewer in a completely different state from the one they walked in with. If they are able to return to their previous state with ease, then they probably weren't paying attention.


But to each their own. If people want a nostalgia show that doesn't make them think or feel much beyond "I remember when I lost my virginity to this song," go see the Eagles. Everyone wins.


The show took place on the day one of the three big telecom networks went down for the entire day, leaving roughly 1/3 of Canadians without internet access, many of whom scrambled to find Wi-Fi to open up their tickets on their phones. Waters was aware of this and held the show for an extra 15 minutes, resulting in it ending 15 minutes later than scheduled. The IATSE union representing the local crew members who help build and tear down the stage charges an overtime fee of $10,000 per minute, which means Waters coughed up $150,000 out of pocket to ensure as many people as possible didn't miss the first few songs. If this doesn't illustrate his character, I'm not sure what will.


Few artists come close to doing what Waters does, if any at all. It is fitting that the man who more or less invented the large-scale arena production remains a leader in his industry nearly 50 years later. Carin is right. This is his masterpiece. It was as if the combined presentation of his music and the imagery was the totality of his psyche, and he wants to share it with everyone while he still can.


Upon arriving home I bought a ticket for the second night. This is the first show that's ever made me want to be like a Deadhead and see every night of the tour. Even if it's the exact same show every night. It is that good, that effective, that uniting, and that edifying.


After this tour wraps up, it cannot and should not end there. This is a show that tribute bands need to put on for decades, the way The Musical Box does for Genesis. As long as the issues highlighted therein are unresolved, this work of art desperately needs to remain in public consciousness.


Amidst the mass exodus of happy concert-goers on Front Street, I overheard a fellow patron say "this is the closest I come to going to church."


I'm sure Waters shares that sentiment.


Saturday 19 February 2022

Dear society: Stop this insanity.


I just watched one of those Olympian profile spots. You know, the ones designed to be filler in between events, done with the best of intentions to tell the heartfelt stories of the athletes' journeys to the games. This particular one was a Canadian bobsledder speaking about her experience at the last Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, lamenting how she didn't medal in one of her events.



(AP Photo/Michael Sohn)


She solemnly and genuinely stated, I quote, "I felt like I'd let down my family, my friends, and my country."

I can't speak for your family and friends, but you didn't let me down because I hadn't even heard of you until twenty minutes ago.

This brand of well-meaning but ultimately misplaced patriotic language has always left me feeling a bit uneasy, not least because we now live in a world where we can ask an astronaut if they see borders on a space walk.

This is just the beginning of what deeply irked me about it. In fact, I've been irked about this kind of thing for half my life.


I remember watching the Salt Lake City games in 2002 when Canadian freestyle skier Jennifer Heil placed fourth. Many of the major newspapers the next day bore the headline "Oh, so close." Fair enough on first glance, not least because the distance between her fourth place finish and the podium was one one-hundredth of a point as deemed by the judges.



Fast-forward to the Vancouver games in 2010. On day two Heil won Canada's first medal in front of the hometown crowd. It was a silver. Guess what the headline from the major papers read?


"Oh, so close."


I wish I was joking.


Being second-best in the world at something is not good enough?


Even the official Freestyle Canada website reused the headline for this entry in their history of the sport.


Dear society:

Stop this insanity.


An article in the Edmonton Journal about Jennifer Heil addresses the many external pressures athletes face on the world stage. A kinesiology professor is interviewed, who suggests that "cluttering the mind with the expectations of others and the pressure that brings may not be an effective strategy. Own the Podium is about outcomes; own the moment is about process, which is the more effective pathway to success."

Wonderful. Sounds like a reasonable path to cherish the experience. But in the same article they also referred to Heil's second place finish as a defeat.

Are you kidding me? Being second-best is not even "close"—now it's a defeat?

Google the phrase "settled for silver" in quotes and you'll get about 325,000 results. Try "won silver" and you'll get 1.6 million. This means roughly one in five instances of speaking about being second-best in the world at something carries the implication of not being good enough.


Dear society:

Stop this insanity.


Tonight at the beginning of the bronze medal game in men's hockey, a commentator referred to it as "the game nobody wants to play in." Likewise, just before the bronze medal game in men's curling began, much of the chatter from the press box was about how this wasn't the game Canadian skip Brad Gushue was hoping to be participating in, treating the chance to be the third-best in the world at your chosen passion as a consolation match. They even went so far as to say it may not be a big deal for Gushue as he'd won Olympic gold before, barely stopping short of insisting the game should be taken lightly and played more for the two members of his team who'd never won an Olympic medal before.


No, no, NO.


Dear society:

Stop this insanity.


When someone is named high school valedictorian, they're treated like they've won an Olympic gold because they came in first place. This is obviously a marvellous achievement. But there are nearly 3,500 high schools in Canada, and each one has that top student. With 2.5 million students, that's about one in 700. And that's generous, as it's not even accounting for the sizeable portion of students without academic aspirations.

By contrast, there are an estimated 135 million skiers in the world. If you qualify amongst the top hundred or so in the world to be in the Olympics, you are literally one in a million. But if you finish in any position apart from number one, you're a failure.

And yet we wonder why athletes struggle with mental health issues?


Dear society:


Stop.

This.

Insanity.


It's fascinating that this kind of thinking exists concurrently with the "give every kid a participation trophy for having a pulse" mentality that permeates much of our society today. It's a bizarre dichotomy that effectively amounts to "if it's our kids (or the kids we're responsible for), let's make them feel great" existing alongside "if you're someone else's kid, you're dead to me unless you win."

From this humble soapbox, all I can ask as one tiny voice is that we seek a happy medium between these two extremes.

Perhaps we should rethink the language we use in individual sports. In team sports there are only two teams playing, whereby one team typically wins and the other loses. It makes sense in this context that winning and losing is framed in binary terms. But in individual sportsparticularly ones where dozens of athletes are racing against the clock, or especially relying on the input of judges who are prone to emotionally driven biases and various other forms of human errorit's not a clear cut winner/loser type situation. If whoever is in second place was "defeated," that means in an event with 50 competitors, 49 are considered defeated. But of course nobody actually says that, because everybody knows it's not true.

Going forward, let's try to remember that literally everyone who makes it to the Olympics is world class. Maybe it's time we steer the conversation in that direction and become more cognizant of this undeniable and remarkable fact while we pick apart the minutiae that separates the top 0.000001 and 0.000002 percentile of athletes. And maybe then we'll progress to a point where we won't have a 15-year-old girl having a complete meltdown on live TV because she was only the second-best in the world.


Dear society:

Stop this insanity.