Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Wall (Live in Berlin) - Roger Waters


One year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Roger Waters and a bunch of other artists performed Pink Floyd's classical The Wall in Potsdamer Platz, a location where Eastern Berliners were shot for trying to go to West Berlin.

Over 350,000 people attended the concert, which was broadcast in 52 countries. The World was quite optimistic about the future back then and the massive scale of the show, still impressive almost 25 years later, is a testimony of that.

Since the aftermath of the show, Waters has been criticized for inviting pop musicians like Cyndi Lauper or Bryan Adams to perform. I think people who make that point completely misunderstand the purpose of this concert: this was not about music, but about providing The Wall with a completely new meaning, and I think Rogers succeeded on that: when people listen to "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" today, they don't think about Pink's introspective processes, but about political repression and manipulation, something reminiscent to the Berlin Wall.

I highly recommend this video. As I said, the production is quite impressive, and the music is quite good, even if, I have to concede, Cyndi Lauper's performance is nonsense...

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