It
was time to take our youngest daughter, Mackenzie (aka Mac) to
a real concert. In truth, it was to be her second concert. My
wife, Deb, and I took her with us to see Bob Dylan and Paul Simon
at the same venue a few years earlier.
Mac was only about 2 and-a-half
feet tall at the time. She was 4, maybe 5 years old. We got the
cheap lawn seats. She had a great time, dancing, pumping her
fist up in the air at the end of songs, cheering, applauding...
She loved it. Now she doesn't remember going at all. Could have
been the same year we took her to Disneyland. She doesn't remember
that, either.
The reason it was time to take
her to see a real band is that she thinks a concert is something
that happens at a mall, an actual band is optional, and lipsyncing
is perfectly acceptable. She might expect Hannah Montana (Billy
Ray Cyrus' daughter) to play guitar, but if she didn't, well
that would probably be okay, too, as long as she sings "Best
of Both Worlds".
Mac already plays violin and
piano, so I was thinking that if we took her to see Roger Waters
do Dark Side of the Moon, then maybe, just maybe, we could
raise the bar a little bit. I wanted her to see the difference
between watching interchangeable Disney clone singers and getting
a show. Besides, Pink Floyd is her big sister Rachel's
favorite band and Mac idolizes Rachel.
Having already seen David Gilmour's
version of Pink Floyd twice, it seemed like lawn seats would
be a perfectly awesome way for a 10-year-old to absorb the spectacle.
It is possible to be too close to the stage for Gilmore's show.
You'd simply miss too much going on behind and around you. It
was going to be on a school night, but Mac's always got good
grades, occasionally stays up too damn late and "Roger Waters
will take the stage at 7:30 p.m. sharp," said the LiveNation
advertisement. So I bought three tickets.
That was back in early August.
A few days later, Deb and Mac went to the Arizona Science Center.
When they came home, Mac brought me something in a gift bag,
saying, "Mom said you'll think this is really cool, but
I don't get it."
It was a winged pig. "They
had cows, too, but Mom said you'd want the pig. I STILL don't
get it."
I explained the phrase "When
pigs fly..." adding how people often act like sheep. Then
I showed her the cover of Animals and said, "When
Pink Floyd comes, pigs fly."
I put the pig on my desk, but
I didn't put batteries in it so it would actually fly (in a circle,
attached to a plastic line). I was going to wait until it would
mean the same thing to Mac as it already did for Deb and I. Then
it would be kinda special. For now, it was just a silly plastic
pig with wings.
The Show
By the time October 3 rolled
around, I was really looking forward to seeing this show. LiveNation
had sent a reminder about the "7:30 p.m. sharp" part.
Mac was still asking if she could take a book and a flashlight
in case she got bored. We were there in plenty of time, found
a decent spot and waited for the show.
I've always heard that Pink
Floyd without Roger Waters just isn't Pink Floyd. The purists
will say they've sucked ever since the day they stopped picking
Syd Barrett up for the gigs. I've heard it said that Gilmour
thinks Waters focuses too much on production and is too extravagant.
They're both out touring, both doing Dark Side of the Moon.
So I'm kind of hoping for a little competitive rivalry for the
best show.
As I sat waiting, it was painfully
obvious that this was not going to be better. For one thing,
they were missing about 3 tons of speaker cabinets and infrastructure,
not to mention the giant video screens.
Cricket Pavilion has a roof
of sorts for the reserved seats area, more to keep the sun out
and provide ceiling fans than protect from rain. The lawn area
fans out behind it, but the roof never seemed an obstacle before.
I should have realized that you can't put Pink Floyd there. I
figured they'd just work around it.
Waters had a couple of video
screens, one on either side of the stage. They were large, but
nowhere near the "giant" category. At every other show
I'd seen at Cricket Pavilion (even when it was Desert Sky Pavilion),
there had always been at least one large video screen at the
rear of the covering (away from the stage). The video screen
for the lawn seats was no longer there.
