Roger Waters To Bring The Wall To Chicago

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 12, 2010 9:00PM

Pink Floyd changed their sound plenty of times over the length of their career, and we were fans of the band just about every step of the way, but it could be argued that the band's true masterwork that has held up mightily in the years since its creation is The Wall. Roger Waters led the band on that album to create a tour through one man's inner dystopia that took a little work to unravel but no work at all to get lost in. Once Waters and the band parted ways after the follow-up to The Wall, The Final Cut, neither party was ever quite the same. Pink Floyd would continue on under David Gilmour to tour stadiums and create music that was heavy on tech and distant from emotion. Waters' own solo output fluctuated greatly and his finest moment was probably the song-cycle of The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking, another look inward at emotional turmoil.

One could always tell Waters hungered for a return to the larger stage though. His initial tours were heavy in concept but as his audiences dwindled so did the size of his shows. To counter that trend Waters has pulled out the big guns and announced he will tour behind The Wall, bringing the show to the United Center on September 20 and 21. Waters explains that "This new production of The Wall is an attempt to draw some comparisons, to illuminate our current predicament, and is dedicated to all the innocent lost in the intervening years." We suppose that means we can expect some updated visual cues, and probably a few nods towards the xenophobic tendencies swirling through segments of the world population, but we hope it doesn't mean the core of the show will change much. We were always sorry we were too young to see The Wall onstage the first time around so we're eager for a chance to experience it in person ... we just hope it's not "updated" too much.

Tickets are not on sale yet, but you can register for your chance to be one of the first in line to buy some.