The Wall In Charlotte

This is “CBG 21st Century Master Video Series Vol.12”.

I have a lot of favorite bands that I love (Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Van Halen, Kiss, Aerosmith, Rush, Queen, Maiden, U2, to name a very few) or singers (not to mention their bands) that I love (Freddie Mercury, Rob Halford, Robert Plant, Ronnie James Dio, Bruce Dickinson, Pat Benatar to name a very few), but there is one artist that really sums up the singer, songwriter, band, innovation, incredible feeling that results from his creativity and that is Roger Waters. For me, he always pushes the creative envelope in the design of his shows and relates to life and the world around you with his presentation. I was too young to go see the Wall show in 1980 in concert at Nassau Coliseum, heck, none of us had drivers licenses, so I always regretted not being able to experience that show back then when the album came out. I remember in 9th grade having an English class totally dedicated to an open discussion on the underlying themes of The Wall and specifically ‘We Don’t Need No Education’. The Teacher actually dropped his lesson for the day and agreed to open the floor to a wide open discussion that seemed to involve everyone in the class. Yes, there were a few that really spoke up, but a lot of my classmates were also expressing some form of opinion about what it all meant.

I didn’t realize at the time that I was one of the lucky ones to have the show come to the Nassau Coliseum. It was only 3 hours away drive. But that seemed like it was in California for how much we ventured out at that time. Parents would drive to NYC, not us alone. So I didn’t make it to one of the 5 shows. But we had a lot of ‘bridge’ parties dedicated to playing that 8 track tape or cassette (we used to sneak under a bridge that crossed the Hudson river and bring cars down there and have big bonfire parties for the neighborhood). So after several very cool tour productions (84, 87, 99,00,01,02, 06, 07, 08), Roger hit the road a little over 30 years after the original production with The Wall show circa 21st Century technology.

I was able to catch a few of these shows. The last one I went to was in Charlotte, NC just before the end of the 2012 leg of the tour. For me, it was cool to see that the show changed slightly with the inclusion of The Ballad for Jean Charles de Menezes at the end of Another Brick Pt.2. It was a show you had to see in person. I was lucky to catch it in arenas, somewhat more intimate than stadium shows. The part I was most happy about was learning that a friend ran an IEM of Roger’s feed and captured it beautifully in complete ‘soundboardish’ form. How lucky did I feel that the show I filmed now had an accompanying IEM audio to use for the DVD/Blu-ray production. I sent an audio and the IEM to DigitalDan to matrix and then create both 2 channel and a 5.1 surround sound mix. Both of these audios mixes will be placed on the DVD/Blu-ray productions.

After last week's release of the KAOS tour in Montreal, 28 years ago, and being the 4th show I filmed back then, I thought this week's release here of The Wall Live in Charlotte 2012 would be a fitting bookend to where I am (and technology is) today. What a fun ride. Many great shows. And incarnations of various bands. Now I need to fill in all the bricks in between! So for all of our viewing & listening pleasure, I give you Roger Waters performing The Wall Live one more time in Charlotte! CBG5150 Posted to DIME 2015-08-22.

Dodano:  30.12.2019