Staples Center

The Rolling Stones 5/3/13

Rolling Stones

Legendary comedian Bill Hicks was joking about Keith Richards and cockroaches being the only ones to survive a nuclear war as early as 1990. Here we were 23 years later and despite all the hard living, the indestructible Keith was still touring with The Rolling Stones to celebrate their 50th Anniversary. That was not a typo. 50 years! As in five-oh. Of course The Rolling Stones cemented their place in rock and roll history long before Keith Richards became the punch line of jokes and I was not about to miss my opportunity to see them. I was a late bloomer when it came to the Stones as I did not really start getting into them and appreciating them until Lucinda introduced me to the Hot Rocks double CD with some of their early hits.

Through many online attempts I was able to secure a ticket for Ingrid, her dad, her youngest sister and I to the closest date of the tour in Los Angeles, which also happened to be the opening night of the tour.

The show started with the UCLA Marching Band walking around the perimeter of the floor section while performing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” then the legendary band took the stage for “Get Off of My Cloud” and never let up. Mick Jagger was bouncing around the custom stage that resembled the famous tongue logo with the space just under the upper lip acting as a video screen and the middle of the tongue housing some very lucky guests. In all the concerts I have seen I have seriously never seen a singer with more energy than Mick and here he was pushing 70! He was there to make sure you had a good time and did a damn good job doing it. These guys were giving everything that was left in the tank and apparently that tank was not even close to empty.

There were different special guests slated for each stop of the tour. Our first guest was when Gwen Stefani came out and joined the performance of “Wild Horses.” Keith Urban was next when he joined the band for “Respectable.” I am not a fan of Keith Urban’s music but he shredded on the guitar. Later in the show Keith Richards took over vocal duties for “Before They Make Me Run” and “Happy” before they brought out the guitar player from the Exile on Main St. era Mick Taylor for a raucous/extended version of “Midnight Rambler.”

I read somewhere that this was the first time they ever performed “Emotional Rescue.” I fell in love with that song the first time I ever heard it so first time for the Stones performing it or not I was loving Mick’s falsetto. They came full circle to close out the show with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and I left feeling like I had just been run over by a freight train. Younger bands could learn a thing or two million from this band.

SETLIST: Get Off of My Cloud, The Last Time, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It), Paint It Black, Gimme Shelter, Wild Horses, Factory Girl, Emotional Rescue, Respectable, Doom and Gloom, One More Shot, Honky Tonk Women, Before They Make Me Run, Happy, Midnight Rambler, Miss You, Start Me Up, Tumbling Dice, Brown Sugar, Sympathy for the Devil, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

 

Roger Waters 12/5/10

Roger Waters

My proper introduction to Pink Floyd did not come until one night in high school at a friend’s house when he thought it would be a good idea to take a large amount of Dramamine and watch “The Wall.” I decided to forgo the Dramamine but “The Wall” stuck with me not just for the acid trip that the movie was but also because of the music. This lead me to the double album and then I worked my way backwards through their earlier catalog. As of the time of this writing I still haven’t brought myself to work my way forward through the albums that came afterwards.

When it was announced that Roger Waters would be embarking on a tour playing The Wall live from front to back I knew this was a monumental concert I had to get to. The tour was not coming to San Diego but lucky for me Los Angeles is a mere 100 miles away. As if I needed another reason to love Ingrid she surprised me with tickets as an early Christmas present.

Before the show started while the house lights were on it was hard not to notice what appeared to be a homeless man pushing around a shopping cart through the floor section. He was wearing a sign that had things written on the front and back and was talking with people as he walked around. It soon became clear that the homeless man was Roger Waters and the show had actually started. The stage was as wide as Staples Center and prominently featured a partially built wall made of giant white bricks that doubled as projector screens. As Waters neared the stage he threw a pink doll that was in the shopping cart onto the stage, which triggered fireworks and the beginning of “In the Flesh?”

For roughly the next hour everyone in the audience was transfixed on the spectacle at hand as Waters and his band tore through every song on the first half of The Wall in sequence. My favorite moment was when Waters played “Mother” as video of him playing the song live back in 1980 was projected behind him. There were two other songs played during this half as well: “What Shall We Do Now” that was originally intended to be included on the album but omitted at the last minute due to the time constraints of vinyl and “The Last Few Bricks,” an instrumental added to allow the roadies more time to finish erecting the wall. The last brick went into place during the closing notes of “Goodbye Cruel World” and with that the show paused for an intermission.

With the exception of a couple instances the band performed the second half of the show from behind the wall. One brick was removed during “Is There Anybody Out There” to show the guitarists playing and then for the next song “Nobody Home” I remember a portion of the wall folded away to reveal a hotel room where Waters sang from a Lazy Boy. The guitar solo section of “Comfortably Numb” was performed from atop the wall. All of this of course culminated in the wall coming down at the end of the show in grand fashion.

The Wall is arguably Pink Floyd’s greatest masterpiece and this live production was equally a masterpiece. The sound was fantastic and the technical wizardry gave the audience no choice but to succumb to the immersive experience. I have been to a lot of concerts and can hands down say this was the best “production” I have ever seen.

Pink Floyd The Wall