September 24, 2006Tay and I went to see the Roger Waters' show at Star Lake Amphitheatre last night. For the most part, the show was very enjoyable. I still believe to this day that Roger Waters represents the "true" Pink Floyd, while the other guys, David Gilmore included, are a roving bunch of pseudoFloydian hacks.
Waters' music through the years has always understandably had strong anti-war undertones. The guy's father was killed in Anzio during WWII. Maybe he saw little point in that war but I'm sure that millions would disagree with his assessment. It's easy for peaceniks to denounce war for any reason and decry that the tree of liberty is stained with the blood of patriots. They live in an idealistic world where they paint the tyrant tag on just about any political leader. But, I think age and creeping senility has finally taken it's toll on ol' Rog.
I was more than a little annoyed when I saw "Leaving Beirut" on his set list for this tour. The song was inspired by a story where his car broke down in Lebanon and how all the wonderful misunderstood Arabs helped him in 1960 something. The song then uses that story to make a leap about how all Arabs are misunderstood and how they all are a kind, sweet people and that magically, 2006 is no different than 1966. It goes on to imply that the conservatives and religious right somehow fucked up the world in the last 40 years to justify the Islamic extremism we see today.
As if 9/11, which happened on the heels of an eight year Clinton presidency, was somehow our fault. That people I knew were dead because of something we did to wrong the Middle East. Fuck that bullshit.
Finally, he released a balloon pig (a la Animals tour), with the message "Impeach Bush" on it's ass.I have three things to say about all of that. First of all, Waters got some hearty boos from more than a few in attendance including myself. I heard that they booed his sorry ass in New York City as well as he tried the same hystrionics the day after September 11th. Secondly, Waters, in describing the Lebanese people sounds like Sean Penn describing Iraq as having "flowery meadows, rainbow skies and rivers of flowing chocolate where the children danced around with gumdrop smiles".
Sooner or later, the Lebanese people have to be held accountable for allowing extremist assholes to hijack their country. As far as I'm concerned, they are all guilty by association until they do something to fix their own damn country.
Is Waters really that delusional that he can paint one positive experience to encompass and generalize about a whole region of people. And a region forty years later, no less! If you did that with a negative experience, you'd be branded a racist. Thirdly, Mr. Waters can get his sorry limey arse out of my fucking country and take the singing Irish assholes (U2) with him as well. The US is a convenient pitstop for these folks to ring the cash register and spout their anti-US message. Let's see how well he does playing in cities in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Syria.
Lastly, I'd like to drop his sorry ass in Lebanon today and see what happens. Maybe someone can "put him up against a wall" and chainsaw his head from his body. Then he can write a song about it and his offspring can get cheers in Pakistan for it.
My support for Roger Waters has officially ended. Hey Rog, thanks for all the great years of Pink Floyd and some wonderful music but you've gone too far off the deep end, so I bid you a fine adieu and say....Fuck You!
No comments:
Post a Comment