Post by Fuggle on Sept 22, 2006 9:17:50 GMT -5
Concert Preview: See you on 'The Dark Side'
On the occasion of Roger Waters' visit here, we look back at the making of Pink Floyd's classic
Thursday, September 21, 2006
By Scott Mervis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pink Floyd -- Rick Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and David
Gilmour -- during the heady days of the early ?70s.
It begins with a simple, soothing request -- "Breathe ... breathe in the air" -- and then proceeds to blow your mind.
Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon," released in the post-hippie haze of 1973, is a staggering work that helped define a new era of high fidelity rock while also acting as an essential rite of passage for teenagers experimenting with things to breathe in other than air.
Spawned by a band with an acute identity crisis and only modest prior success, it became a monster, lingering on the Billboard Top 200 for 741 consecutive weeks, the longest of any record in history. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and continues to move approximately 10,000 copies per week. Currently, it's No. 3 on the Pop Catalog charts, where it has remained for 1,518 weeks.
You could say all those ringing cash registers on "Money" were a sign of things to come.
In spite of all the radio overkill and all varieties of backlashes -- Johnny Rotten once sported an "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt -- the album continues to live and breathe with critics and fans. It placed at No. 43 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the Top 500 Albums of All Time. Reader polls in magazine's like Q and Guitar World generally place it in the Top 10.
To the chagrin of Floyd fans worldwide, the life of the "Dark Side" has far exceeded the band. All of the members who worked on it are still living -- they just don't talk much. In fact, they hadn't played together since 1985 before the brief one-off reunion last summer for the benefit of Live 8.
But with Pink Floyd in storage, Roger Waters, Floyd's bassist and visionary, is on a North American tour unleashing Pink Floyd classics, solo work and, for the second set, "The Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety. The music is enhanced by video projections, theatrical staging, 360-degree quadraphonic sound and the flying pink pig, now sporting the words "Impeach Bush Now."
Asked why he chose to reproduce "Dark Side," the reclusive Waters told Billboard that it was spawned by a request for a special event the day before the French Grand Prix in July. "Somebody rather fancifully suggested Pink Floyd playing 'Dark Side of the Moon,' and somebody else rather fancifully approached various people who said, 'Are you [expletive] insane? It's not going to happen.' So they asked me. ... The more I've worked on it, the more the idea has grown on me. ... I've got a great band together, and I have every hope that we will do the work justice."
ROOTS OF FLOYD
Pink Floyd did not begin as the kind of band that would generate a "Dark Side of the Moon." Its roots go back to 1964 and a London R&B outfit called Sigma 6 that included Waters, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Richard Wright. They became T-set, the Megadeaths and the Abdabs before the newest member, mercurial singer-songwriter Syd Barrett, dubbed them The Pink Floyd Sound in tribute to blues singers Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
This new band, establishing itself at the UFO club in late 1965, was known for infusing rockers like "Louie Louie" and "Roadrunner" with weird psychedelic jams, designed partially to fill out the set. Eventually the covers were augmented by Barrett's fanciful originals, and Pink Floyd charted with "Arnold Layne," a whimsical tale of a transvestite, in March 1967.
The still-loved single "See Emily Play" went to No. 6 in England, advancing the band's drug-inspired psychedelic-pop debut, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," a record that a certain cult following still swears to be the best of Pink Floyd. It would be the first and last Floyd album helmed by Barrett, who was experiencing a dangerous mix of schizophrenia and LSD.
With Barrett falling apart -- he would occasionally show up at gigs and just strum one chord -- the band recruited guitarist-singer David Gilmour and became a five-piece for a short time in 1968, before finally dismissing its leader. (Barrett's sad history of "unfinished genius" ended when he died this summer.)
With Barrett exiled from Floyd, the band went through a long transitional phase. But clearly, under Waters, the strongest personality of the bunch and a non-drug user, the tone began to harden.
In "The Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece," John Harris writes, "Barrett's '67-era personality was detached, non-materialistic, increasingly astral; Waters, by contrast, affected a hard-headed drive." Harris contrasts Barrett's idyllic upbringing with that of architecture student Waters, a darker soul whose father died in Italy fighting for the British during World War II when Roger was only 5 months old.
