Full moon: Roger Waters performing “The Dark Side of the Moon Live” at Madison Square Garden.Credit…Judith Levitt for The New York Times
By Sia Michel
The idea of an album may seem increasingly hoary in a singles-oriented, downloading age, but the sellout crowd for Roger Waters at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night paid a lot of money to hear his band recreate a record — in sequence, in its entirety. Granted, the record was “The Dark Side of the Moon,” the 1973 rock masterpiece by Pink Floyd, Mr. Waters’s old band. It lingered on the Billboard 200 chart for almost 15 years and has sold about 34 million copies worldwide. And as long as there are potheads, water beds and freshman philosophy majors, it will continue to sell thousands of copies every month.
Part of the eternal appeal of the album is its trippy, vague seriousness. It seems to be a concept album about the difficulties of staying sane in a corrupt modern world. It seems to encourage people to rebel. It seems to encourage people to maintain a childlike state of purity. It seems to address issues like mortality (“Time”), greed (“Money”), war (“Us and Them”) and madness (“Brain Damage”). In short, it sounds really deep when one is zonked out on drugs at 3 a.m. “The Dark Side of the Moon” helped create the template for what a Great Album is conventionally supposed to be: a thematic, sonically adventurous social critique with brain-frying cover art.
The show drew a wildly diverse crowd, ranging from graying men in suits to entire families, including a fivesome in matching Pink Floyd T-shirts. Such was the reverence for the record that even the ringing bells that opened “Time” received a standing, cheering ovation.
Mr. Waters, the bassist and self-proclaimed “creative genius of Pink Floyd,” credited with the lyrics to “Dark Side,” performed with a backing band that included Nick Mason of Pink Floyd on drums and a guitarist-singer who expertly imitated David Gilmour, the Floyd member who retained the legal rights to the band’s name after it split acrimoniously in the 1980’s.
Mr. Waters took the stage in a roving spotlight, pumping his fist as if he had just won a prizefight. Before he plunged into the album, he played many Pink Floyd classics, including “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a tribute to his eccentric, reclusive former bandmate Syd Barrett. When the face of Mr. Barrett, who died this summer, appeared on the giant video screens, the crowd saluted him with raised lighters and cellphones and the loudest singalong of the evening, which is saying a lot: some die-hards even mimicked the ka-ching of cash registers during “Money”.
As “Sheep” closed the intro, one of Pink Floyd’s trademark inflatable pigs flew about the arena, with “Impeach Bush Now” scrawled on its backside. On the main video screen, Mr. Waters offered antiwar commentary throughout the show and compared Tony Blair to Genghis Khan and the Son of Sam during his awkward new song, “Leaving Beirut.” His agitprop alternated with retro kitsch visuals like squiggly amoebas, human brains, floating pills, space rocks and, naturally, M
other Earth.
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