And all that is now

And all that is gone

And all that’s to come

And everything under the sun is in tune

But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

I’ve seen Roger Waters’ The Wall tour when it came to the Vienna stadium five years ago, and it was one of the most visually impressive shows I’d ever seen, so when I found out he was coming back with his new Us+Them tour, on which he was playing a lot more songs from the Pink Floyd back catalog, I knew I had to be there. It was at the sold out Wiener Stadthalle this time, and I got the best “cheap” seat that I could get (still 90€, mind) – an aisle seat, slightly to the right rather than central, because I knew how the visuals would be set up in the second part of the show. I’ve been to this venue more times than I can count, but I’ve never sat in this particular area before, and couldn’t help but think it looked pretty damn cool, so I took a panorama picture:

What you can see on the screen was a video that started promptly at 8PM (he had no support act), which lasted 20 (!) minutes, while the last few late-comers were finding their seats. It was just a shot of a female refugee sitting on a sand dune looking over the desert with bird sounds on top of it, and eventually some chanting and vocalization, before the sky started turning red and the visual imploded in on itself and turned into moving meteorites in space as the band got on stage to a pre-recorded Speak to Me, before launching into Breathe. It’s one of my absolute favorite songs, opening one of the greatest albums ever, and I was very glad that Jonathan Wilson (the “resident hippie” of the band, according to Roger) sang on it exclusively; he sang the David Gilmour parts for the better part of the show, thankfully. Roger may have been the conceptual leader and lyricist, but he was certainly not the best vocalist in Pink Floyd.

Breathe segued right into One of These Days off Meddle, a mostly instrumental track, except for one spoken line (“One of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces…“). The visual of a hallway in an abandoned building paired with flashing lights went really well with the threatening nature of the song, before changing to more mundane shots of supermarket aisles, backyards, and people’s faces after the spoken line, getting increasingly over-saturated. I really enjoyed watching the band jam, and thought it actually replaced On the Run as a follow-up really well! This song also segued into the next one immediately – a lightning strike and sound of thunder, and then a single spinning clock in the sky turned into hundreds – Time! Images of the band’s instruments were put over the clocks, it looked super cool, and it was the first song Roger actually sang on. As on The Dark Side of the Moon, Time went straight into The Great Gig in the Sky, with visuals of deep space already being put up as the last notes of the reprise of Breathe ticked out. Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessing of the indie pop band Lucius were the back-up singers who stepped up for the wailing; they wore matching platinum blonde bobs and did a really great job at a tough song. I’m just too used to the improvised and slightly rough album take for the differences to not be glaring to my ears, but I appreciate that they did their own thing with it rather than trying to recreate it. Welcome to the Machine was next, and it was a highlight for me – the visuals were really creepy and featured a weird white monster, decapitations, a severed head melting down to the bone, and a sea of blood which turned into red outstretched hands at one point.

Three back-to-back songs off Roger’s new solo album Is This the Life We Really Want? were next, and a lot of people chose to go to the loo or gets drinks at this point… let’s face it, we were all there for Pink Floyd. Deja Vú featured mostly videos of military air strikes, while the The Last Refugee visuals were centered around the same woman we’d seen on the opening desert montage video, with the images switching between her dancing in an abandoned building, and her dancing all beautifully made up in her past life, as well as heartbreaking flashbacks to her child (it’s implied it drowned in the ocean). Finally, he played Picture That, my favorite of the three, and the most reminiscent of a Pink Floyd song. I expected the first Trump images to be projected on the line “picture a leader with no fucking brains“, but instead it happened a few lines later, when he sang “wish you were here in Guantanamo Bay“. Damn, Roger.

Wish You Were Here was next. The video was beautiful – two hands reaching towards each other before disintegrating in a million pieces towards the end. The crowd loved it… but I’ve seen David Gilmour sing this song, as it was meant to be, and was moved to tears by the sheer emotion he put into it. This one, sung by Roger (not the backing vocalist who did the David parts on the other songs)… not even close. Sometimes I really think he needs the over-the-top impressive live show to distract from the fact that he’s just not a very good singer; the backing vocalists carried him through this one, in truth.

A The Wall triplet was next, starting with a spotlight searching the crowd in the dark and Roger pointing at someone in the audience screaming the teacher’s part. I caught the rest of it on camera to send to my dad, who’s responsible for my love of Pink Floyd, and because after all these years, I’m still a sucker for Another Brick in the Wall. He always gets local children to sing the choir, and I believe I liked this performance better than at the The Wall show. They stood still on Roger’s sides with black hoods over their faces until it was their turn to sing.

This closed the first set – before walking off, Roger thanked the kids and told us that they’d learned their part at 5PM that day, that he thought they did a fantastic job, and that we’d now have a twenty minute break to “reflect on the subject of resistance”.

I decided to brave the lines at the loo, and to my surprise and delight there was a huge queue at the gents’, while I could walk straight into the ladies’ with no wait at all. That’s never happened in my life, so I just had to mention it. The perks of being a woman who likes prog rock, I guess. They steadily projected political messages throughout the entire interval though, and I missed some of them because of it.

