The combined wishes of the Brain Damage team, along no doubt with many of you reading this, go to Roger Waters, who celebrates his 70th birthday today. He celebrates this milestone along with the massed fans at the Esprit Arena this evening in Dusseldorf, where Roger will be tearing down a wall as well as no doubt helping to demolish a birthday cake...
Roger was born in Great Bookham, Surrey, in 1943, moving to Cambridge when he was two years old. It was there that he met, and became childhood friends with, a number of key people in the story of Pink Floyd. We hope you have a great day, Roger, and that the concert this evening is special for all the right reasons. Many happy returns!
Of course, Roger has been extremely busy over the last few years, having successfully taken Dark Side Of The Moon on tour in 2006, which became an extended event. On completing that, the touring bug had clearly bitten strongly, as he immediately started work on a new version of The Wall - which finally opened in September 2010. That tour has been spectacularly successful, wrapping up later this month in Paris for show number 217.
Once the tour concludes, we suspect that work will be completed on the planned DVD/Blu-ray of The Wall, taken from recent concerts,
which hopefully will also be announced soon. There's also the promised new material. He did say recently that "it might just be [my last tour]. I'm not a great singer or entertainer, so the concept is very important. I've no trick that I can perform until my 90th [Birthday]. On the other hand, the ambition to make new music is growing"...
Earlier today, Roger Waters appeared at the site of some controversial building works in Berlin, which involves demolishing some of the remaining parts of the old Berlin Wall. See his passionate plea below:
To tie in with tomorrow night's Roger Waters The Wall Live concert in Bucharest, Romania, one of the sponsors erected a large brick advertising the show in one of the main squares of Bucharest. Our thanks for Bogdan Bobocea for sending in these three pictures of the brick! Just click the thumbnails to see them in more detail...
Excitement is clearly building for Monday's BBC Radio 2 broadcast of Darkside at 10pm UK time, and to help build the anticipation, our friends at the BBC have just sent us not just an audio teaser but a VIDEO extract, below, from the play to give Floyd fans a flavour of what it will look like on Monday night at bbc.co.uk/radio2. As a side note, we've had masses of people ask what the situation is internationally, and we've had confirmation from the BBC that the live broadcast will be available to stream worldwide from their site, with no geo-blocking to stop people outside the UK from tuning in, which is excellent news for many!
As we've mentioned though, the BBC are giving Floyd fans the opportunity to choose the Ultimate Pink Floyd Playlist for a two-hour show airing on
BBC 6 Music/Radio 2 on Monday at 8pm, just prior to the Darkside broadcast. What do you think must be included in this ultimate playlist? Let them know by leaving a comment with your suggestion and reason, tweet using #Darkside, and read their blog for more information: http://bbc.in/14Z2BQF.
In this teaser clip from Darkside, Emily and the boy seek out the Wise One in an attempt to discover the secret of life...
Next Monday's Darkside drama on BBC Radio 2, written by Sir Tom Stoppard and featuring Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, includes some very atmospheric and intriguing footage. Seen so far is the promo video (see elsewhere on our news pages) and this is to be followed by an extended film loop to compliment the audio experience online and on the "red button" service on UK digital TV.
Responsible for the footage is Bristol based Aardman Animation, best known for things such as Wallace and Gromit. Aardman director, Darren Dubicki saw the piece working as a film trailer and the team spent time absorbing the rich detail from both Pink Floyd’s music and Sir Tom Stoppard’s play. In doing so they developed a striking visual concept where images juxtapose with carefully considered lyrics and dialogue from the play encompassing the underlying themes of greed, conflict, consumption, humanity and the descent into madness…
Dubicki, who was delighted to be given the opportunity to direct the film, said: “What was fundamentally important to us was that we retained a consistent visual tone that echoed the imagery created over the years for the band. The intensely surreal and powerful artwork created by Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis has always had a strong distortion on reality. Their sense of space and twisted context make for some uncomfortably beautiful art. This tone has been consistent for decades and we wanted to honour this with our contemporary digital (and analogue) slant on the style.”
The films were created using a collage of digital imaging, CGI, studio-based effects and hand crafted elements, and will be available to view online during the broadcast, and subsequently via the BBC's iPlayer on demand service.
Older News Archive 
The combined wishes of the Brain Damage team, along no doubt with many of you reading this, go to Roger Waters, who celebrates his 70th birthday today. He celebrates this milestone along with the massed fans at the Esprit Arena this evening in Dusseldorf, where Roger will be tearing down a wall as well as no doubt helping to demolish a birthday cake...