First came "A Saucerful of Secrets," with leftover Barrett tracks, then the darker, spacier "Ummagumma" in 1969. "Atom Heart Mother," in 1970, was an orchestral work with avant-garde composer Ron Geesin, deemed by Gilmour to be "a real bit of cobbled-together old rubbish." "Meddle," in 1971, touched on folk, blues, jazz and prog-rock, while signaling the Roger Waters era with "Echoes," a 23-minute ambient epic that served as a prelude to "Dark Side."
Mason called it "the first real Pink Floyd album."
The members of Pink Floyd, playing the role of perky psychedelic
rockers, leap from the steps of EMI House in London on March 3,
1967. From left are Roger Waters, Nick Mason, the late Syd Barrett
and Richard Wright. Barrett was replaced in the late '60s by David
Gilmour.
ALAN PARSONS PROJECT
For the next proper studio record Waters came to the table -- Mason's kitchen table, in fact -- with an idea for a concept record. There would be no story line a la "Tommy," just a couple light themes like aging, death, greed and war, and a dissertation on the ways modern society can deliver one to madness. "If there's any central message," Waters says in the Harris book, "it's this: [life] is not a rehearsal. ...We all make a small mark on the painting of life."
Waters goes on to say, "There was a residue of Syd in all this," as heard in such lyrics as "If the band you're in starts playing different tunes" on "Brain Damage."
The music, of course, manages to be cosmic, futuristic and soulful with the flowing qualities of Gilmour, the aggressive bass lines of Waters and the wondrous playing of Wright. But for being "the ultimate stoner album," the lyrics are hardly "out there." Waters' word are poetic but tangible, a long way from the surrealism of the past. The mournful "Time" looks at how life can slip away while you're not paying attention, complete with wake-up bells. Waters, raised a socialist, scolds the upper crust on "Money," a rare pop hit in 7/4 time. The echoe-y "Us and Them" is a beautifully understated anti-war song dealing with the timeless issue of the poor fighting the rich man's battle: " 'Forward' he cried from the rear and the front rank died." "Eclipse" is an intense piece of existentialism that closes the record on a note of lunar ambiguity.
Because Pink Floyd had been touring it live, "Dark Side" was nearly intact before the band ever entered Abbey Road studio in June 1972 with an engineer who would later become the Alan Parsons Project. Total recording time was 40 days over the next seven months, broken up by tours, family vacations and Waters' departures to catch his favorite soccer team, Arsenal.
Under the hand of Alan Parsons, who assisted on "Abbey Road" and was now using new 16-track studio equipment for his quadraphonic effect, "Dark Side" took on the added textures that make it a Laserium spectacular -- the crashing plane, chiming clocks, ripping paper, running boots, an early synthesizer and the amazing ca-ching beat of the cash registers and coins on "Money."
According to Gilmour, "Money," the breakout single, was a case of Floyd test-driving the Southern funk of Booker T and MGs. "Nice white English architecture students getting funky is a bit of an odd thought," he tells Harris, who notes the band's "shaky sense of timekeeping."
Along with funk, "Dark Side" comes complete with the jazzy bursts of saxophonist Dick Parry and a touch of gospel in the vocals. The ecstatic wailing on "The Great Gig in the Sky," the album's dramatic death scene, came from Clare Torry, who spent an evening fumbling around in the studio for the right vocal part before deciding simply to "pretend I'm an instrument."
Near the end of the sessions, the Waters brainstorm was to support his theme with spoken voices. He held a series of interviews with people at Abbey Road, including Paul McCartney (who was left on the cutting-room floor), asking such questions as "Do you ever think you're going mad?" and "Are you afraid of dying?" The result was the disturbing laughter of road manager Peter Watts, Chris Adamson's claim of "I've been mad for ... years" and Gerry O'Driscoll's "I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do."
The end product was almost called "Eclipse," because the British blues-rock band Medicine Head had already used the name "The Dark Side of the Moon," but Pink Floyd forged on, on the grounds that they had thought of the name before that other record came out. The cover prism by Hipgnosis served to indicate that Pink Floyd was departing the psychedelic hippie days and moving into a new realm of modern rock.