Roger Waters did not take the
stage promptly at 7:30. I wasn't wearing a watch, but there were
about 10 songs that played over the PA -- Neil Young, Elvis and,
for a brief moment, ABBA. After every one, the crowd would stand
up, thinking it must be time now. But it wasn't. Another song
would start, then they'd sit back down. And I'd remember it was
a school night.
By the time Waters actually
appeared, they had stopped sitting down between songs. He said
two or three words, and they started playing. From the first
note, the sound was positively underwhelming. It was thin and
weak. I don't remember for sure what they opened with, but I
heard "Have a Cigar", "Set the Controls for the
Heart of the Sun", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"
and "Wish You Were Here".
If I'd never heard or seen
Gilmour's live show, I might have accepted it. And I'm recalling
that Gilmour thinks Waters is too extravagant. Really? I think
someone's been putting you on, David. Roger Waters led a very
good Pink Floyd tribute band at a mid-sized outdoor amphitheatre.
The five songs we listened to were accurate reproductions of
radio versions of Pink Floyd songs.
Sorry to all the die-hard Roger
Waters fans, but this was Pink Floyd Lite, compressed into a
shoebox. Maybe you've seen a different show, maybe in a bigger
place. As far I can see, David Gilmour owns Pink Floyd
and not in any legal sort of sense. When somebody else sings
a Pink Floyd song, it's somebody else singing a Pink Floyd song.
When Gilmour sings them, it's Pink Floyd. Waters' guitarist copied
Gilmour, but it just wasn't Gilmour.
Pink Floyd is huge. It's a
monster, a spectacle. It sweeps over you like a giant wave. It's
louder than God, crisp and clean, you can feel it in your bones.
And there's constantly something going on that dwarfs the people
on the stage, with parts of this activity occasionally crashing
into the stage and blowing up. That's what I wanted my kid to
see. A huge show.
She got to see a guy on TV,
some sparklers, some animation. Kind of. Mostly she saw a lot
of people's butts because, after 5 songs, the crowd did not sit
down. I've never seen the entire audience refuse to sit down.
I'm over 6'-1" and so it's not really a problem,
but alas, poor Mac is only about 4'-2".
"Just hang on and these
people will sit down. They always do this."
During "Set the Controls..."
Deb and Mac start moving around in search of a temporary spot
to hang out in so Mac could see, oh anything, until people sat
down. I guarded our space.
"Shine On You Crazy Diamond"
was a sing-along. Everyone was still standing, but now they were
singing, too. This was only bothersome because they were louder
than the PA. By the time they got through the intro to "Wish
You Were Here," it became evident that the PA was barely
covering the crowd conversation level.
Before the song was over, Deb
came over and said, "Let's go. It's not worth it."
Mac never got to see the flying
pig. It was a school night, after all. And Pink Floyd hadn't
actually come to town anyway. If it had, it would have been big
enough and loud enough that there would have been plenty to see,
even from the four-foot level, even if the audience was so entirely
rude to never sit down. And it wouldn't have mattered how loud
the people in the audience were singing or talking because you
would still hear the PA unless they intentionally brought
the level down low enough to allow participation. You certainly
wouldn't hear people 10 feet away talking to each other during
the middle of a song.
The major disappointment of
the evening was not Roger Water's failure to put on a show unable
to meet my standards of excellence on this particular evening
and the impact of any future debate on the topic of Waters vs.
Gilmour. I've seen many a rock star become a mere mortal.
No, the thing that really bothered
me about this show was the audience, which was comprised of far
too many middle-aged white people, not enough college-age people,
with limited dance skills overall. Everyone was trying to be
louder than the show they spent $50 a ticket to see. And succeeding.
Roger Waters was just the stereo for the giant karaoke party.
The crowd came to hear themselves sing.
Maybe they were really drunk
at the time. It certainly wasn't right.
