Jul 9, 2012

Roger Waters The Wall!

This past weekend my friend and fellow performer DeeDee Luxe invited me to be her plus+1 to Roger Waters' The Wall Live at Yankee Stadium! DeeDee and I were both in SHAME and now she's also in Roger Waters' music video "Young Lust" which was projected in giant size during the show. She got us VIP seats (Row 14), backstage passes, and Hospitality entry (on the side away from all the norms). I've never been to Yankee Stadium and I also didn't even know who Roger Waters was! I know, it's blasphemous. I know who Pink Floyd is and I'm aware of their cultural significance especially in the US, but I couldn't tell you any song titles or names of the band members. When I tell people this, they are shocked but it's really not that shocking considering that I didn't grow up in this country and although I spent my teenage years in Texas, no one I knew or hung out with listened to Pink Floyd. My parents certainly have never heard of them. What people don't understand is that although I "blend in", there are HUGE gaps in my popular cultural knowledge especially when it comes to music and television from particular eras. During my parent's time in Taiwan, they only got the most mainstream influence from the West like The Beatles, Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc. They wouldn't know who Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix were.  

So go ahead and hate away! Ha!




Lots of giant puppets - made me think of Basil Twist
Local choir performed during "The Wall"
Amazing video and animation work. Super tight. Flawlessly synched. Fireworks. EVERYTHING.
There's Dee Dee on the giant screen!

More DeeDee
I loved their use of fascist symbology throughout the show. As one of the backup singers mentioned during break its a commentary of passive entertainment culture as a form of control and imprisonment of oneself from a personal to state-level. 
Clowning around with the backup singers during intermission
Dave the guitarist who killed it with this amazing guitar solo at the end. He was high up on the wall with a smoke machine and hair blowing around. He looked like Jesus. No, Mr. Waters never came out to the Hospitality room.
Roger Waters The Wall at Yankee Stadium 2012 from calamity chang on Vimeo.
A snippet of the amazing visuals at the concert. My friend DeeDee Luxe appears in their "Young Lust" video so we had VIP seats, backstage access & all that jazz! What an experience & I'm so proud of her!

1 comment:

  1. Calamity, are the gaps in your American pop culture knowledge filled in by cool Chinese pop-culture knowledge?

    Because I would very gladly give up my knowledge of Rod Stewart or The Cars in exchange for having more Shaw Brother's movies in my brain :-) (Or even just getting some in sooner, I like to imagine my childhood would have been much better if I had only seen "36th Chamber of Shaolin" a few years earlier.)

    (Incidentally, I don't mention any Chinese bands, because I don't really know any... gaps in my Far Eastern cultural knowledge abound.)

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