Sunday 18 May 2008

roger waters, you
political animal.
but pig, dog or sheep?

The Ugly One and I, after a lazy day watching ‘Holby Blue’ and ‘Days of Our Lives’, hied it off to North Greenwich to see Roger Waters at the O2, performing ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ Live.
the programmes were £15.00. I was shocked!
Obviously, DSOTM is not a particularly long album, so the first half of the show was taken up with a tribute to the late and great Sid Barrett. (I have to confess I had no idea he was late at all until the UO told me died a few years ago.)
Waters has always been a bit of a political animal. ‘Animals’ and ‘The Wall’ in fact, are albums packed with social comment and criticism, something of which I heartily approve, although sometimes Waters does tend to over-egg the political pudding. He told the audience the story of the time, at the age of seventeen in 1961, when he was stranded in Lebanon and taken in by a one-legged man, his hunchbacked wife and their disabled baby. He has never, it seems, forgotten this kindness and wrote a song about the time and the current situation in the Middle East, and whether he would find these people if he went back and make amends. Being a cynical bugger, I’m wondering if he’s ever tried to find them in the last forty-seven years, or whether he just didn’t have the time to go and look.
‘Fifteen pounds for a programme,’ I said to the Ugly One. ‘I hope the money’s going to Hunchbacks in Lebanon.’
However, Waters certainly puts on a spectacle. It was a brilliant show, combining excellent music with visuals, lasers, floating astronauts and flying pigs. Certainly, it was one of the best concerts I have attended in the last few years.
No. I didn’t buy a programme.