Roger Waters Brings This Is Not A Drill Tour To Boston: Recap & Photos

There are a few things you’re sure to get at a Roger Waters show: amazing production, a highly talented band behind him, and plenty of politics. The This Is Not A Drill Tour, which landed at Boston’s TD Garden on Tuesday night, has plenty of all of that, but it also contains what might be the co-founding member of Pink Floyd’s most autobiographical show to date.

The production was second to none. Being in the round – something more bands should do – is a brilliant move. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house as Waters and the band moved around the T-shaped stage. The video screens mirrored the stage and projected everything from typed messages to the crowd, to Pink Floyd imagery through the years, to animations that went with the music. The audio production was also surround sound, as Waters has done in the past, and the light show, while simple, was gorgeous.

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It’s amazing to watch what Waters and his team come up with every tour to make it different from the last one. Waters (and Pink Floyd in general) has always been known to be on the cutting edge of live shows with jaw-dropping set pieces and visuals and he’s done it again. One of the most impressive parts did not come until near the end of the show when the Dark Side of the Moon was recreated with lasers and the video wall. It’s one of the most impressive feats of the whole show.

The band is impressive and almost exactly who was on the Us And Them Tour from a few years ago. Newcomers to his nine-person band include organist Robert Walter, who got to shine plenty of times through the night. Also joining the band are singers Amanda Belair and Shanay Johnson, who took over the roles previously held by Lucius’ Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig and did a terrific job harmonizing with Waters and taking a few solos. Watching them effortlessly play some of the most iconic songs in rock history was pure joy. Seeing Waters’ reaction to it through the set was also wonderful. You could see the genuine love he has for this band during both sets.

Never one to bite his tongue when it comes to politics, this show is no different for Roger. The show started off right away with a message over the PA and on the screens saying if you like my music but not the politics to go, “Fuck off to the bar.” From there came among the most haunting version of “Comfortably Numb” that’s ever been played as the screens showed a post-apocalyptic landscape that truly set the mood for the night and came full circle with the explosions happening during “Two Suns in Sunset.” During the medley of “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” and parts 2 and 3 of “Another Brick in the Wall,” flashes of statements asking who should you trust and who is good and who is evil and who controls those ideas scrolled across the screen.

Greed came up back-to-back with “Is This The Life We Really Want?” and “Money” depicting luxuries and a pig dancing around loads of money and other excesses. Waters went after fascists and wannabe strongmen during the beginning of the second half of the show with a succession of “In The Flesh” and “Run Like Hell” coming out in full The Wall regalia, with a fake shooting a gun into the crowd, the giant pig floating above everyone with new slogans on it, and the screens depicting the likes of Putin and the previous President of the United States before showing clips that were leaked by Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. A plea for human, trans, reproduction, Palestinian, and other rights scrolled over the screens during “Déjà Vu.”

“Sheep” to close set one sees Waters making sheep noises as the song began with visuals of pigs, dogs, and sheep projected across the screen as well as medicine and the COVID-19 virus. As the jam went on the visuals went straight to all of the recent Supreme Court decisions that have taken away so many rights for so many people. “Us And Them” started visually with the slow walking workers, as it has since the 1970s, but then turned to the recent protests of the past few years. It’s good to see that Waters still believes in the power of music and how it can change the world.

Waters has never shied away from speaking about Syd Barrett during his shows. Waters went even deeper into their relationship during the first set, thoroughly digging into their friendship and brotherhood and depicting how Waters’ life was affected from losing his best friend. “Have A Cigar” showed the last original member of Pink Floyd on the screens, slowly showing more and more of just Syd and Waters as the latter and the band went into “Wish You Were Here,” which included Waters’ typed words of how losing Barrett affected him.

Those words changed to how he almost lost himself as “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)” started up and how he was scared he was going through what Barrett went through. The show felt like Waters coming to peace with a lot of the memories of his days in Pink Floyd and with Barrett, which he’s seemingly not done to this extent before.

The crowd in Boston appeared to genuinely move Waters. He acknowledged, a few times, how delighted he was to be playing for this specific crowd with all the love and adoration and attention everyone gave during the show.

“Outside The Wall” closed the show with the band marching around the stage before disappearing through the crowd and into the night having successfully pulled off another brilliant performance.

Roger Waters’ This Is Not A Drill Tour continues on Friday in Montreal.

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Setlist

Source: JamBase.com