City of Rock, Portugal

Ticket scan - thanks to Dieter Rutjens

Rock In Rio Festival, City Of Rock, Lisbon, Portugal
Capacity: 69,000
Multi-artist festival

Address of venue: Bela Vista Park, Lisbon, Portugal. MAP

Website: rockinrio-lisboa.sapo.pt

Roger's 2006 tour kicked off in fine style, with a show in front of 69,000 festival goers in Lisbon, Portugal. Armed with four and a half tons of lasers, and a device to create a ring of fire, the show is an impressive one, and the longest performance ever heard at Rock In Rio, clocking in at around three hours long!

On a down side, it was widely promoted by AOL that they were going to be webcasting Roger's show, in full, live, as part of their coverage of the Rock In Rio festival. BD, like many thousands across the world, waited patiently for his set to begin, only to be let down at the last minute. Right after the Carlos Santana set finished on the broadcast from last night, viewers could see the crew setting up the stage for Roger. And then... back to a repeat of Carlos Santana's set, with no explanation.

Shortly after this, a message appeared on AOL: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, AOL Music will not be broadcasting the Roger Waters Rock in Rio performance. We regret any inconvenience."

And then nothing. All mention of Roger was removed from the site, and it was only in the cold light of day that it was revealed to be a legal issue, with AOL being tight-lipped about the whole affair. Despite being told some 30 minutes before the concert started that they wouldn't be able to broadcast it, they chose not to pass this information on sooner to the internet audience.

The show itself went down well with those who were able to see it, and it bodes well for the dates that lay ahead. The tour moves to Verona, in Italy, tomorrow for a pair of shows. If you are going, have a great time!

SHOW REVIEW

By BD contributor, Francisco Figueiredo

The show started, after the Carlos Santana show, at 00:30 and ended at 03:12 (with a 15 minute break).

Spectacular surround sound! The sound, special effects and lights are greater than the 2002 tour. New movies and a bar of lights on the stage coordinated with the music. There was also a flame wheel that rose on Comfortably Numb, and a lot of fireworks, specially during In the Flesh.

On Shine On there was no initial guitar solo (something went wrong?), they moved directly to the drum crescendo part.

A great show!

SHOW REVIEW

By BD contributor, Nuno Berberan

Roger performed such an amazing show to an attendance of 70.000 people who waited until 0:30 to watch his show. Everybody had a great expectation of which songs will he play in this tour, but at the end, those who had been in the previous tour In The Flesh, found out the setlist was slightly similar to this one. He even kept some of the musicians like Jon Carin, Graham Broad, Andy Fairweather Low and Snowy White. Doyle Bramhall II was replaced by another guitarist, Dave Kilminster. There were some changes and some surprises such as the live performance of Have a Cigar and Sheep.

The show was divided in two parts of more or less one hour each one. The first included different songs from Pink Floyd albuns like The Wall, Wish You Were Here, A Saucerful of Secrets, Animals, The Final Cut and also some of Waters solo work. Roger had the chance to show us a bit of his new album, with the song Leaving Beirut with a black and white video cartoon. In this song, Roger returned to the Final Cut main theme, leaving a special message for George Bush recent policies, specially in Iraq.

In the second part Waters performed the entire Dark Side of The Moon and end with three encores from The Wall and with fantastic fire effects in the stage.

SHOW REVIEW

By BD contributor, Joao Pinto

I’m still thrilled with the amazing concert that Roger Waters gave at Rock In Rio before 70.000 excited fans.

Roger brought the surround sound system (they had to install 10 additional pair of columns in the audience space of the Rock In Rio). After the performance of Carlos Santana, we wait about 30 minutes for the set change.

And then Roger Waters and his band appeared on the stage and the crowd went mad!!

The show started with 3 songs from “The Wall” Happiest Days, ABITW Part II and Mother, where the female background vocal started to delight the audience. With Shine On and Wish You Were Here, the crowd sang the lyrics in absolute moment of magic.

The next step of the show was amazing. Roger seats in a chair and started to sing masterpieces of Final Cut, in a truly moment of privacy and emotions with the 70.000 people, that were mad with the performance of Perfect Sense: absolutely Amazing this moment!!

Leaving Beirut, with a strong political message, touched the audience, and the first half ended with Set The Controls (magnificent) and Sheep.

After a short break, Roger and his band performed Dark Side of The Moon, with the large circle in the stage where the images were projected, and the audience reacted with large enthusiasm to all the performance.

After Dark Side, the encore was absolutely amazing. Roger and the band came to the stage and then, “Ein, Zwei, Drei!!” a pyrotechnic display in the stage and the crowd were mad: with hands in the air and the throats singing In The Flesh, Vera, Bring the Boys and, finally, Comfortably Numb, where the pyrotechnic display and large fire display offered an unforgettable moment.

Roger seemed to had a nice time, very happy, with a large interaction with the audience, and said that we were a fantastic crowd and said lots of “obrigado” (thank you) and spoke a lot.

The band were amazing, like always, and the new guitar player (Dave Kilminster) played very well, but I think it is very difficult to forget Doyle.

In resume, another great moment of my live: Amazing show, and the feeling that: I WANT MORE!! Roger Waters : Thank you very much for the great moments that you gave to us!!

Pictures: our thanks to Joao Pinto and Pedro Ferreira