Norwegian Wood Festival

Ticket - thanks to Haakon Hagelund and Keith at Neptune PF

Press review - Aften Posten/Oslopuls website

Capacity: 7,500
Concert starts: 7pm

Address of venue: Frognerbadet, Middelthunsgate 28, Majorstua, Oslo, Norway. MAP

Website: www.norwegianwood.no

Another day, another festival crowd - and another reportedly storming show on Roger's tour. The set list seems to have stabilised, with the variation seen at the start of the tour seemingly a thing of the past. Daylight affected things again, but didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the band or crowd.

The tour moves now to the beautiful Italian city of Rome, with Roger playing at the Olimpico Stadium tomorrow evening. Have a great time if you are attending this show, and let us know how it went!

PRESS REVIEWS

A press review, with three pictures of Roger in action at the concert (one of which is shown to the right), can be found at the Aften Posten/Oslopuls website. It is written in Norwegian, however, with no alternate language option.

Another press report, again in Norwegian, that is worth seeing, is at the Side2.no website. As part of their report, they have no less than 49 pictures of Roger and his band in action at the show, most of which is in a slide show. Some wonderful pictures of Roger in action in the daylight!

Additionally, there is Smaalenene.no which has a selection of nine shots for your attention. And, finally, there is Rogalands Avis which gives the show a very short, but positive review, and has six pictures of Roger on their site, including one showing him in a meditative mood... (our thanks to all those BD visitors who told us that there were a number of pictures on Rogalands Avis - we need to work on our understanding of Norwegian!)

SHOW REVIEW & PICTURES

By BD contributor, Bjorn Riis of www.gilmourish.com

Waters did you say? Reviewed by someone from Gilmourish? Well, a lot of our visitors have been asking so here's a brief review and some pics I took from the performance at the Norwegian Wood festival in Oslo, Norway, last Wednesday...

You all know my stand on how Waters is perfoming the Floyd classics. In my mind, he has more or less vandalized many of them. I didn't have any expectations at all, especially after hearing and seeing footage from the opening night in Rio. In all fairness, I must admit that I was surprised a couple of times and some moments made the hair stand on my neck...

The Norwegian summer has daylight almost 24/7, so the show suffered from that. Still there was some really cool films and I was pleased to see that he used most of the original Dark Side films, although they all had a brownish hue.

The first set started out with In the Flesh with the usual Hammers symbol and a lot of fireworks. A classic opener! Then they fired up Shine On and Have a Cigar... I was totally paralyzed. It sounded horrible and they even skipped the opening solo on Shine! I mean, come on! There was no blues feeling. No jams. No communication between the musicians at all... And it was really emarassing hearing Waters lip syncing over his own vocals on Cigar. You could hear it quite clearly and there was a couple of times when he turned away and the voice was still there...

They went on with some songs from The Final Cut and I must say hearing Fletcher Memorial home performed live for the first time was a real treat! I love that song and Snowy handled the solo pretty well.

Amused to Death is one of my all time favourite albums, and tonight's performance of Perfect Sence part 1 & 2 was really awesome! Why doesn't he play more songs from that album? He does it 100 times better than the Floyd songs. The new Leaving Beirut was OK, but it had a really warm story and a strong political message. At least ol' Rog has something to say and he really let Bush and Blair have it... The crowd responded great!

The first set ended with Sheep. A fantastic version only missing David's earpinching sound during the outtro. Definitely the highpoint of the evening!

Dark Side was better than I'd expected. It sounded more or less as on the album. They had some problems on the bridge between Speak to Me and Breathe though... Their monitors just cut they couldn't hear when to start. The drummer clicked them in but right before the end you could hear a loud "crash" on On the Run started.... way too early, which leads me to think that they're running a sequence tape throughout the set. I don't know, but A LOT of stuff was on tape...

Great Gig in the Sky was extremely good and I must admit better than David's with Mica Paris. It was cool to hear Water's old bass patterns too. Just like in 74!

On Money they did a twin solo with Snowy and Kilminister. It was really cool and you got the feeling of the ADT'd solo David's playing on the album.