"It was a bloody good package," Gilmour once said. "The music, the concept, the cover, all came together. For me it was the first time we'd had great lyrics."
"When the record was finished," Waters told Billboard, "I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me, and I remember playing it for my wife then, and her bursting into tears when it was finished. And I thought, This has obviously struck a chord."
STRIKING A CHORD
"Dark Side" was feted at an opening party at the London Planetarium in February 1973 with Wright the only Floyd member in attendance. A critic from Melody Maker, which had incorrectly touted it a "space fantasy opera," reported, "Ten minutes from blast off, the music became so utterly confused with itself that it was virtually impossible to follow."
Billboard called it "a tour de force for lyricist Roger Waters" and defined it as "avant-garde rock by one of England's most adventurous bands."
Rolling Stone waited three months to cover it, then offered a short, mostly positive review that called the band "pop's preeminent techno-rockers" and stated, "There is a certain grandeur here that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock."
"The Dark Side of the Moon" hit No. 4 in England and then debuted at No. 95 in the United States in March 1973. But the buzz built and the U.S. tour, complete with a plane crashing into the stage, pushed it to the top of the charts by the end of April.
As a further boost, "Money" was edited and released to AM radio as the band's first single since 1968. Suddenly, pop fans were on the Floyd bandwagon, somewhat to the horror of Waters and Gilmour, who told Harris, "We were doing these places where all the young kids would be shouting 'Money!' all the way through the show. We'd been used to all these reverent fans ..."
BACK TO THE 'MOON'
"Dark Side" put Waters fully in command of Pink Floyd through "Wish You Were Here," "Animals," his smash rock opera "The Wall" and 1983's aptly named "The Final Cut."
Unfortunately, long-standing tensions between him and Gilmour became a communication breakdown by 1985, and Waters left, calling Pink Floyd "a spent force creatively."
"With 'Dark Side' we had sort of achieved what we'd set out to achieve as young men going into the music business," Waters told Billboard. "After that we clung together out of fear more than out of hope."
Waters, while working on the solo effort "Radio Kaos," saw Gilmour and Mason uniting for "A Momentarily Lapse of Reason" in 1987 and initiated a lawsuit over the rights to Pink Floyd property (which was settled later in the year). Waters called "Lapse" a "pretty fair forgery."
Meanwhile, Waters struggled as a solo artist -- his highlight was performing "The Wall" at the Berlin Wall in 1990 -- while the Gilmour-led Floyd went on to fly the pink pig as a stadium headliner in 1987 and then after "The Division Bell" in 1994, Pink Floyd's final run.
When the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Waters was a no-show. Although he said in the mid-'80s that he would never work again with Gilmour, he relented last summer for the Live 8 benefit concert in London and joined Floyd for five songs. Despite relations between them now reportedly being "amicable," there are no plans for a Pink Floyd reunion, with or without Waters.
Instead, Waters is on the road with guitarists Andy Fairweather Low (Eric Clapton), Snowy White (Thin Lizzy) and Dave Kilminster, keyboardist Jon Carin, drummer Graham Broad (Procol Harum), Hammond organist Harry Waters (Roger's son), saxophonist Ian Ritchie and backup singers. Kilminster and Carin have the job of reproducing Gilmour's vocals and are doing it admirably, according to reviews. Ira Robbins wrote in Newsday, "As a note-for-note re-creation, this was as good as it could possibly get."
So good, that it's possible, the day after the show, it will sell a few more copies than it normally would have.
Ben Curtis, of the Secret Machines, a modern band that clearly carries Floyd influence, is certainly sold on "The Dark Side.
"It really is so good," says the singer-guitarist. "When someone asks you your favorite Pink Floyd record, you almost have to discount that one. Because it's ... not fair. It's one of those records that's just not fair. Like a lot of what the Beatles did, you can't even really compare it with a lot of other things. It was so far ahead of what they did before. It just really came out of nowhere. It's difficult and challenging but really immediately engaging.
"When I go back and hear it again, I'm always impressed and I always hear new things in it. I always hear it a different way, from a different perspective and I think maybe that's why it keeps going and stands up to so many different perspectives."
Roger Waters
Where: Post-Gazette Pavilion.
