PINK FLOYD -- ROGER WATERS CONCERT, TACOMA 2017

An Experience Beyond Time

My father called me up some time in May of 2017 and animatedly told me that he purchased tickets for my two younger brothers, my stepmother, my girlfriend, and myself. The tickets at hand had been purchased for the Roger Waters US & THEM tour. Roger Waters was the lead of Pink Floyd, which reigned at the top of the genre of classic rock and overall charts for decades: spanning from the 60s clear to the late 80s and so forth. The most notable members of the band over those years were: Syd Barrett, David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Roger Waters. Due to creative differences around the year of 1985, Roger left the band and the rest of the zany bunch went on to preform under the name of Pink Floyd. A couple others in the band dropped out as well in the following months and years. Gilmour continued on with the name of Pink Floyd creating new material. While Roger went on to preform as Roger and continue on preforming songs from The Hay Days. Roger has, and assumedly will always be, seen as the real mover and creator behind the music. This is the case, because the albums where he had his most influence are some of the most sold albums of all time, Dark Side of The Moon and The Wall. Pink Floyd is most notable for their weird sonic combinations, metaphorical meanings, ballad like songs, and an impactful, resonating sound.

I grew up listening to the packed lyrics, deep guitar, and odd sounds of Pink Floyd almost every day driving with my father, going to his separate projects and jobs he had. My father grew up in some sort of way listening to Pink Floyd as a young man as well, and I know that they shaped him and inspired him throughout the years how they often times have for me. Between my father, my brothers, and myself there seemed to be a magnificent proliferation and credit to Pink Floyd’s music. Passing time like it has been nothing.

Due to current and ever dazzling political tensions running like wild fire, as well as Roger being a starch political junkie himself, there was a great and colossal display of themes and metaphors in the form of images and video throughout the entirety of the performance. It all ran like a fine tuned machine from massive projections behind the stage as well as a multi-display drop down screen hanging from the dusty rafters. All of the screens were beaming neon images of silly political leaders, expletives, and opinions. About a quarter way through the performance Roger brought local Tacoma and Seattle children on stage wearing “RESIST” t-shirts screaming at the top of their lungs that they didn’t need no education. It was gorgeous, blunt, and hypnotic.

The archaic cedar planked, aggressively steep stair cased Tacoma Dome somehow clashed with the seemingly everlasting age of Roger as well as the supposed time capsule of his music. Just as the clanking, disruptive intro of “Money” started a black, blow-up piggy bank softly fluttered throughout the lower levels of the dome. Eventually, Roger’s images would always gradually morph into different forms of currency, gold and generally green.

I couldn’t help but think about the massive brainpower that must have gone into the show. What planning and collecting and creating of images, photographs, sounds, dreams, conceptions, and most of all: people. Not only the chanting children but also the newly enlisted and I assume promising young artists that backed Roger up and helped him hit the higher notes that he simply was physically incapable of making.

He didn’t close with Shine On You Crazy Diamond, unfortunately, but he did close with another great guitar solo: Comfortably Numb. It made me want to jump up and down the sheer cliff like staircases of the dome. I looked over at my brothers with a clenched fist, which was the only display of emotion and bodily movement I could harness in the desperate time.

Leaving the venue we grabbed our t-shirts and exited with wide eyes and warped minds. It was all a decent Armageddon out into the gentle late night with a soft summer breeze dancing between the droves of zombies exiting the near sensory overload. There were a lot of “wows”, and minor disputes about Roger’s platform on the basis of hypocrisy, which there always tends to be. I give a guy like Roger a pass on just about everything. I do this mostly because he’s an artist and if the cost of projecting worthwhile, resounding messages results in another hypocritical, perhaps delusional old rock star -- then so be it.

The cover of the t-shirt displayed hands reaching towards each other redolent of God and man and the Sistine Chapel. In the backdrop there was the smoke stakes in blazon bright red and blue aligning with the cover of the underrated Pink Floyd album, Animals. North American tour dates were drenched on the back, displaying a rigorous schedule and the reaffirmation that Roger is in a race against the dismal image of age. I couldn’t help but think that this was going to be the farewell tour, but perhaps that’s selfish. I hope not, but the notion cannot be ignored. In some sense I can’t believe Roger doesn’t just throw up his arms and sulk away into some bright, shiny place forgetting about the world he is so inspiringly angered by, although the tours and the music do pay. Thankfully, the classic music of Pink Floyd is as transcendent as it is and for better or worse it is sickeningly ironic that it has to be.