This weekend was brilliant, I loved it. Had a great time. This weekend, I flew back to Newcastle so I could go and see Roger Waters in concert with my brother. In short, it was awesome - absolutely fantastic show, well worth all of the effort to see it.
It's especially impressive considering I had no interest in Roger Waters or Pink Floyd less than two years ago. Let me back up a bit to explain how this all happened.
I'm a big, big music fan - have been since I was a young 'un. I blame my brother, who blasted all sorts of different music throughout the house the entire time we were growing up. Not surprisingly, I ended up with very similar tastes as my brother for a long time for the simple fact that the only music I ever heard was what he played. This all ended the day he introduced me to Metallica.
The thing about my brother's music taste (and he's admitted it to me more than once) is that he's very much into popular music. I've never been one to like anything that's popular, I'm very much into things a bit left-of-centre, a bit different - anything that excites me, really. At the time, I'd never heard anything like this song before (it was 'One', trivia fans) and it awoke something in me. I needed to hear more. At a guess, I'd say I was 12, maybe 13 at the time.
Anyway, at this point I became a massive metal-head. I grew my hair, started tracking down all sorts of different metal bands, started teaching myself to play the bass... I was pretty into it. My brother and most of my friends, however, were not.
The a strange thing happened when I was 16: I became completely sick of the sound of the guitar. I stopped listening to all these guitar bands. I sold all my metal CDs and started listening to electronic music. At first it was hardcore techno (but not for very long), then I discovered industrial - sort of a blend of all the different genres I'd grown up listening to all in one. And the whole time, I was regularly being chastised for my taste in music (and still am, I might add).
So what does this long-winded tale of my musical past have to do with this weekend? Well, it all comes down to the Live 8 concerts of 2005.
You see, I'm an extremely new fan of Pink Floyd. Oh, I've known of them for many, many years - in fact, my brother used to torture me by playing Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) every once in a while at home. The truth is, I used to hate Pink Floyd and everything about them. I was impressed by the sales record of Dark Side of the Moon, but I could never understand why they were so popular - they just sounded like another dull '70s band to me. It didn't help that I'd once been forced to sit through the movie of The Wall when I was 15 and found it excruciatingly boring.
I'm not sure if age has mellowed me, but something changed late one night in 2005 while I was watching highlights from the Live 8 concerts. For some reason, I was particularly interested in seeing Pink Floyd play - I think primarily because it was such a massive coup that they had reformed, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Anyway, I had the house to myself (R was on a trip to Sydney that weekend) so I cranked up the volume and watched history unfold.
As it was only highlights, the only song I saw was 'Comfortably Numb' - and I was stunned. I remember a chill going up my spine at the line 'just a little pin-prick'. I had no idea of the story of The Wall, much less the importance of this song, but those words began to haunt me, it just sounded so creepy. The next day, I rang my brother and asked him to send me all of his Pink Floyd CDs down to me - I had to hear more.
After they arrived, I listened to The Wall a few times, as well as Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. I kinda liked them, but at the time they just didn't click with me.
Nothing really changed until roughly a year later, and even now I can't remember exactly what the catalyst was. I guess I thought I'd give another Floyd album a listen. It was probably The Wall: I had become obsessed by its story and had done a lot of reading about it. Forgive the pretentiousness, but there were sections of it that struck very close to home to me - particularly the alienation from my long-time girlfriend (our relationship had already dissolved beyond repair by this point).
This time it hit me. Hard. And this time it stuck. I started listening to them non-stop. I bought up every one of their CDs I could find - I couldn't get enough. Pink Floyd had become my drug, and it was more addictive than anything I could possibly imagine.
By now I knew the entire history of the band - including the falling out between Roger Waters and the rest of the band, as well as David Gilmour's retirement of Pink Floyd. Sad as I was that I'd never get the chance to see them live, I was intrigued that one of the more well-regarded cover bands was touring Australia in November. Figuring this would be as close as I'd get to seeing them live, I rang my brother and asked if he was interested in seeing them with me. As luck would have it, he was going to be in Melbourne the very weekend they were playing here.
This was the point I discovered something about my brother: he wasn't actually that big a fan of Floyd. He knew the hits, but beyond that they were just another bunch of CDs in his collection. Despite this, he was interested in seeing the show so he said yes. Like me, he figured he should become a bit more acquainted with their material if he was going to catch a live show. The fool - he had no idea what he was getting himself into!
Like me, another Floyd fan was born. Every time we spoke we'd talk about Floyd: what we'd been listening to, nuances in David Gilmour's guitar solos - everything. It was especially exciting for me as at last I had a common musical point with my brother, something we've not really had for almost 20 years.
As the Pink Floyd Experience show grew closer, an even bigger event appeared on the horizon: Roger Waters announced an Australian tour. It was a foregone conclusion that we were going, so I booked tickets in Sydney the instant they went on sale. And after months of waiting, the show finally arrived last Thursday.
I think we both weren't really expecting that great a show. I can only speak for myself, but I was more excited at getting a chance to see a musical legend in concert than hearing a man in his 60s relive the songs of his youth. I mean, this is the man who wrote roughly 95 per cent of Pink Floyd's music and lyrics - that deserves more than just a little respect in my books. Unfortunately, if you've seen the full Live 8 set, Waters's vocals were the least impressive part of the show, and I think we were both expecting the whole show to be similarly underwhelming.
I am extremely happy to report that we were both completely and utterly wrong. The show was unbelievably awesome: the sound, the stage show, the songs and the band were all excellent, but Waters himself delivered in every possible way. Not only was he gracious on stage, gladly stepping to the side to let other band members have their time in the spotlight, but he sounded just as good as he did back in the '70s and '80s - I was truly impressed. By the time the intermission arrived, we both agreed that this show was a million times better than we could have possibly imagined.
My brother and I have always been close over the years, so it's been strange being so far away over the last eight years or so - particularly since I moved to Melbourne. We haven't always seen eye-to-eye on everything, which is natural - in most respects, we're extremely different people. I guess this is why I have such a special place in my heart for Pink Floyd now, it's helped open up a new common ground in our lives, something we're able to share together. And this is why I had such a great weekend, I got to share a fantastic day with one of the most important people in my life, doing something we both enjoyed.
Thanks Russell, I'm gonna miss ya.
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