One I really liked said “Protest is the immune system of society. The poster bearers are the white blood cells. Cancer cells are dressed in black, wear body armor, carry assault rifles, and point them at you. They are a symptom that society is sick.“, but there were many more, a lot shorter and catchier for the most part, pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is close to Roger’s heart, but not only, as you can see from the other examples. I admit that I used to think (especially after seeing The Wall), that he had a way of expressing his views (which I can mostly get behind) in a way that however dances dangerously close to crossing the line into antisemitism. To be perfectly honest, he always struck me as a bit of an asshole, also for how he left the band? Someone I could agree with, politically, but who had a really patronizing and antagonistic way of sharing his views. I feel like he’s really taken criticism to heart in the past few years though, and mellowed out a little when it comes to that – he seems more compassionate and less angry when he speaks of it, and I was very glad of the change. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

Then everything went dark, and the visually incredible half of the show began. If you look at the previous pictures, you’ll see a rig on the ceiling, in the middle of the room, at a 90 degree angle to the stage. There were sirens, and four black boxes as well as the bottom frame started lowering with flashing lights, and the Battersea Power station from the Animals album cover was recreated in the room, running the entire length of the stalls – including the floating pig! It looked absolutely incredible, and the unveiling was so well done. Unfortunately I was “spoiled” and knew this would happen, but it was super impressive to see how it was set up, and I heard people around me audibly gasp. Dogs opened the second set, and during the instrumental interlude, about half the people on stage put on pig masks and set down at a table, with Roger pouring out champagne. He toasted the audience holding up a sign that said “PIGS RUN THE WORLD”, then he ripped his pig mask off and held up a new one that said “FUCK THE PIGS”. I thought the champagne bit was a little over the top, but I admit that I loved the signs, and also the messages projected onto the sides during the last verse – I couldn’t read them all as the angle was a bit too tight, but I was under the impression that they (or most of them) were quotes (by both the officers and the victims) from incidents of police brutality.

My favorite song off Animals was next – Pigs (Three Different Ones), and it was a Trump drag of epic proportions. I was honestly flabbergasted by the balls on this man – if in an alternate universe some nut had assassinated him on the US leg of this tour because of it, I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised. It started off easy enough, with Warhol-like images of Trump with “CHARADE” written over his face… but over the course of the song he was shown with make-up on, vomiting, on a pig’s body, holding a huge dildo, on a baby’s body, with a KKK-hood on, on Hitler’s body while doing the Nazi salute, driving a tiny clown car, on a toddler’s body being held up by Putin, and naked with a tiny cock. Actual quotes and tweets were shows at the end of it (my favorite moment was how “I’ve always had a great relationship with the Blacks” was followed by “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?“, and then “TRUMP IS A PIG” in huge letters across the entire length of the screens. Meanwhile, a giant, drone-controlled inflatable pig was flying around the venue, with “piggy bank of war” and “bombs and death come out of here“, with an arrow pointing to its asshole written on one side, and Trump’s face with dollar signs over his eyes and a speech bubble saying “I won!” and “Welcome to the Machine” on the other. The song is over 40 years old, and it’s almost a laugh but really a cry how well it fits. Hands down the highlight of the night!

Money was next, and the original soundbite in the beginning was replaced by Trump saying “I won” over and over, but he went for everyone on this song: Putin, May, Johnson, as well as other politicians, juxtaposing images of them smiling and waving with ones of the poor. I also thought it was really cool how the screens “danced” during the saxophone and guitar solos. Us and Them, the tour’s namesake, followed – the visuals were a lot less flashy than for everything else so far, but really powerful – images of war, bombings, and police violence were juxtaposed with montages of the people affected and peaceful protesters. Black Lives Matter and the immigration ban protests were prominently featured, before the screens across the venue were drawn back at the end of this song.

The fourth and last of his new solo songs was played, Smell the Roses, and I don’t have an awful lot to say about it or the visuals used – just that Roger didn’t play an instrument on it; I believe this was the only song of the night for which that was the case. The set then closed out with Brain Damage and Eclipse – I have to give props to the two backing ladies again, their vocalization gave me chills. During Eclipse, a beautiful prism of white lasers was made over the first dozen rows or so, and rainbow colored lights from the stage were added for the climax – it was gorgeous!!

The first song of the encore was an acoustic version of Mother, which also felt eerily relevant. He preceded it by introducing the band, and with a long and passionate speech (here’s a small snippet of it) about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the whole US embassy in Jerusalem fiasco that claimed 52 lives had just happened two days before, and I believe this was the first show he played since it happened). The show ended with a goosebump-inducing and all-around great performance of Comfortably Numb, a personal favorite (isn’t it everyone’s?). Dave Kilminster absolutely killed the solos, as he did all others tonight – I knew he wasn’t available to tour with Steven Wilson this time around because he was busy with Roger, what a singular talent! I loved that the show ended on this colorful spectacle, and that we were showered with confetti reading “RESIST!”.

Overall, I’m having a really hard time deciding whether I liked this one or The Wall better – they were so different, and it appears that he truly ups the bar as far as visual effects go every time. I could’ve done without his solo songs, but I appreciated the more eclectic choice of Pink Floyd back catalog, especially the songs off Animals, which I hadn’t heard him or David Gilmour do live yet. Then again, The Wall felt more cohesive, but being a tour of just one (concept) album, that goes without saying. I liked Roger more this time around, so I think Us+Them would ultimately win out! Given his age, it’s not a certainty that he’ll go on the road with another big production again, but if he does, I’ll be there, and if not, I’ll treasure the ones I’ve seen, and be forever jealous of people like my parents, who got to experience the original Pink Floyd line-up live.

Setlist » F i r s t S e t «

Speak to Me (pre-recorded) / Breathe

One of These Days

Time / Breathe (Reprise)

The Great Gig in the Sky

Welcome to the Machine

Déjá Vu

The Last Refugee

Picture That

Wish You Were Here

The Happiest Days of Our Lives

Another Brick in the Wall Part 2

Another Brick in the Wall Part 3 » S e c o n d S e t «

Dogs

Pigs (Three Different Ones)

Money

Us And Them

Smell the Roses

Brain Damage

Eclipse » E n c o r e «

Mother

Comfortably Numb