Jon Carin sang Us & Them... it was beautiful! I really must hand it to him. He is one hell of a musician and it was funny to see that Waters introduced him with the same awe and respect as David did. Great voice and he did a lot of guitar stuff too, like the slide on Breathe (sounding frighteningly close to David...)

The encores were the usual Wall stuff with a horrible guitar duel on Numb. What the hell is that???

All in all it was an OK concert. Not too impressive, but not too disappointing either. It's sad that Waters need backing tracks for his own vocals, but what the hell... he's is bold enough to choose some obscure songs and if it needs some cheating to sound good, then.... OK.

Two things strike me, though. One - Waters seems more relaxed and confident than ever and he made really good contact with the audience. You can also see that he means what he sings. He really wants you to listen and take part. The other thing I noticed was that the band seemed totally lost. There was absolutely no communication and no free space to jam. I don't think they had a bad day (in fact they seemed very pleased), but I think that Waters lacks the ability to include them in the show and music. They do what they're told and that's that. It also sounds a little dull when everything runs on timed tracks. They need to concentrate to keep up. That's really the big difference between David's show and Water's. David communicates with his band all the time and he triggers them to do better. They have an amazing contact between themselves too and they always pitch ideas on each other and take the music to new heights. I miss that in Waters' show. It's too sterile...

To sum it up; it was good seeing Waters in such a good mood and Carin must be one of the most talented guys in the business. The choir girls did a very good job as always, as did the guy on sax. Snowy is Snowy. Hate him or love him... But the drummer and Kilminster.... Someone need to give them a reality check.

So... did I hear a reunion????

SHOW REVIEW

By BD contributor, Thomas Hansen

This is the second time I've seen Roger live, but I hope it isn’t the last. On a warm (and bright) Norwegian summer evening, Roger and his band hit the stage just before 8 o’clock, and kicks off the show with “In the flesh".

First half of the show is old goodies, and in my opinion, “Have a cigar” is the highlight of the first set. The sound is great, but a Norwegian summer is bright, and it doesn’t get really dark before midnight, so the video screen doesn’t live up to its potential.

And yes, Roger does lip sync on some of the songs…

Second set was “Dark side of the moon”, and it blew the audience away, wow!!!!

When they came back on stage to do the encores, it was a party all night long in Oslo, a great show, a great night. Thanks Roger!!

SHOW REVIEW

By BD contributor, Kay Arne Jensen

First of all: thanks Roger for this amazing show. It all started with sun and good weather and then seeing you In the flesh :)

There we had the show, and the quality was great!

Set The Controls, Perfect Sense, The Fletcher Memorial Home, and Sheep are the first songs that come up in my mind from the first half of the concert.

I'm a huge fan of old Floyd songs include the album "Animals". When I heard "Set The Controls" I forgot who I was. It was just that song and the solo. Cheers for a amazing solo guitar playing!

"Fletcher Memorial Home" was special (it will always be) A brave song from Roger. His voice here was really screaming and cool!

SECOND HALF: straight to the amazing "The Great gig in the sky". This song only is worth the ticket alone. I had a tear in my eye and what Roger's woman's is doing freaks me totally out.

In this song the female voice really moved my heart to the limit. Cheers and love for this perfect best Floyd song ever (after Echoes he he!).

For all the other Dark Side songs I'm impressed. He delivered us all about the dark side and the powerful madness we love in this album with surround effects and everything.

For the encore he made us all scream and sing with the heavy "Bring the Boys back home" and "Another Brick in the wall" He lifted us from the dark side to the wall! After the "comfortably numb" the feelings said to me in a hungry way: I want MORE!!!

For me he could just finish the cd 2 from the wall :)

Totally I did not mention mistakes. Only thing I miss is Gilmour's guitar (sorry) but he's the man to play Breath, Shine on, and Comfortably Numb.

The sound had a touch of mess sometimes. It was all too heavy and the guitars gave shadow feelings when they should be light and easy to hear. But this happened only very few times.

All in all a very clever, sharp, serious concert from Roger Waters. With Leaving Beirut and the messages to Bush and America. Not to forget to mention how strong Perfect Sense was. This PP Arnold has the strongest voice ever and the way she sings thrills me.

I really hope Roger finally gets his new rock album out and makes a new tour as fast he can! I'll be there!

Thank you Roger............