spinofflive
RogerWaters

PartnersAugust 31, 2017

After the Floyd: A beginner’s guide to Roger Waters’ misunderstood solo career

RogerWaters

With the announcement today that Roger Waters is heading back to New Zealand for a tour next January, Pete Douglas takes a look at his intermittent and sometimes misunderstood solo career.

It’s hard to imagine now, but when Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, he initially struggled to match the success of his remaining estranged bandmates. His first solo record attracted unkind reviews, the accompanying tour saw him personally lose £400,000 due to poor ticket sales, and when his 1987 follow up Radio K.A.O.S was released, it was comfortably eclipsed commercially by his former band’s adjacent effort, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which arrived just a few months after.

During the ensuing world tour for Reason, the David Gilmour-led version of Pink Floyd was met with enthusiastic audiences, desperate to see some version of the band after years off the road, and mostly unconcerned that the man behind the concept and execution of The Wall was no longer in the mix. Waters meanwhile played much smaller venues and became more preoccupied with trying to stop Gilmour and co from using the Pink Floyd name and his work.

Things are different now of course – The Wall Live tour ran from 2010-2013 to positive reviews and huge demand (it was the third highest grossing concert tour of all time), and saw Waters pull off the massive stage show he’d always envisaged to accompany the live presentation of his magnum opus. More importantly, Waters actually genuinely seemed comfortable as a frontman and looked to be having fun playing his songs, which was virtually unheard of previously.

Despite all this latter-day adoration, Water’s studio work post-Floyd is a slightly mistreated mystery to many casual listeners, and so here is a quick guide to his four solo records:

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (1984)

Many Pink Floyd nerds will tell you that 1983’s The Final Cut is the first Waters solo record (and they may have a point – it was after all billed as “By Roger Waters, Performed by Pink Floyd”) but the following year’s The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking was his official solo debut. In a brutal review at the time of release Rolling Stone gave it 1 star, which in hindsight was unfair. Like The Final Cut the record is challenging for sure – basically a concept album following a dream outlining a man’s (Waters) struggle with the concepts of monogamy and family commitment. But unlike The Final Cut it works as a piece of music, and holds up much better than its reputation might suggest.       

Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)

A concept album about a wheelchair-bound boy who tries to stop the onset of nuclear war by using his amateur radio set, Radio K.A.O.S. is probably the weakest Waters solo LP, but it’s hard not to admire his ambition, and it’s still better than the Floyd-by-numbers of Gilmour-shepherded latter day records A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell. The pure pop of single ‘Radio Waves’ is a particular highlight.      

Amused to Death (1992)

In 1980 Waters swore he would never play Berlin again until the Wall came down, and so when it did he pulled together a star studded performance of The Wall, pulling off the amazing trick of turning an inward looking rock opera about being an emotionally crippled rockstar, into a grand political statement.

Armed with the success of this project (which also materialised as a successful live record) Waters proceeded to work on a new solo record dealing with a new generation of war and its manifestations. Unlike its predecessors, Amused to Death was warmly received, showing Waters could take his obsessions and still present them effectively into his middle age.

Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017)        

25 years is an enormous amount of time in popular music, but it didn’t feel like Waters had been away that long when he released Is This the Life We Really Want? earlier this year. Perhaps it was because of how active he has been with his touring, his side projects (including writing an opera), and his general opinion on everything from Brexit to if Radiohead should tour Israel.

Given the state of world in 2017 it’s probably not a surprise that Waters mood is mostly one of complete disgust here, but what makes the record work is that he and producer Nigel Godrich create a piece of music that sounds good, and echoes the best moments of Pink Floyd without slavish imitation of any particular record.          


Roger Waters plays Spark Arena in Auckland on 24 January 2018 and Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium on 30 January 2018. Spark has an exclusive pre-sale for Spark customers, available from 1from 11am, Monday 4 September to 11am, Wednesday 6 September.

Keep going!
Miss Frisky (2)

International Cabaret SeasonAugust 31, 2017

Five reasons why cabaret is the most fun you can have in a theatre

Miss Frisky (2)

Forget the cliches of women in top hats and bustiers singing tired songs about heartbreak. Auckland Live’s International Cabaret Season is full of energy, emotion, feminism and mischief, writes Sam Brooks.

There’s a billion definitions of cabaret, from the clinical to the etymological to the base. For me, cabaret takes the best things of live music and distills it down to two things: Fun and feeling.

Over the past few years at the Auckland Live International Cabaret Season, I’ve tried to catch as many shows as I can. The flipside of being on the opposite side of the world from where most of the best, bravest and riskiest cabaret is happening is that when something gets brought over, it’s because it’s really good and you need to see it. And it means the local productions have to be on that level too.

Miss Frisky, star of Miss Frisky’s Karaoke Experience.

Having seen two of the shows in the festival already in previous outings, the absolutely stunning and tear jerking Starman and the Kiwi-bred glam-rock musical That Bloody Woman, I can say that 2017 looks to carry on the trend of really bloody good cabaret being seen on our shores.

But cabaret is a dirty word for some people! It conjures up images of old folk sitting around tiny tables while a woman sings dated, boring songs on a piano. This is not what cabaret is (even though that does sound kind of great to me) and you’re wrong for thinking it!

This is what cabaret actually is, and also why you should go see it:

It’s basically a more fun version of a concert

Live music is great. I feel that’s an objective fact I shouldn’t need to convince you of.

But sometimes it can be annoying or irritating. The venue might be bad, they might make you sit down (or make you stand up, if that’s your particular irritant), it might be too crowded and gross.

It’s still worth it, though. It’s a chance to see someone you might’ve listened to for years, to hear that song you’ve listened to over and over again staring at your bedroom ceiling live, and to hear the person who sings it banter a bit.