When: Sunday at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $34-$129; 412-323-1919.
On the occasion of Roger Waters' visit here, we look back at the making of Pink Floyd's classic
Thursday, September 21, 2006
By Scott Mervis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pink Floyd -- Rick Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and David
Gilmour -- during the heady days of the early ?70s.
It begins with a simple, soothing request -- "Breathe ... breathe in the air" -- and then proceeds to blow your mind.
Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon," released in the post-hippie haze of 1973, is a staggering work that helped define a new era of high fidelity rock while also acting as an essential rite of passage for teenagers experimenting with things to breathe in other than air.
Spawned by a band with an acute identity crisis and only modest prior success, it became a monster, lingering on the Billboard Top 200 for 741 consecutive weeks, the longest of any record in history. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and continues to move approximately 10,000 copies per week. Currently, it's No. 3 on the Pop Catalog charts, where it has remained for 1,518 weeks.
You could say all those ringing cash registers on "Money" were a sign of things to come.
In spite of all the radio overkill and all varieties of backlashes -- Johnny Rotten once sported an "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt -- the album continues to live and breathe with critics and fans. It placed at No. 43 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the Top 500 Albums of All Time. Reader polls in magazine's like Q and Guitar World generally place it in the Top 10.
To the chagrin of Floyd fans worldwide, the life of the "Dark Side" has far exceeded the band. All of the members who worked on it are still living -- they just don't talk much. In fact, they hadn't played together since 1985 before the brief one-off reunion last summer for the benefit of Live 8.
But with Pink Floyd in storage, Roger Waters, Floyd's bassist and visionary, is on a North American tour unleashing Pink Floyd classics, solo work and, for the second set, "The Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety. The music is enhanced by video projections, theatrical staging, 360-degree quadraphonic sound and the flying pink pig, now sporting the words "Impeach Bush Now."
Asked why he chose to reproduce "Dark Side," the reclusive Waters told Billboard that it was spawned by a request for a special event the day before the French Grand Prix in July. "Somebody rather fancifully suggested Pink Floyd playing 'Dark Side of the Moon,' and somebody else rather fancifully approached various people who said, 'Are you [expletive] insane? It's not going to happen.' So they asked me. ... The more I've worked on it, the more the idea has grown on me. ... I've got a great band together, and I have every hope that we will do the work justice."
ROOTS OF FLOYD
Pink Floyd did not begin as the kind of band that would generate a "Dark Side of the Moon." Its roots go back to 1964 and a London R&B outfit called Sigma 6 that included Waters, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Richard Wright. They became T-set, the Megadeaths and the Abdabs before the newest member, mercurial singer-songwriter Syd Barrett, dubbed them The Pink Floyd Sound in tribute to blues singers Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
This new band, establishing itself at the UFO club in late 1965, was known for infusing rockers like "Louie Louie" and "Roadrunner" with weird psychedelic jams, designed partially to fill out the set. Eventually the covers were augmented by Barrett's fanciful originals, and Pink Floyd charted with "Arnold Layne," a whimsical tale of a transvestite, in March 1967.
The still-loved single "See Emily Play" went to No. 6 in England, advancing the band's drug-inspired psychedelic-pop debut, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," a record that a certain cult following still swears to be the best of Pink Floyd. It would be the first and last Floyd album helmed by Barrett, who was experiencing a dangerous mix of schizophrenia and LSD.
With Barrett falling apart -- he would occasionally show up at gigs and just strum one chord -- the band recruited guitarist-singer David Gilmour and became a five-piece for a short time in 1968, before finally dismissing its leader. (Barrett's sad history of "unfinished genius" ended when he died this summer.)
With Barrett exiled from Floyd, the band went through a long transitional phase. But clearly, under Waters, the strongest personality of the bunch and a non-drug user, the tone began to harden.
In "The Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece," John Harris writes, "Barrett's '67-era personality was detached, non-materialistic, increasingly astral; Waters, by contrast, affected a hard-headed drive." Harris contrasts Barrett's idyllic upbringing with that of architecture student Waters, a darker soul whose father died in Italy fighting for the British during World War II when Roger was only 5 months old.
