Capacity: TBA

Concert starts: 9pm

Address of venue: Via G. di Vittorio, 6-20090 Assago (MI), Italy.  MAP

Website: http://www.forumnet.it

Tickets for this concert are now on sale, through the venue, Ticketone.it, and other normal agents.

Our thanks to Francois Prieto for sending in the ticket scan.

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!

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

Roger and his band rolled into Milano to the delight of the Italian fans. Playing the impressive indoor venue, the show was received extremely well and all shot by far too quickly for the near capacity crowd.

For those who have been following the tour, including the setlist and the great visuals, this show brought no surprises, but irrespective, it was clearly a good, well-received show.

Back onto the autostrade now, heading back north to Antwerp in Belgium. If you are going, have a great time!

CONCERT PICTURES - courtesy of BD contributer, Alexander Macinante

CONCERT PICTURES - courtesy of BD contributer, Chiara Borroni

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Rafael Lima

To tell my story about this show, I have to go back in time a little bit. Last year, in December, everyone was talking about Roger's show in Brazil (I'm Brazilian), but at that time, those were all rumours. When the fog came down and I thought it would never happen, I decided to spend my holidays (February, March and April) in UK. Yeah, when I bought my ticket I saw that those weren't rumours and I would not go to his show on Brazil. But then I thought that I could go to it in London, on May 7th, but I realized that I was coming back to Brazil on April 29th! Come on, Roger was running away from me, I had to "catch" him somewhere! And that "where" turned out to be Milan.

I got to the city without speaking Italian or any experience in the country and alone, but it was worth it for Roger!

Finally, the show.

The place wasn't fully crowded, for my surprise, but everyone was trying to get in the mood. Most of the people had Roger's T-shirts (not the originals, but the ones being sold at the entrance of the stadium, at half the price), and the ones who couldn't get Roger's T-shirt, managed to go with PULSE's T-shirts, or even worse: David's On An Island T-shirts!

The film on the screen was very interesting, showing the radio, before the show, and "the hand" changing the stations, I guess everyone laughed when it played ABBA. Sometime later, the lights went down, the crowd started shouting, and Roger and the other players came.

They started playing In The Flesh, very good! It's impressive to see Roger as the showman he used to be in the Floyd, interacting with the people. Mother was quite normal, the solo was just ok, one point for the singer girl, very good, all of the three were. Everybody sang at the chorus.

Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun really divides me, I love that song, but I don't know if I really liked what Roger did to it on this tour, that solo wasn't good at all, at least to me, the guitars sounded a bit lost sometimes.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond was very good, the projection film was much better than the PULSE one. The players were perfect, the sax solo, everything. I thought I would lost my voice while shouting "shine on you craaaazy diamond".

I had some doubts about Have A Cigar, after the video I saw of Roger singing it on his first show of this tour, back in 2006, in Rock in Rio Lisbon, he almost didn't have voice at all, and I feared it was still happening. Fortunately I was completely wrong. His voice was very good, limpid, he didn't choke at anytime. And I am sure it wasn't playback! The guitars at the end weren't very good.

And then, Wish You Were Here, this is one of the songs that there is no way in which it could be bad, and it wasn't at all. Roger sang in a very good way, for my surprise. The guitars were very good. Again, everyone sang aloud.

Southampton Dock was a pretty intimate piece, with him sitted and playing the guitar, very emotional. So it was with Fletcher Memorial Home, with the projection in the back touching us even more. I have to say that some tears came to my eyes sometimes.

And then the astronaut came, everyone stared at him, I guess I even forgot the song was starting. Perfect Sense, just perfect. The girl singing, perfect. Everyone shouting the chorus, perfect.

Roger introduced Leaving Beirut, telling us about his trip to the Middle East and hitchhiking home. This version of the song is even more perfect than the original, if it's possible, incredibly touching, the projection showing the story of the song, the lyrics of the short story, it was all too sad. By the end of the song I was really crying.

The pink pig appeared. With messages against Bush, religion and Dick Cheney, it flew around the stadium. And Sheep started, I thought I would enjoy more this song, the guitars weren't as explosive as I thought it should be, but still very good.