Cabaret takes the best parts of a concert and gets rid of all the bad ones. It’s not crowded, the sound is generally gorgeous (most of the shows in the festival are in the stunning Town Hall Concert Chamber) and you’re not gonna lose a seat at your table if you want to go and get a drink.

That Bloody Woman by Luke di Somma and Gregory Cooper. Dir. Kip Chapman. Auckland Theatre Company production. Production Photo: Michael Smith

The performers are at the top of their game

Actors can act, dancers can dance, singers can sing; sometimes things overlap. Cabaret performers have to do all three, and be charming as hell at the same time. Often they have to write the whole damn thing themselves.

And the thing is, when you have to do all these things at the same time, you tend to get really good at it. And if a festival is willing to drag you all the way over from Edinburgh, or the US, or Germany, then there’s a good chance that you’ll have honed these talents to the finest point. Velvet is a great example of this. The show has done the rounds at the two biggest Fringe festivals in the world, as well as a stint at the Sydney Opera House. It’s a finely and fantastically tuned machine at this point, it’s tried and true. (And, as a big bonus, it features the considerable talents of 70s disco queen Marcia Hines lending her voice to some more disco classics. It’s a huge get for the festival, and sure to be a highlight of it.)

And our homegrown talent isn’t anything to sniff at either: Esther Stephens has one of the most remarkable voices in the country, and she’s taking up the white dress and ten dollar notes of Kate Sheppard for That Bloody Woman again. It was one of my favourite performances of last year, and is guaranteed to be a highlight of this festival.

And Play On features a stunning cast of some of New Zealand’s best performers including Julia Deans (read on to hear how she left me in tears two years ago), Paul McLaney, Ria Hall, Laughton Kora, and Mara TK.

Witness below:

And also another act at this festival (doing a different show, however):

You can drink at your table – and you should!

I think there’s not a single entertainment experience on this earth that can’t improved with a bottle of wine. Concert? Wine! Bowling? Wine! Sport? Probably beer for most of you, but a bottle of wine can’t hurt!

Theatre functions a bit better when you’re a bit tipsy, and by that rule, cabaret functions best when you’re sloshed, and the way that the shows work, it totally encourages you to get sloshed beforehand – and then buy some more during the show. You can get up during cabaret shows and go to the bar! It’s fine! Often, the performers will encourage you to do so! We’ve been conditioned so much during shows or concerts that if we go to the bar we’ll lose our spot at the front that we queued outside from like 11am to get, thanks Florence and/or the Machine (this is me perhaps speaking from personal experience).

But in cabaret, you can get up, keep watching the act, get your bottle of wine, then go back and sit down. Why? Because it’s chill. They want you to have fun. Do you need alcohol to have fun? Absolutely not.

But, as a smart person once said, “Drink to make a good time better, not to make a bad time good.”

Laughton Kora from Play On.

It’s pretty much an hour

The big turn-off with a lot of shows is the running time. Even for someone like me, who genuinely enjoys his three hour marathon shows where angels burst through the ceiling or big Midwestern families have feelings, the running time of a show can be enough for me to pass on tickets. By the time the entire thing is over there’s no time for hanging out after and discussing the show, or even a quick drink with the people you shared this experience with. Cabaret doesn’t have this problem.

It’s a one-and-done kind of thing. You don’t need an interval because you can get up whenever and get a drink (which is the only thing you should do in an interval; the bathroom is for the weak). If you’re crazy like me, this means you can fit several shows into a night! If you’re a normal, adjusted person, it means you can get dinner, see a show, have a drink afterwards. That means the show becomes the highlight of a great night, rather than the thing you’re forced to plan your whole week around.

In fact cabaret wants you to go out after the show. For the first two weeks of the festival, from Thursday through Saturday, they’ll be hosting a secret piano bar running late into the night to celebrate the naughty side of cabaret. Just a short walk from the Town Hall, cabaret ticket holders (and those on the guestlist) get exclusive entry where they will be looked after by a revolving VIP host. Shhh don’t tell anyone.  

When it hits you, it really hits you

I think of the most emotional and real moments I’ve had in a theatre – and I’m currently sitting at about 80 shows seen this year, so take my word for it – has often come from cabaret, even from this very festival in previous years. When I think of those moments, I think of sitting next to a group of friends watching Lady Rizo close out her set with her original song Cherry Lane Saint, or Julia Deans doing an encore of Joni Mitchell’s River. Those moments are the ‘hold the person you came with so they don’t fall apart’ but also so ‘they’ll hold you right back so you don’t fall apart’ moments.

Cabaret pulls together everything to bring itself to you. It’s the drama of it, it’s the theatricality – every element is being used to make you feel something. One moment in particular which sticks out for me is not from this local festival but from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year, during an 11pm variety show hosted by Miss Frisky (who’s performing her Karaoke Experience this year, which is my absolute pick of the festival, hands down. If you’re not seeing Miss Frisky you are doing something fundamentally incorrect with your life).

It was towards the end of this show – everybody in the room was a little bit drunk – and Miss Frisky finished up the show with a gorgeous piano cover of Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’ (an undeniably tacky and potentially even bad song) while a circus performer spun on silks (which is an inexcusably crude way to frame this incredibly beautiful and very difficult act) throughout. The entire stage was bathed in blue and the song was rearranged in such a way it felt like it was coming directly from the heavens. I’m not a big crier, because I am dead on the inside like most theatre people, but I bawled my goddamned eyes out.

Cabaret gives you moments like this. That’s why you see cabaret.


Get ready to stay out late, set your senses alight, fall head over heels, and go a little bit wild this Auckland Live International Cabaret Season (14 September to 1 October). A suite of international and local provocateurs and cultural icons will be unleashed across the city centre, over 18 evocative nights. Get your tickets today.

But wait there's more!