Capacity: TBA

Concert starts: 8pm

Address of venue: Kölnarena, Willy Brandt Platz 1, Köln, Germany.  MAP

Website: http://www.koelnarena.de/

Tickets for this concert are now on sale through the venue, the ticket agents www.eventim.de or tel: 01805 570000 (Germany only).

Our thanks to Kees Nijpels for sending in the ticket scan, shown to the right.

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!

Do not read on if you don't want surprises to be spoilt, regarding what the band played!

The band have now reached Germany, and the rather unusual looking venue (Wembley Stadium looks to have copied that arch!) was packed to the rafters with excited fans, who enjoyed a great show. The band are off to Leipzig in Germany tomorrow, and conclude their German excusion in Hamburg on Thursday.

CONCERT PICTURES - courtesy of BD contributer, Maxime Berne

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Stefan Blau

I was in Cologne yesterday and I'd like to give you a short impression of what I felt at that concert.

First - it was great! Much has been said about the show and it was really amazing. Loud, explosive, imaginative, fantastic surround sound.

The Kölnarena was packed and the crowd was very pleased from what I could see and hear. What really struck me was the concept of the show - there was a big radio on the screen behind the band and sometimes you could see a hand switching channels, cigarette smoke coming into the frame, a whiskey bottle and some pills next to it. You never saw the person - only when Comfortably Numb was played at the end, the person was revealed and it was clear that it was a young war veteran sitting in his flat, staring at the wall, totally numb, listening to the radio. This whole war concept was very evident throughout the show - very clever.

BUT there were some things that bothered me. The song "Leaving Beirut" is very mediocre stuff - especially for someone like Roger Waters. Boring song - no melody at all. Ok, it's a protest song and protest songs don't necessarily need melodies, but it's a very long song and I was glad when it was over, especially having heard and read (on the screen) the lyrics that could have been written by a ten year old. Don't get me wrong - I am absolutely anti-Bush and anti-war, but the naivety and simple-mindedness of Rogers lyrics seemed ridiculous to me.

Another thing that bothered me was the way the people responded to "Perfect Sense". Very strange! I mean, Roger played all the Pink Floyd stuff and people were quietly sitting on their seats, but then he plays one of his lesser known solo songs and only because of the football choir at the end of the piece coming out of the speakers, people thought the whole arena was singing the chorus and suddenly everyone went totally nuts, jumping from their seats, waving their arms and singing "can't you see, it all makes perfect sense". Strange and frightening, a perfect example of manipulation of the masses.

Oh, and one thing, but I think that has been discussed before - on "Have a cigar" and "The fletcher memorial home" and maybe one or two songs more Roger was definitely lip-synching. No problem for me, because I was very glad he played these songs - and if that's the only way he could play these songs live - ok, no problem.

Overall a great concert with great sound and a terrific show!

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Hans-Juergen Mueller

I came to Cologne in the afternoon, visited my hotel and took a walk along the Rhine River. It was a warm and sunny and I came by the Hyatt Hotel near the Dome, where I noticed about 10 fans, waiting for Waters and the band. They showed me Dave Kilminster on the promenade and said, that they got already a few autographs from the band members. Some waited for more than 5 hours. Roger was spotted once, when he came back from his tennis match.

After a good meal, I went to the KoelnArena (just 5 minutes to go). A lot of people waited before the small entrances and after the door you could see and smell the dry ice all around. And the hall itself was really foggy with it. To my surprise, they played Syd Barrett songs before the show - nice gesture! On the left and the right of the stage, there've been 2 screens and behind the stage a huge rectangular one. There you can see an old radio, a bottle of whiskey, a glass, a full ash-tray and postcards on the wall behind. After some time, old Rock'n'Roll numbers were played and between them "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn (who will be part of the encore later on).

All of a sudden, the picture changed quite imperceptible: the smoke of a cigarette arose! So the picture turned into a film and if you like, this could be claimed as the beginning of the show. Now and then, you could see a hand taking the bottle, filling the glass, operating the radio and finally with the cigarette.

In the end the (almost sold out) show started with a delay of 20 minutes, which is not typical for a Waters' show. The setlist itself is well known and identical to the other shows, even to the show last year in Berlin. It's strange to see the same show almost a year later and to pay more than 50% more than last time! The same show? Well, I thought so, as the setlist was identical! But it turned out, that I was totally wrong. These have been 2 totally different shows!

There a several reasons: First of all, "my friend" Dave Kilminster! We'll never get close friends in our lifetimes and I criticized him in my review last year very clearly (just a remark about that: My criticism last year unearthed some supposed Waters' Fans, who condemned my "lese-majesty" totally and called me names in a very evil way. Well, besides my amusement for this childish behaviour, I'm astonished to learn, that fans of Roger Waters don't know the words tolerence and the right of a free speech. This is very sad, but won't change one word in my review of last year's show!). This year in Cologne, Dave Kilminster was better integrated in the whole band and showed less of his exaltating behaviour. So this could be interpreted as a small praise from me. But he can do better ...

Another reason for the difference was of course the setting. Last year open air in an amphiteater, this year indoor in the KoelnArena. I'm no big outdoor fan and prefer indoor shows, where it's easy to get all things perfect. In Berlin you couldn't see the back projections and the lighting in the first half because it was still broad daylight. There are no problems like this in a hall!

And in the end, the show itself was different! Mainly in part 1, there've a lot of new films. Some really moving! The sound was quite loud (in some parts too loud), but very good! The screens on the sides confused me at the beginning. I was in row 11 near the 3 ladies and had a really good view of the whole stage and so these screens distracted me (in opposition to the folks at the end of the hall). I then just concentrated on the stage.

Waters (again) communicated a lot with the audience and walked to the edges of the stage to get his special applause there. The whole band played the complete set with great routine, but with a lot of power, that blew the audience away. And Waters had obviously a good time ...

All in all, a remarkable change and an enhancement to the Berlin show. I was surprised to see, how the show developed over this year and all the additional elements of the show.

Here some interesting details: During the intermission (this was really just 15 minutes and a lot of fans didn't make it to their seats in time for the second part) you could hear the legendary, old Pink Floyd concert intro with the birds and the noises of Mother Nature. The huge astronaut and the pig were in action and flew through the hall. At the end of the Dark Side set, there was a laser pyramide over our heads. There were some explosions on the stage with such a heat, that I could feel it even in my row 11. And during "Sheep" we had for 10 minutes a thunder-shower out of millions of small green papers from the roof of the hall and all of us became green Shreks.

Musically highlights were "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" with pictures of Syd Barrett (it would be interesting to know, how many of the audience did recognize [or know] him), the moving "Southampton Dock" and "The Fletcher Memorial Home" and of course both parts of "Perfect Sense", where the audience went crazy. The Dark Side set was little surprising, but very good. It's a shame, that "Comfortably Numb" wasn't once again convincing. Normally you can't beat this song as a closer for a show.

After some 140 minutes (if you add the radio intro, it's 150 minutes) the final fireworks closed the show, Waters gave 1 (!) autograph and the band left the stage. They left an extremely happy audience, that went out of the hall for their way home. With some beers, I finished this remarkable night ...