Roger Waters Best of

Roger Waters' The Wall, Live In Berlin marks the second in a series of Pink Floyd related reviews I will be writing to commemorate the long awaited release of the band's Pulse DVD, which I reviewed last month. During the end of the 80's, after Roger Waters had left Pink Floyd, he began making plans to perform The Wall as a huge event, originally considering such grand places as the Sahara Desert, Monument Valley, The Grand Canyon, and Wall Street. Around this time, plans were also underway for the reunification of Germany, and the Berlin wall eventually fell in November of 1989.

Raymond Briggs' animated tale about an elderly British couple living out their last days after the bomb has dropped spawned this hit-and-miss soundtrack, with contributions from Squeeze, David Bowie, Genesis, and a lengthy coda from Roger Waters and the Bleeding Heart Band…

Roger Waters is Pink Floyd's grand conceptualist, the driving force behind such albums as Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. In the wake of Syd Barrett's departure, Waters emerged as a formidable songwriter, but it's this stretch of '70s albums – each one nearly symphonic in its reach – that established him as a distinctive, idiosyncratic voice within rock and, following his departure from Floyd in 1985, he continued to create new works in this vein (notably, 1992's Amused to Death) and capitalized on the enduring popularity of his old band by staging live revivals of Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall in their entireties.

In The Flesh was a series of worldwide concert tours by Roger Waters that spanned three individual tours over the course of three years (1999, 2000, and 2002). Returning from a 12-year-long hiatus from the road, In The Flesh was a showcase of his best known work from his days with Pink Floyd, with that material dominating shows. Songs were also performed from Waters' most recently released solo album, 1992's Amused to Death, being played live for the first time. The tour's name is an allusion to the 1977 Pink Floyd tour for the Animals album, as well as the two songs so titled on the album The Wall.