Today is one of the main reasons that we came to London: the wife's 58th birthday, and the concert.
To celebrate, we slept late till 9:30am. Woo hoo!!
Raining, again. A breakfast of eggs, bread and coffee. Since it's raining, again, we decided not to explore Regent's Park as planned. This flat is only a couple of blocks from Regent's Park, but the weather has been so consistently shitty that we don't really feel like spending time in a park in open space. Call us weird.
The only thing on the agenda today is Roger Water's performance of "The Wall" at Wembley Stadium. Roger performed this concert two different times in Houston, but we missed both of them.
Still raining? Time for lunch. Bread, cheeses , ham, grapes and strawberries made a decent lunch. It looked like we might have to see the concert in the rain.
I found a restaurant close to Wembley that we set a reservation for for dinner before the show.
About 4pm the rain finally quit. Just a short break in the deluge?
We left the flat about 4:30pm and jumped on the Bakerloo line, one of four train lines that goes to Wembley. We should have taken the Metropolitan line instead. One of my map-reading miscues. While the Bakerloo line goes to Wembley, we had to walk through a small town, or borough, or neighborhood, to get to the stadium. But it wasn't raining.
Found the restaurant, had dinner and made it to the Club Wembley about an hour before the show.
I had opted for a "Comfortably Numb" package, which gave us special seating, special access to the "Bobby Moore" entrance, and access to a pre-show party room with free booze and food.
There was one more-expensive pre-show package, "The Wall" package. They were right where we were, only on the second floor, with a giant hole in the floor so they could look down upon their lessers.
This crowd is OLD. Average age might be 60. And I don't see one black person at all. We sat at a table and struck up a conversation with a Brit couple who was seeing The Wall for the second time. Only the second?
(On the train ride over, we chatted with one couple who had seen The Wall EIGHT times, and they told us of a couple they'd met during the last show in Stuttgart that had seen The Wall 38 times. You know? That's just a little excessive.)
At 7:45pm, they called everyone to their seats, and the show started at 8pm.
They finished "building" the wall by the intermission. Time for another free beer in the Comfortably Numb Lounge.
Water's performance of the tune "Comfortably Numb" was rather special. That guitar solo is one of the greatest of all time, and Snowy White, the guitarist, did a superb job on it. Multiple goosebumps on this one. Yeah, sure, there were rumors before the show that David Gilmour might join Waters for this show, but it didn't come to pass.
(I decided to embed the last time that Waters and Glover played together, in 2011)
This is one massive performance art show. There must be 50 projectors flashing images on the wall, and sounds were coming from all over the stadium. I can't image the complexity it takes to pull this show off.
After the show, one of the largest waves of humanity I've ever seen surged north of the stadium to the rail lines, and it took at least 30 minutes to walk the 1/4 mile. Fortunately, we hooked up with the same new friends we'd made in the Lounge, and so had a nice chat en route and they helped us get to the right train.
Up till midnight! OMG! Haven't done that in awhile.
Oh, BTW, click here for a review of this performance in Britain's The Telegraph.
Raining, again. A breakfast of eggs, bread and coffee. Since it's raining, again, we decided not to explore Regent's Park as planned. This flat is only a couple of blocks from Regent's Park, but the weather has been so consistently shitty that we don't really feel like spending time in a park in open space. Call us weird.
The only thing on the agenda today is Roger Water's performance of "The Wall" at Wembley Stadium. Roger performed this concert two different times in Houston, but we missed both of them.
Still raining? Time for lunch. Bread, cheeses , ham, grapes and strawberries made a decent lunch. It looked like we might have to see the concert in the rain.
I found a restaurant close to Wembley that we set a reservation for for dinner before the show.
About 4pm the rain finally quit. Just a short break in the deluge?
We left the flat about 4:30pm and jumped on the Bakerloo line, one of four train lines that goes to Wembley. We should have taken the Metropolitan line instead. One of my map-reading miscues. While the Bakerloo line goes to Wembley, we had to walk through a small town, or borough, or neighborhood, to get to the stadium. But it wasn't raining.
Found the restaurant, had dinner and made it to the Club Wembley about an hour before the show.
I had opted for a "Comfortably Numb" package, which gave us special seating, special access to the "Bobby Moore" entrance, and access to a pre-show party room with free booze and food.
There was one more-expensive pre-show package, "The Wall" package. They were right where we were, only on the second floor, with a giant hole in the floor so they could look down upon their lessers.
This crowd is OLD. Average age might be 60. And I don't see one black person at all. We sat at a table and struck up a conversation with a Brit couple who was seeing The Wall for the second time. Only the second?
(On the train ride over, we chatted with one couple who had seen The Wall EIGHT times, and they told us of a couple they'd met during the last show in Stuttgart that had seen The Wall 38 times. You know? That's just a little excessive.)
At 7:45pm, they called everyone to their seats, and the show started at 8pm.
If at first you don't succeed, call in an airstrike. (one of the sayings on the wall)
They finished "building" the wall by the intermission. Time for another free beer in the Comfortably Numb Lounge.
Water's performance of the tune "Comfortably Numb" was rather special. That guitar solo is one of the greatest of all time, and Snowy White, the guitarist, did a superb job on it. Multiple goosebumps on this one. Yeah, sure, there were rumors before the show that David Gilmour might join Waters for this show, but it didn't come to pass.
(I decided to embed the last time that Waters and Glover played together, in 2011)
This is one massive performance art show. There must be 50 projectors flashing images on the wall, and sounds were coming from all over the stadium. I can't image the complexity it takes to pull this show off.
After the show, one of the largest waves of humanity I've ever seen surged north of the stadium to the rail lines, and it took at least 30 minutes to walk the 1/4 mile. Fortunately, we hooked up with the same new friends we'd made in the Lounge, and so had a nice chat en route and they helped us get to the right train.
Up till midnight! OMG! Haven't done that in awhile.
Oh, BTW, click here for a review of this performance in Britain's The Telegraph.
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