Waters's Wall Live — a Good Old-Fashioned Ear-Ringer

Once you have seen enough live rock and roll, you learn that the best part of a set is the spontaneous moment all the players onstage click on something completely unplanned. Roger Waters's touring production of The Wall delivers nothing of this sort. Every moment of this show in San Diego was choreographed months ago.

So, why did I still love this concert? It was a true show. I would even lean toward referring to this event as more of a theater performance than a traditional rock concert. The music played second fiddle to the visual eye-candy, much of which borrowed heavily from the Gerald Scarfe cartoons and images associated with the film version of The Wall. "Goodbye Blue Sky" and "The Trial" certainly stuck close to this formula. Other selections, such as "Mother" and "Run Like Hell," delivered some timely image content ranging from Apple products to innocent victims of warfare. The incredible pyrotechnics display at the end of opener "In the Flesh" was also of note, as was the epic solo closing out "Comfortably Numb." David Gilmour may not have been in attendance, but apparently his guitar tone was.

As far as the band's performance, this group of players did not get nearly as heavy on numbers such as "In the Flesh," "One of My Turns," and "Empty Spaces" as Pink Floyd circa 1980 did, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of rock delivered by this collection of, primarily, baby boomers. Even better was the fact that they weren't afraid to really turn up the volume at the Sports Aren-uh-Valley View Casino Center. This wasn't a golden oldies Humphrey's concert. This was a good old-fashioned ear ringer.

• Concert: Roger Waters - The Wall Live
• Date: May 13
• Venue: Valley View Casino Center
• Seats: Terrace section 20C, row 10, seat 9