The Dark Side Part was fantastic. The sound was perfect, the visual effects also. The projections were superb. Each song got a different colour. Fantastic! The guitar solos were precisely reproduced. Roger sang very well. Just perfect. To see the prism become real at the end was incredible! Highlights were the new projection for On The Run and the visual effects for Any Colour You Like, two songs that are just forgotten sometimes.

After the Dark Side Part, the crowd shouted, screamed, asking for the encores. And they came back for the The Wall encore. Everyone sang everything, every line. That was fantastic! I just didn't enjoy Comfortably Numb, Dave Kilminster tryed to play by Gilmour's book, but he just couldn't. Didn't like it at all.

The guitars were something that I didn't really enjoy. I always got the feeling that they were playing everything by the book, in this case, by the album. It's good in a way that they can't mess anything, maybe Roger has this fear as well. But I one of my favorite things in a rock concert are the improvisions, there weren't much here. Sometimes I really missed Gilmour's hands. But the projection films were far better then the PULSE ones.

I think it was the best night I've ever had, it was incredible. Really worth coming from another country! And after all, I caught Roger!

CONCERT PICTURES - courtesy of Stas Voler

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Simon Wimpenny

First a little history (thats not for fools :>)

A lot of people ask me out of all the European 2002 shows I saw (all of them but 2!) which one was the best? I always reply the same without hesitation and that is Milan, Italy closely followed by Rome, Italy. Theres no other fans in the world as passionate about Roger (& Floyd) as the Italians. I remember at the show in 2002 a group of fans had made a huge banner and hung it over the balcony to the left of the stage, it was painted to look like The Final Cut album cover with with the words "Our Hero Returns" written on it, upon Roger coming onstage he immediately walked over to the side and acknowledged the fans who had made it, the whole section of crowd in that area went absolutely wild!! I think experiencing a Roger Waters show in Milan should be on everyones list of top 10 things to do!

Anyway, I always said no matter where or when Roger played in Italy again (especially in Milan) i'd be there no matter what. When the tour was announced and Milan was on the list I immediately started to make my plans for this show. I booked the flight from Manchester to Bergamo (about 45 minutes out of Milan) and paid the £39 (approx $70!!) roundtrip airfare without hesitation, I was to fly out the morning of the show and return the morning after. I booked the bus from the airport to Milan central and a cheap hotel by the central station for the night. I think within 12 hours of the show being confirmed I was all booked up and I've been sooooo looking forward to the show ever since!

Monday 23rd April (yesterday) I awoke at 3:45am and took the 45 minute drive to Manchester airport for my 6.30am flight, the only 'downside' to the cheap flights to Europe from the UK is the early time a lot of them depart, it could have left at 3am for all I care, lol.

9.30am I arrived in Bergamo, I’d looked online the night before at the weather forecast for Milan and it was forecasting a high of 78' during the day! This was great for me coming from a cold, damp morning in England! The humidity hit me as soon I stepped of the plane, you could tell it was gonna be a hot day.

The transfer bus was waiting outside the terminal and 15 minutes later I was on my way! The route the bus took was lined with thousands upon thousands of wild red poppies along the roadside!! seeing these gave me goose bumps and certainly made me smile with thoughts of The Final Cut tracks to come that evening :>)

I sent my friend Kevin a text message to say I was on the bus, Kevin had been to the Barcelona show 2 nights before and I knew he was getting the night train to Milan but wasn’t sure where he was at this present time. 30 minutes later I got off the bus at Milan central station and spotted Kevin.

We walked the 5 minute walk to the hotel and checked in, crashed in the room for an hour or so then went across the street for breakfast at a typical Italian street side café bar, yes in Europe you can order a beer with your morning croissant, however orange juice was my drink of choice, lol.

