ROGER WATERS
'' THE WALL LIVE ''
Friday, July 8th 2011
Saturday, July 9th 2011
Tuesday, July 12th 2011
Basketball Arena – Athens Olympic Stadium (O.A.K.A.)
tickets here !
It kicked off last September, from Toronto, Canada, made a number of stops at major cities in North America and now is in Europe!
On Friday, July 8th, the legendary Wall will be built, brick by brick, inside the Basketball Arena of the Athens Olympic Stadium (O.A.K.A.), to be knocked over the same day, during the show, in a spectacle that has been hailed from international media, as epic.
The international tour of “The Wall Live”, created and designed by Roger Waters, celebrates the 30th anniversary of the seminal multi-platinum Pink Floyd album, and seems like it will be Waters’ “swan song”, following the extensive “The Dark Side of the Moon” tour (that took place between years 2007 and 2008 – In Greece the venue was TerraVibe Park).
"I started to think that maybe there is something in the story of 'The Wall,' which is about this one guy...that could be seen as an allegory for the way nations behave towards one another, or religions behave towards one another," Waters, who last toured to play "The Dark Side of the Moon" in 2007-08, tells Billboard.com. "In other words, could the piece be developed to describe a broader, more universal condition than we did in 1980 and I did in 1990 in Berlin?
"So I started to think about it more and more, and I suddenly had a few more ideas and I thought, 'Maybe if we did this with this song and that with that song, we could achieve that.' And so I started jotting a few things down on paper, and eventually I said, 'Y'know what? I'm gonna do this...' "
The Wall show has only been performed 31 times in the past (in a very limited number of cities in the United States and Europe). It was also documenter aurally on "Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81," which was released in 2000. The current THE WALL LIVE tour has already played 56 dates in North America and has now moved on to Europe for another 62 dates, as of March. Waters has expressed his wish to take the show to other territories, including South America.
Waters' "The Wall" is a theatrical opus like Pink Floyd's performances in 1980 and Waters' all-star presentation to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall in July 1990. The center piece is an actual wall -- 240 feet wide and 35 feet tall -- that's constructed during the first half of the show and knocked over towards the end. The shows also feature Gerald Scarfe-designed puppets that "will articulate more than they did in the last show," according to Waters, as well as extensive projections and other special effects.
"The engineering and technology has gotten better, especially the projection techniques," Waters notes. "We can make a very bright image across the width of the arena, which we couldn't do before."
On the musical end, Waters says this version of "The Wall" is closer to the Pink Floyd performances than to the 1990 exposition at Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, which had to be arranged to accommodate his special guests. "Because it's so visual, it means playing to clicks a lot," Waters explains. "I personally don't mind that. I'm happy to sacrifice the freedom of guitar players flailing about, doing anything they want, on the altar of creating a show that moves people and that's political and so on. It's a piece of theater, so it has to be controlled... The lighting and the visual content has to be in sync with the music that we're making. That doesn't worry me at all."
Despite the more "universal" focus of the piece, Waters hadn’t anticipated changing "The Wall's" songs very much, according to the initial press release for the tour, released last year. And he was confident the work would hold up as well now as it did when it was released in November of 1979.
"I thought it was a great piece of work," Waters says of "The Wall," which spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and has been certified 23-times platinum. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording -- Non-Classical. "I was a bit surprised it was so successful, but I was really proud of it. I was proud of everything we did on it. It was ridiculously successful."
When the tour was announced, Waters hadn't yet thought about filming or recording during the tour but he said: "it's very unlikely we won't film it at some point." That is now confirmed and, as a matter of fact, in a way that honours Athens and Greece: The show chosen for that purpose is officially the 8th of July performance of “The Wall Live”, at the Basketball Arena (O.A.K.A.)!
At an interview especially made for Greek media, Roger Waters explains the reasons behind this choice:
1. The great venue, that meets the demands of such a huge production, and the special requirements of filming, the outcome of which is intended for cinema and Blu-Ray release.
2. The greek audience, which impressed him and captured his heart, with its enthusiasm, a few years ago, when he was again in Greece, at TerraVibe Park, during “The Dark Side Of The Moon” tour.
For all the above reasons, the Roger Waters team and the production team of Big Star Touring kindly ask all media to communicate the following information/terms, to the audience, well in advance, and in order to secure their entrance in the concert venue, as well as the success of the show:
Considering the gravity of this restriction, we have to warn that any member of the audience carrying either a camera or a cell phone of any kind, will not be permitted to enter the venue, regardless the purchase of a ticket (the above condition/restriction will also be mentioned in the conditions at back side of the ticket).
Thus, we kindly ask you to inform your readers/viewers/listeners regarding all the above, in order to avoid any discomfort, as well as to secure the success of the show and its filming, significant part of which will be the greek audience.
We don’t need any cameras or cell phones with us to capture the moment, on the night of July 8th… The whole show will be a unique documentary, with those securing their tickets on time in the leading role!
USA REVIEWS
“The former Pink Floyd bassist rebuilt that band’s classic 1979 album “The Wall’’ for the first of three shows with the help of an impeccable band; a crack team of light, sound, and video artists; and a small army of onstage masons. The visually arresting, musically majestic, and emotionally tumultuous performance that resulted was breathtaking.”
– The Boston Globe
“The Wall’ a majestic experience”
– The Boston Globe
“That bold change, along with the reverent performance of the music, turned this new Wall into something more sturdy, meaningful, and grand than ever.”
– New York Daily News
“When Roger Waters finished building "The Wall" in its entirety, at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, it was just another brick on what was the best arena concert I've ever been to. Period.”
– New York Post
“The show, a theatrical experience that brought the great 1979 Pink Floyd album to life, was simply fantastic.”
– New York Post
"The Wall" becomes bigger than the individual songs with this spectacle that rocks.”
– New York Post
“It is the concert of a lifetime to witness.”
– Suite101.com
"Roger Waters tore down the house Wednesday night in Toronto," raved the Associated Press. "He walked out to thunderous applause beginning with the first track of the seminal concept album, ‘In the Flesh’, and the adulation never stopped."
Toronto Sun said "Roger Waters builds a dazzling Wall"
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Valania writes,
"Everyone should see it once before they die."
HOW TRUE !!!!!!
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