Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 12:37:40 -0500
From: "Mark Anderson" <manders@xsite.com>
To: <cpforbes@hopper.unh.edu>




               Darling, Is the Child Warm in the Bed Tonight?

     Reflections on an evening (or parts of it) spent with Roger Waters



When I was in high school, in the southwest suburbs of Chicago in the late
1970's, there were really only three bands one could reasonably expect
to be able to swear allegiance to: Led Zeppelin, Boston (yes, remember
Boston?) and Pink Floyd. Drab green army fatigues cast off from older
brothers served as the billboards of the day, and the very location where
such allegiances were proclaimed - a black marker and a fair rendering
of a pig and Battersea Power Station could get you a certain cache at
parties back then - and the ability to pronounce theories about the
meanings of either Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here was sometimes
all it took to impress a fellow party-goer with your wisdom and
understanding of the world.

In many respects, the subsequent decades were not very kind to such
sensibilities. My love for Pink Floyd was sometimes hidden away or admitted
to only with a shrug in the face of scornful New-Wavers and
Pre-New-Brit-Popsters. When the subject came up, it was often in reference
to the highly-publicized battles of the various band members, and not to the
increasing sophisticated and prescient world-view Roger was forming in his
work, nor the subsequent responsibilities such observations foisted on the
listener. I remember writing a letter to the school newspaper in defense of
The Final Cut, savaged as "pretentious" and "boring" by a loyal follower of
the New Guard at a mediocre Midwestern university I was attending, only to
be hooted at in the cafeteria by the very same people who would, no doubt,
fork over a couple of hundred dollars a ticket a decade later to see the
reconstituted Floyd in a stadium awash in lighters and shouts of "encore"
and devoid of any and all knowledge or understanding or appreciation for
irony. Socialists and other worriers, in or out of rock-and-roll, often
suffer the same fate when tangling with courses for horses and market
forces.

Those same people were on my mind last night as I sat in attendance at the
Chicago stop of the Roger Water's In The Flesh tour. (In fact, the
word that came to mind time and again was actually "punters", for those of
you with an English sensibility). From at least Welcome to the Machine
onwards, Roger has explicitly spoken to the yawning gap between
understanding and mindless obedience in all forms, up to and including his
own work. Build a wall across the stage to separate the band and its
"followers", you say? Why not? When the explosions happen, they won't
be watching us anyway. All they need are the chimes of the clock and the
sound of dropping coins, and maybe a guitarist floating over their heads
during the solo. Roger had long expressed his disdain the realities of
corporate rock and the behaviors and mindsets it spawns, and it has colored
most of his career - more so than almost any other performer still
standing today. So a concert by such a willful iconoclast is almost an event
by its very nature, forgetting the reclusive nature of the artist and the
long spell since the live Radio KAOS.

Unfortunately, the punters didn't disappoint, but, then again, neither
did Roger. I was lucky enough to be the friend of a friend of someone who
works in the ticket office of the Rosemont Theatre, and found myself
deposited in the middle seat of the third row of the orchestra pit for the
evening's festivities - not a bad seat if one is as interested
in taking the emotional and psychological temperature of a revered artist
and not just pumping the fist into the air. The set list was heavy with some
old war-horses - the coins made their appearance, as did
barrel-chested shouts against education. Roger energized the crowd from the
beginning with that most overt of statements about the relationship between
fascism and rock-and-roll, In The Flesh, and looking happy to be doing it.
The crowd got into the act by the time Mother came around, booing after the
line "mother, should I trust the government". Roger looked a bit pained by
the obviousness of it all, and thereby set up the gamut of his own responses
to the show - obvious pleasure in performing on the one hand
sandwiched between battles over the awkwardness of what he was doing on the
other - whether it was philosophically-based or not.

The first set was filled only with Floyd numbers - including Get Your
Filthy Hands Off My Desert and Southampton Dock - both profound
meditations about the nature of militarism and the human toll it exacts. Not
very easy to smoke dope to (the standard concert behavior) or hold a cell
phone up to (the latest behavior, one that the guy next to me actually did,
no doubt to impress the friend on the other end as opposed to increasing any
understanding of what the word "cenotaph" means). While there were certainly
fans in attendance for who such ideas resonate, and who are drawn to Roger
for that very reason, there were many others who simply considered the
moment to be an interlude between the more recognizable tunes. Let's
face it - "Brezhnev took Afghanistan, and Begin took Beirut" just
doesn't "kick ass".

And there's no way Roger doesn't recognize that. My show-mate
leaned over and asked if I thought Roger was "mailing it in". My vote was
for no, but it was a fair question. Many were the moment in which Roger
stood near-motionless on stage, eyes wide shut, only to open them with what
appeared to be a bit of a surprise in where he found himself. What appeared
to be grimaces found themselves in attendance as well - uneasy shrugs
at what he was doing or little bits of awkwardness over when he should pull
out the requisite Rock Star motions. The relationship with the audience was
spelled out a bit distinctly when, during the extended instrumental portions
of Dogs, Roger and band sat down for a game of cards, either reminding us of
the nature of English Gentlemen Artists or the author's current
interest in some of the more "spacey" portions of his earlier work. The mood
progressed as the show went on, however, and by the middle of the second
set, during Perfect Sense, Part 2, he pumped his fists during certain
moments and reminded us just how truly engaged he was in his work
emotionally and artistically. The prayerful moments at the beginning of
Perfect Sense Part 1, the way he nailed the vocally demanding lines in 5:06
AM (Every Stranger's Eyes), and his tendency to mouth the lyrics to
songs he wasn't singing backed up such sentiments in clear and
powerful ways.

Now that shit "kicked ass".

And that's exactly the point: How do you integrate what you are now
with what you once were - even if those things aren't really
that far apart? Rock-and rollers of every stripe have struggled with the
same issues time and again - Lennon, Dylan, Ray Davies, Joni Mitchell,
Kurt Cobain et al. And what if the only way you can get across what
you're doing today is by feeding off the trough of what went on
yesterday? Just look at Dylan - the master of awkward grimaces.
Roger's predicament is that he heaps on extra helpings of irony in his
work - pointing out the very nature of that awkwardness, and imploring
his listeners to be aware of where the alienation and illusion lie, and, by
default, to do something about them?

Will you stand by a passive spectator, Of the market dictators?Or
will you take to the hills?

Which paints him into a bit of a corner when it comes to shilling his wares
in the marketplace or attempting to reclaim the legacy others have attempted
to appropriate. One wishes him all of the luck in the world - and
hopes it doesn't in some way challenge or damage the delicate balance
of a career built around Important Artistic Statements. I want to hear Roger
sing Welcome to the Machine as much as the next guy - I just
wouldn't want to do it if I didn't understand it was a bit of
cynicism directed right at me and others cheering along in the
punter's section.





Mark W. Anderson

July 25, 1999

Manders@xsite.net

Manders@mstar.com