ROGER WATERS - THE WALL LIVE
Bercy - Paris, France
May 31 2011

This was the end of the late-may concert marathon, wiith 4 legendary concerts in four days: Iron Maiden, Rush in Frankfurt, and Roger Waters in Paris two nights in a row!

This time I had a seating ticket and watched the show from the right side.

As this is a very visual tour and I'm attending several dates, this one will be a special track by track review following the setlist.... but only from the first part of the show!

It all started with some military folks holding a puppet of Pink, the main character of The Wall.
They let him fall down and the show starts with In The Flesh?.

There were fireworks, hammer flags are projected on the sides of the wall, and a platform rises with 8 soldiers holding the flag.

By the end of the song there is a huge roar of a plane. Suddenly, a World War I airplane comes down the roof and crashes into the wall.
This is the plane that dropped the bomb that killed Pink's father.

The next song is The Thin Ice, where several portraits of fallen paople appear in the wall... the first one being the one of Roger Water's father himself, who fell during World War II.

This is followed by Another Brick In The Wall Part 1, where the face of a child, probably from the Middle East, is shown on the central circle screen.

The next tune was one of the hightlights of the show: The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, where we felt a helicopter roar while a light spot was pointing the audience.

Then came Another Brick In The Wall Part II, during which a huge puppet of the schoolmaster appears on the right side of the stage.

On the central corcle screen, there is a wall with a fence with the inscription "I Believe".

For the second verse, several kids from different origins get on stage to sing the words while dancing. They all wear the same black shirt which reads "Fear Builds Walls".

Mother was the next song, and Roger said they were going to try a time travel experiment: The central circle screen was projecting video footage from Waters performing the song in London 30 years earlier with Pink Floyd.

The aim was to match it exactly, with the same tempo, and he did it great. It was strange to see Roger Waters performing the same song, with a difference of 30 years, at the same time...

During this song there was also the puppet of the mother. During the solo there was a projection of a security camera watching us all... and at the and an inscription on the wall readed Big Brother is watching You... except that that the Br was crossed off and replaced with an M... so it's Big Mother that was watching you!

That wasn't all, during the line "Mother Should I Trust The Government", two inscrptions appeared on the wall:

On the left side one could read "Jamais de la vie", and on the right side "No Fu**ing way"

Goodbye Blue Sky came next and the projections on the wall showed B-52 airplane bombers throwing some special kind of bombs:
- religious signs such as Latin crosses, star and crescents and Stars of David
- Political signs like the hammer and sickles
- dollar signs
- Corporation signs: the Shell logo, the Mercedes-Benz logo.... plus some discrete McDonalds logos only shown on the sides of the wall.

During Empty Spaces a well known animated sequence was shown, during which two loving flowers began to fight, and one becames an evil bird eating the other.

During What Shall We Do Now a sequence of the movie was projected. Especially impressive was Pink's face was screaming out of the wall.

The romantic meeting of Pink starts with Young Lust, where stripper girls are shown on the almost completed wall.
Roger sings One Of My Turns alone in front of the wall, while images from the girl at Pink's appartment are shown.

After their fight, there's Don't Leave Me Now: on the left side there's the face of the girl, who starts to cry green tears. Then she appears as a praying mantis puppet on the right side.

Excerpts from French TV are shown on the wall, with a guy taking about inflatable dools made in France... This sequence was shown on the whole tour, not only at the Paris gigs!

Pink hits the screen and breaks the TV, as we get into Another Brick In The Wall Part III.

The wall becomes red during The Last Few Bricks, while some images of people are projected on reorganized bricks.

Only one brick is left to complete the wall. Roger Waters sings Goodbye Cruel World from this space... to be filled by a brick as soon as the song ends!

There was a 20 minute intermission during which faces of fallen loved ones, people killed in different wars around the world, were shown.

OK, I have only written about the first part of the concert. There's still half of the show left, you'll know about it after the next Roger Waters concert in Paris, in late June.
Don't be mad at me, but this review is already quite long.
Anyway, if you live in Europe it's still time to see the show by yourself, as Roger Waters is currentlyon tour.
You can't be disapointed!

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Setlist Roger Waters – Bercy - Paris, France – May 31 2011

Roger Waters Links:

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