Look at that well timed camera phone pic on the left. That was a ROTATING LASER PRISM reflecting a ROTATING LASER RAINBOW!!!!!Wednesday was the second time Heidi and I saw the same Roger Waters show at MSG. The first time last September we got Nick Mason as guest drummer on Dark Side of the Moon (played in its entirety) and harlem ghetto children singing on Another Brick in the Wall wearing oversized white shirts that said "FEAR BUILDS WALLS" in Frankie Goes to Hollywood bold type.
But there was something missing. Something that really upset me. There were no lasers! Are lasers simply out of vogue I mused? Was there a discovered health risk? Originally this post was going to be a long tirade on the death of the laser. Then during Brain Damage/Eclipse that beautiful laser prism emerged and by the end of the song was bathing us every rotation in rainbow laser light. It was breathtaking!
God save the lasers! The rest of the show was pretty unaltered. There was an amazing "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" where the video screens showed vintage footage of the original Floyd lineup. "Shine on you Crazy Diamond" was note for note accurate with a beautiful haunting image of Syd Barrett on the screens.
He still did that stupid fucking borderline anti-semitic "Leaving Beirut" tune. The major conceit of the song is because in 1961 a Lebanese family took him in and treated him well we are all ignorant for going to war and not letting Palestinians have Israel. It is very naively written and the lyrics are astonishingly literal. If this is not bad enough the video screens have the lyrics put up in big comic book style voice bubbles. Now the effect was VERY cool out of context, but since it was all about letting us see his pointed remarks against Tony Blair and GWB it lost a lot of its cool real quick. The worst part was his stupid simplistic attitudes and accusations regarding foreign policy made my lefty anti-war ass start to feel jingoistic. I was all like "no, fuck you Waters! We gotta bomb them back to the stone age!" I don't think that is the sentiment he was trying to stir.....
But still overall great show. I would probably spend another 100 bucks to see it a third time (although if he wanted to do an Animals show the next go round I wouldn't complain).
