Roger Waters - 06/07/18 - Hyde Park

Roger Waters knows how to put on a concert. Massive screens, inflatables, lasers and most importantly: incredibly loud yet crystal-clear sound.
We were a little later than planned and walked through the gates as the Waters walked onto the stage. To the strains of ‘Speak To Me’ we ran to the loos. During ‘Breathe’ we picked up some t-shirts. Then for the rest of side one from ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ we searched for a decent pint of beer. Eventually I found something, hidden away in the unfashionable arm of the western part of the site I got a drink that was almost, but not quite totally unlike lager for the outrageous sum of £6.50. That’s one way to stay sober for the evening.
We stomped back to the front and the gold circle area in time for ‘Welcome to The Machine’ , eventually finding a spot near one of the sound towers. The sound was phenomenal – surrounds-sound effects mixed with instruments so clearly defined you could hear every note, despite the gargantuan scale of the equipment.
This great gig which was mainly Pink Floyd material, with the choice songs from the new album mixed in. The videos were stunning – I’ve never seen screens that big at a concert. For the first half they were much like the standard Floyd visuals – mainly abstract with some animations, interspersed with political slogans.
The band shifted into ‘The Wall’ mode and for ‘Another Brick in the Wall part 2’ a line of kids came onto the stage. Dressed in orange boiler suits and with black bags over their heads it was a disturbing and powerful sight. The bags came off for the chorus and then the boiler suits were ripped off so they could dance. While most of the kids were plainly stage-struck in front of umpteen thousand people in the audience, a couple of them were totally into it and danced up a storm.
Thus ended the first half and in the break we were treated to a lecture by slogan.
Standing chatting we began to hear dogs barking. It took a moment to realise that this was the sound system bringing us back for ‘Dogs’, which was far more angry than ever before, and ‘Pigs’ featuring a succession of satirical images of Donald Trump. In front of Janet and I, a lady audience member was not impressed. She looked away from the images in disgust, obviously looking for someone who shared her view. She didn’t seem to find anyone.
The tour is billed as ‘Us and Them’ and was more politically charged than anything I’ve seen since Prophets of Rage. There isn’t enough anger in art these days and to find the biggest protest (in every sense) coming from a musician who went his own way thirty years ago, says nothing good about the current music industry.
Of course, they ended with ‘Brain Damage’/’Eclipse’. Of course, the encore was ‘Comfortably Numb’. But that’s not a complaint – to end on such cathartic music whose subject matter is the inability to cope with modern life was the only way to end a concert that had us talking politics all weekend.
That’s art, that is.