Roger that!

Photos taken with my Motorola Q. Wish I’d remembered to bring a “real camera” with me.

I was born in 1971, so by the time I’d seriously gotten into music, not only were the ‘60s over, but punk was already fading in the rearview mirror. Punk, begun in the U.K. as a reaction to the rotten economy and lack of opportunities, was also—musically—a reaction to the excesses that came before, one of which was judged (by the punks) to be Pink Floyd. (The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten got fingered to join the band, famously, when he walked into Malcolm McLaren’s shop wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words “I HATE” crudely scrawled across it.)

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that things come in cycles, and history has judged Pink Floyd favorably, at least in its prime. And despite having been only two when the band’s magnum opus, Dark Side Of The Moon, was released, I was very excited to attend tonight’s Roger Waters concert at Philips Arena in Atlanta. Some six months ago, I spent a solid weekend reading an excellent book by John Harris, Dark Side Of The Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece while listening to the album on repeat. And the night’s big draw, aside from the promise of a grand spectacle from a rock legend, was the performance of Dark Side in its entirety during the show’s second half.

Having never experienced anything having to do with the Floyd live, I was a bit nervous. What if Roger was obviously just mailing it in for a big paycheck? (I exaggerage not—seats on the floor were priced well in excess of $100.) But even though his last recorded work was a stab at opera, there was nothing to fear—for most of the night Waters had a huge grin plastered on his face and spent lots of time walking to the wings of the stage and playing to the seats. (He even had a member of his rock-solid 10-piece band play bass for him on occasion so he could simply use his instrument as a prop as he worked the crowd.)

The first half of the show was laden with highlights, beginning with The Wall‘s “Mother” and moving through a performance of the Syd Barrett-era (but Waters-penned) “Set the Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” and moving into a good chunk of Wish You Were Here, including “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond (Part I-V)” and “Have A Cigar.” And what would a Floyd(ish) show be without Spectacle? We got a pyrotechnics, a laser rendering of the iconic prism, the inevitable floating pig…

...with ticker-tape (a nice touch), and then, of course, the floating spaceman:

Seriously, you gotta have the floating spaceman. It’s space-rock after all. Unfortunately the first half of the show also included a hamfisted political song—nothing necessarily wrong with the sentiment, but the way it was put across was so clunky, I winced. And to increase the wince factor, all the lyrics were projected on the screen behind the band, in comic-book fashion. But that misstep was quickly forgotten as the band left the stage for an intermission before the main event, to the accompaniment of a tiny onscreen moon that slowly, steadily grew in size until the sound-collages introducing “Speak To Me/Breathe” kicked in.

But an excellent rendering of Dark Side wasn’t all there was. After “Eclipse” faded, the multi-generational crowd went nuts and Waters & co. returned for a Wall of encore, featuring “Another Brick In The Wall, pt. 2” and “Comfortably Numb.” Sure, it may have been Dinosaur Rock, but dagnabbit, there’s a reason this stuff has been played to oblivion on certain radio formats. It’s an evening well worth your attendance, steep ticket price and all.