First came "A Saucerful of Secrets," with leftover Barrett tracks, then the darker, spacier "Ummagumma" in 1969. "Atom Heart Mother," in 1970, was an orchestral work with avant-garde composer Ron Geesin, deemed by Gilmour to be "a real bit of cobbled-together old rubbish." "Meddle," in 1971, touched on folk, blues, jazz and prog-rock, while signaling the Roger Waters era with "Echoes," a 23-minute ambient epic that served as a prelude to "Dark Side."
Mason called it "the first real Pink Floyd album."
The members of Pink Floyd, playing the role of perky psychedelic
rockers, leap from the steps of EMI House in London on March 3,
1967. From left are Roger Waters, Nick Mason, the late Syd Barrett
and Richard Wright. Barrett was replaced in the late '60s by David
Gilmour.
ALAN PARSONS PROJECT
For the next proper studio record Waters came to the table -- Mason's kitchen table, in fact -- with an idea for a concept record. There would be no story line a la "Tommy," just a couple light themes like aging, death, greed and war, and a dissertation on the ways modern society can deliver one to madness. "If there's any central message," Waters says in the Harris book, "it's this: [life] is not a rehearsal. ...We all make a small mark on the painting of life."
Waters goes on to say, "There was a residue of Syd in all this," as heard in such lyrics as "If the band you're in starts playing different tunes" on "Brain Damage."
The music, of course, manages to be cosmic, futuristic and soulful with the flowing qualities of Gilmour, the aggressive bass lines of Waters and the wondrous playing of Wright. But for being "the ultimate stoner album," the lyrics are hardly "out there." Waters' word are poetic but tangible, a long way from the surrealism of the past. The mournful "Time" looks at how life can slip away while you're not paying attention, complete with wake-up bells. Waters, raised a socialist, scolds the upper crust on "Money," a rare pop hit in 7/4 time. The echoe-y "Us and Them" is a beautifully understated anti-war song dealing with the timeless issue of the poor fighting the rich man's battle: " 'Forward' he cried from the rear and the front rank died." "Eclipse" is an intense piece of existentialism that closes the record on a note of lunar ambiguity.
Because Pink Floyd had been touring it live, "Dark Side" was nearly intact before the band ever entered Abbey Road studio in June 1972 with an engineer who would later become the Alan Parsons Project. Total recording time was 40 days over the next seven months, broken up by tours, family vacations and Waters' departures to catch his favorite soccer team, Arsenal.
Under the hand of Alan Parsons, who assisted on "Abbey Road" and was now using new 16-track studio equipment for his quadraphonic effect, "Dark Side" took on the added textures that make it a Laserium spectacular -- the crashing plane, chiming clocks, ripping paper, running boots, an early synthesizer and the amazing ca-ching beat of the cash registers and coins on "Money."
According to Gilmour, "Money," the breakout single, was a case of Floyd test-driving the Southern funk of Booker T and MGs. "Nice white English architecture students getting funky is a bit of an odd thought," he tells Harris, who notes the band's "shaky sense of timekeeping."
Along with funk, "Dark Side" comes complete with the jazzy bursts of saxophonist Dick Parry and a touch of gospel in the vocals. The ecstatic wailing on "The Great Gig in the Sky," the album's dramatic death scene, came from Clare Torry, who spent an evening fumbling around in the studio for the right vocal part before deciding simply to "pretend I'm an instrument."
Near the end of the sessions, the Waters brainstorm was to support his theme with spoken voices. He held a series of interviews with people at Abbey Road, including Paul McCartney (who was left on the cutting-room floor), asking such questions as "Do you ever think you're going mad?" and "Are you afraid of dying?" The result was the disturbing laughter of road manager Peter Watts, Chris Adamson's claim of "I've been mad for ... years" and Gerry O'Driscoll's "I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do."
The end product was almost called "Eclipse," because the British blues-rock band Medicine Head had already used the name "The Dark Side of the Moon," but Pink Floyd forged on, on the grounds that they had thought of the name before that other record came out. The cover prism by Hipgnosis served to indicate that Pink Floyd was departing the psychedelic hippie days and moving into a new realm of modern rock.
"It was a bloody good package," Gilmour once said. "The music, the concept, the cover, all came together. For me it was the first time we'd had great lyrics."
