Monday, March 05, 2007

The great gig in Mumbai-Roger Waters live

Sunday 18th Feb 2007 will go down as a great day in my memories. It was "us and him".
Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd) had a live concert in Mumbai. It was also my first live concert. I had missed his live concert in Bangalore in 2002.
I cannot say missed in the literal sense but it was not possible to attend the concert due to various myriad reasons e.g non-availability of time, traveling to Bangalore etc.
This time round I was dead sure that I would not miss it as all the cards had fallen into the right place(time,location,money etc). The tickets were expensive but i really did not care about it.
The concert was fantastic although I wished I had taken the highest priced ticket, where there was a more clear view.
He played the usual concert favorites
"Shine on your crazy diamond"
"Wish you were here"-(A tribute to Syd Barrett-Original founder of thr group Pink Floyd).
A new track I heard was "Leaving Beirut" were the Bush administration and in general the US were criticised.
After a painful 15 minute break he played my favorite - whole one side of the
"Dark Side of the Moon" album . I am especially fond of " Breathe" and "Time"
He ended here abruptly and I was disappointed as no "The Wall" track had ben played.

Surpisingly the whole band came back to the loud chants of Once more to play
Another Brick in the Wall and Comfortably Numb

The concert ended quite early by the normal live show standards.

I got hooked to Pink Floyd's music very early, when I was just 17. I knew nothing about English or Rock music then with the only known bands being BoneyM (because they toured India), Michael Jackson(as he was in the news) and Madonna( for all the wrong reasons).
Those were the carefree college days when you had all the freedom and no responsibilities. My cousin, elder to me by 10 years introduced me to Pink Floyd and eventually "The Wall" album. I was fascinated by the sounds in DSOTM and with no other known group started accumulating all the cassettes when released. Surely after listening to all the albums Dark side of the Moon and Wall so many times , the tracks were etched in my memory and slowly there was a meaning to all those sounds and songs.
When I graduated and started working I lost a bit of interest in English music in general and started following more of Hindi music. So listening to Floyd after a long time really brought back memories of those carefree days.

And finally these lyrics(in part) are my all time favorite
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

An analysis of the DSOTM can be found here and a short quiz on Pink Floyd here