One of the moments in history I often list as one I wish I could travel back in time to is the staging of The Wall in Berlin in 1990.

For those not up on their Floyd/Waters history, Roger Waters undertook an enormous show in 1990, set within the former ‘No Man’s Land’ separating East and West Berlin prior to the tearing down of the wall.  Calling upon some of the most talented musicians around, he staged a start to finish performance of the Pink Floyd album The Wall, complete with the building and eventual tearing down of a wall spanning 550 feet in length and standing 82 feet high.

The Wall is a rock opera, spanning two discs based heavily upon Roger Waters’ personal history and his sense of isolation and simultaneous desire to build a wall to keep him from the growing audiences that Pink Floyd was beginning to entertain in the late 1970s.  Throughout the Berlin performance, the story captured by both the songs and the film version of The Wall plays out live for all to see.

I urge anyone passionate about music who has not seen the concert to do so immediately.  It was an awe-inspiring event, highly emotional and symbolic for those in attendance, and the guests on the roster do an incredible job with the material.  Notable performances for me are Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2 with Cyndi Lauper in a schoolgirl’s uniform, Bryan Adams belting out Young Lust, and this rendition of my and my father’s favourite Pink Floyd song, Comfortably Numb.

To watch the documentary on the DVD and hear of the scheduling problems, the multiple losses of generator power during the show, artist ego issues and so forth, the final product is even more astonishing.  There will never be anything quite like it again in my lifetime, I am certain.

Day 192:  Comfortably Numb (live in Berlin, 1990) – Roger Waters w/ Van Morrison, The Band