I got a text from one of my two Italian friends (Tizziano & Stefano) I was meeting, Tiziano wanted to know if i'd like to see a few sights of Milan and to let him know ASAP as if so he'd have to borrow his fathers car and leave his Porsche at home as it only seated 2 people, lol Stefano was with him, I told him to leave Stefano behind and pick me up in the Porsche, well it was worth a try,lol:>)

We saw a few sights, had a couple of Coffee stops and the started to make our way to the gig, calling at the hotel first to pick Kevin up. I met Stefano & Tizziano at the Gilmour shows in 2000 and had kept in touch by e mail ever since. We'd met up at a couple of gigs over the last 5 years or so and more recently a couple of weeks ago at Rogers Zurich show but due to them arriving late we'd not had much chance to chat. Tizziano is a dentist and works just outside of Milan, he met Stefano through Floyd related things about 15 years ago. Stefano has written over a dozen books about Pink Floyd, sadly only ever published in Italian. The two of them are good friends with Nick Mason and only a couple of years ago had arranged for Nick to do a book signing in Milan. They picked Nick up on his arrival, drove him around, arranged and paid for his hotel and had also shown him some sites in Milan while he was there! as I said, Italian fans are VERY passionate about anythink Floyd related and will go to any lengths to see their 'heroes'.

The venue was a large indoor arena about 15 miles west of Milan and took about an hour to get there, by the time we did I was glad the Porsche had been left at home due to Tizziano driving like a 'typical' Italian!!

ANY gigs around Italy are well known for the amount of people that go to them just to sell bootleg t shirts, jackets, hoodies, scarfes etc etc you name it and they'll put the words Pink Floyd on it and sell it! Around the edge of the venue was like your typical Saturday market, there were hundreds of things for sale every colour, size and style imaginable!

I went for a wander round the venue to soak up the pre show atmosphere.

I'd arranged to meet another friend, Renate who runs Snowys fan club website and had received a message from her earlier but couldn’t find her around the venue. Tizziano, Stefano and I wandered into the venue as they wanted to get themselves sorted out in plenty of time, the show wasn’t to start until 9.30pm which is popular in a lot of the European cities so I had an hour or so to kill.

I went outside and met up with Kevin about 8:30 and we made out way back into the venue take our position for the show. It was standing on the floor and two tiers of seats around the arena. We'd decided to stand for this show as the atmosphere is definitely a lot better, but we found a great place to sit that was about 15 feet back from the stage and to the left side. It was on the floor but was elevated up about 10 feet so you could see out over the floor standing crowd. I gave Kevin a leg up and by the time he'd turned round and got comfy a lot of other people had spotted this 'unique' place and were clambering up to get a good view, the same thing then happened along the other side of the venue.

At 9.15 the Pyros went off at the start of In The Flesh and the moment I'd been waiting for was actually here!

Spanish and Italian crowds have this thing they do that I’ve never experienced anywhere else in the world! Whilst I’m not a huge fan of the crowds singing the songs, the Italians do it not only in perfect time, but all together, in tune and at the right times!! They have this chant like think that they do as well, similar I believe to what they do at football matches. Between each track you can hear them shouting Roger, Roger, Roger this has to be heard to be believed and really does create an amazing atmosphere.

Roger was helped along by the crowd to the words of 'Mother' and they then went wild to the opening notes of Set The Controls and seeing the images of Syd and the rest of the guys on the backdrop just got them even more fired up! THIS was what my several months wait was all about, the whole place was buzzing and I was in absolute heaven!!

Snowy did the opening notes to Shine On fine however he missed a couple of notes after the intro and this totally threw him off, then missing the next few bars, Roger just smiled over to Snowy and laughed.

I've always thought that when a musician makes a simple mistake like the above they play even better than they would have done for the rest of the show. This was clearly visible by Gilmours guitar playing at some of his shows last year, Gilmour would make a mess of some guitar part early in the show and his whole attitude and stance could be seen to change for the rest of the gig, his legs would bend more at the knees, he'd go into a crouched like stance and play like never before for the rest of the set. This was EXACTLY the case with Snowy last night as heard in an amazing solo during Fletcher Memorial, it was as though he was teaching the guitar not to fuck with him and showing it who was in charge the rest of the night!! Great stuff that you have to be there to see, hear and appreciate.

