All right, here we are with the first of two consecutive posts... the first one is a milestone birthday of one of the truly serious motherfuckers of the music of our lifetimes.
He's fresh from successfully lobbying another major artist, to stop her from playing Apartheid Israel, and celebrating his big 75th today.
His music is beloved several worlds over, the band he co-founded being -- still, decades after their swan song -- one of the most revered and important ensembles the world shall ever see.
Perhaps the most proletarian of the Progressive Rockers, there will never be a moment on Earth when one of his songs isn't being played somewhere in the world.
In many ways he is the last holdout of the 1960s/1970s, never ceasing to make politically provocative music and statements -- and do the heavy activist lifting that comes with it -- even as he heads for 80.
I watched Dan Rather interview him recently and was absolutely riveted, hanging on every word. Sometimes I wish he could be PM of Great Britain.
If there were a music Hall of Fame of our lifetimes, he'd be a first ballot inductee with honors. The Rock one put him in quite a ways back.
His songs and records speak in an almost unified voice across five decades, a bulwark for tens of millions of people in buffering the Big Pigs' fascist "reality" we now see rearing its head globally.
A child who lost his father to WWII before he ever met him, he's spent his lifetime railing, eloquently as anyone, against a world that takes parents from their children to make the biggest MIC sociopaths richer and richer.
I think if you asked him, he'd say he was only trying to produce something that would have made his dad proud.
That he still provokes people to walk out of his concerts when he starts in on the current situation says to me he succeeded, and is still succeeding.
If I had to make a list of songwriters whose work has helped the most people get through it all, Roger Waters -- born this day in 1943 -- would be top three and maybe top two. All time.
Let's celebrate the big man's day with a full devastator of a set from his first solo tour way back in 1984, when he was aided and abetted by another Hall of Famer. This is the only extant soundboard-sourced tape from this tour and seems/sounds like a shelved live album recorded by a mobile truck outside the venue.
Roger Waters
Rosemont Horizon
Rosemont, IL
7.26.1984
CD1
01 Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
02 Money
03 If
04 Welcome to the Machine
05 Have a Cigar
06 Wish You Were Here
07 Pigs On the Wing
08 In the Flesh
09 Nobody Home
10 Hey You
11 The Gunner’s Dream
CD2
01 4:30AM (Apparently They Were Traveling Abroad)
02 4:33AM (Running Shoes)
03 4:37AM (Arabs with Knives and West German Skies)
04 4:39AM (For the First Time Today – Part 2)
05 4:41AM (Sexual Revolution)
06 4:47AM (The Remains of Our Love)
07 4:50AM (Go Fishing)
08 4:56AM (For the First Time Today – Part 1)
09 4:58AM (Dunroamin Duncarin Dunlivin)
10 5:01AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking)
11 5:06AM (Every Stranger’s Eyes)
12 5:11AM (The Moment of Clarity)
13 Brain Damage
14 Eclipse
Total time: 2:05:43
Roger Waters – bass, guitar & vocals
Eric Clapton – guitar, guitar synthesizer
Tim Renwick – guitar, bass
Chris Stainton – bass, keyboards
Andy Newmark – drums
Michael Kamen – keyboards
Mel Collins – saxophones
Doreen Chanter – vocals
Katie Kissoon – vocals
2015 silver "Lunatic Rave" boot CDs on the Mid Valley label;
this is the only known soundboard-sourced tape of this tour,
possibly recorded for an unreleased live album
773 MB FLAC/September 2018 archive link
I'll be right back in 24 with more, but today you better think about all the times his music, and the music of Pink Floyd, has given you that necessary, irreplaceable push... and give major thanks for the life of Roger Waters.--J.