"When the record was finished," Waters told Billboard, "I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me, and I remember playing it for my wife then, and her bursting into tears when it was finished. And I thought, This has obviously struck a chord."
STRIKING A CHORD
"Dark Side" was feted at an opening party at the London Planetarium in February 1973 with Wright the only Floyd member in attendance. A critic from Melody Maker, which had incorrectly touted it a "space fantasy opera," reported, "Ten minutes from blast off, the music became so utterly confused with itself that it was virtually impossible to follow."
Billboard called it "a tour de force for lyricist Roger Waters" and defined it as "avant-garde rock by one of England's most adventurous bands."
Rolling Stone waited three months to cover it, then offered a short, mostly positive review that called the band "pop's preeminent techno-rockers" and stated, "There is a certain grandeur here that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock."
"The Dark Side of the Moon" hit No. 4 in England and then debuted at No. 95 in the United States in March 1973. But the buzz built and the U.S. tour, complete with a plane crashing into the stage, pushed it to the top of the charts by the end of April.
As a further boost, "Money" was edited and released to AM radio as the band's first single since 1968. Suddenly, pop fans were on the Floyd bandwagon, somewhat to the horror of Waters and Gilmour, who told Harris, "We were doing these places where all the young kids would be shouting 'Money!' all the way through the show. We'd been used to all these reverent fans ..."
BACK TO THE 'MOON'
"Dark Side" put Waters fully in command of Pink Floyd through "Wish You Were Here," "Animals," his smash rock opera "The Wall" and 1983's aptly named "The Final Cut."
Unfortunately, long-standing tensions between him and Gilmour became a communication breakdown by 1985, and Waters left, calling Pink Floyd "a spent force creatively."
"With 'Dark Side' we had sort of achieved what we'd set out to achieve as young men going into the music business," Waters told Billboard. "After that we clung together out of fear more than out of hope."
Waters, while working on the solo effort "Radio Kaos," saw Gilmour and Mason uniting for "A Momentarily Lapse of Reason" in 1987 and initiated a lawsuit over the rights to Pink Floyd property (which was settled later in the year). Waters called "Lapse" a "pretty fair forgery."
Meanwhile, Waters struggled as a solo artist -- his highlight was performing "The Wall" at the Berlin Wall in 1990 -- while the Gilmour-led Floyd went on to fly the pink pig as a stadium headliner in 1987 and then after "The Division Bell" in 1994, Pink Floyd's final run.
When the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Waters was a no-show. Although he said in the mid-'80s that he would never work again with Gilmour, he relented last summer for the Live 8 benefit concert in London and joined Floyd for five songs. Despite relations between them now reportedly being "amicable," there are no plans for a Pink Floyd reunion, with or without Waters.
Instead, Waters is on the road with guitarists Andy Fairweather Low (Eric Clapton), Snowy White (Thin Lizzy) and Dave Kilminster, keyboardist Jon Carin, drummer Graham Broad (Procol Harum), Hammond organist Harry Waters (Roger's son), saxophonist Ian Ritchie and backup singers. Kilminster and Carin have the job of reproducing Gilmour's vocals and are doing it admirably, according to reviews. Ira Robbins wrote in Newsday, "As a note-for-note re-creation, this was as good as it could possibly get."
So good, that it's possible, the day after the show, it will sell a few more copies than it normally would have.
Ben Curtis, of the Secret Machines, a modern band that clearly carries Floyd influence, is certainly sold on "The Dark Side.
"It really is so good," says the singer-guitarist. "When someone asks you your favorite Pink Floyd record, you almost have to discount that one. Because it's ... not fair. It's one of those records that's just not fair. Like a lot of what the Beatles did, you can't even really compare it with a lot of other things. It was so far ahead of what they did before. It just really came out of nowhere. It's difficult and challenging but really immediately engaging.
"When I go back and hear it again, I'm always impressed and I always hear new things in it. I always hear it a different way, from a different perspective and I think maybe that's why it keeps going and stands up to so many different perspectives."
Roger Waters
Where: Post-Gazette Pavilion.
When: Sunday at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $34-$129; 412-323-1919.