Rogers emotion during The Final Cut tracks was certainly not lost on the Italian fans, something Roger obviously noticed after his comment to them later in the show. Perfect Sense and an audience in Milan!! how the hell could it not be a recipe for one of the best versions i've heard! The applause PP got after her vocal solo showed just how much the audience were into this show.

At the end of Perfect Sense the applause and loud continuous chanting of 'Roger, Roger' were enough to make the whole band smile and for Rogers usuall immediate introduction of Leaving Beruit to be put on hold for at least 60 seconds while he stood there and couldn’t do anything but to take in the admiration from the audience, his consant shouts of 'gratzi' just set the audience off again and again!!what a buzz he must have got from that!

Eventually he manage to get his 'speech' in and Andy Fairweather Low came to the front of the stage with his now well known 'Cowboy look' and white strat and proceeded to show the Italians what he had to offer. Once again Snowy took his Les Paul guitar that by now I’m pretty sure knew Snowy had control over but he wasn’t leaving it any doubts by playing a blinding solo, you could almost see the sparks coming from the frets and the smoke from Snowys fingers!!! the guy was on fucking fire and loving every minute of it!

One thing that always makes me smile is when Roger sings the line 'the bulldog is a poodle...' watch his actions, he crouches down slightly and shakes his arse like a dog crouching and shaking its tail,lol. Also you won’t notice unless your sat dead centre and towards the rear of the venue but when the speech bubbles come up onscreen with the lyrics in, their position relates to whose singing the lines, when Roger sings, the speech bubble is lined up to him and when the girls sing or join him in harmonies the speech bubble above them has 3 spikes pointing down towards each one of them!

Jon's fingers on the keys playing the intro to Sheep was next up and my immediate thought was where the hell did the rest of the first set go!! It's nearly over already! Sheep really is a great track for finishing the first set, everyone's just dancing about, singing out loud and on such a high and then the pig comes out, quietens everyone down by making them take pictures and trying to read the writing on the pig while listening to Jon and Harry on the keyboards, then its one last chorus to get everyone going again before the end of the set.

The band left the stage after Roger telling everyone they’d be back in 15 minuetos to perform DSOTM.

Sure enough the band return to the heartbeat sound and the image of the satelite onscreen getting bigger & bigger. On the European & USA tour last year they only used the circle in the middle of the screen for the Dark Side set but seeing the satelite coming at you the full size of the screen shows you just how much more effective using the whole screen is, I swear you actually want to duck down when the image gets full size and flies by!

Graham's drum into to Time got the crowd all hyped up again and their perfect timing on singing the opening words 'ticking away the moments that make up a dull day' almost drowned Roger's vocals out totally!! The same thing happened with Money as well.

I’m pretty sure from the crowds reaction to Dave Kilminsters solo during Any Colour You Like that they had accepted him as a suitable replacement for the 'other' Dave! One thing that is easily missed and you have to watch out for is Roger's fantastic bass playing during ACYL, this is often missed due to all eyes being on Dave as its the same time as his 'face melting' solo!

I cant remember if its during ACYL or Us & Them but watch the screens at the side of the stage, the camera guys are the same each night and travelling with the crew and its the same guy that’s doing the vision mixing each night as well, there's a great 30 second shot that shows Harry on the keys and Roger on Bass mixed together on the screen!

I’ve always liked Us & Them as a track but seeing it played live shows just how good of a track this is, its certainly move a lot higher up in my list of favourite Floyd Tracks, it really does work well live and involves the whole band in its performance. Brain Damage and Elipse went by as normal with the crowd appreciative of the Laser effect. This whole show with its effects, pyros, lasers etc work so much better indoors, if you’ve only seen the show at an outdoor gig then try make an indoor one for a lot better experience.

As the band went offstage before the encore the whole crowd began to chant..... 'whhooooaaaa' it got louder and louder building up until they came back onstage, again, something very unique to the Italian audiences.

Ok, imagine hearing 15,000 plus people all singing everyword to Another Brick and doing the hand motions in the air! Whatever you can imagine is only a fraction of what its actually like, it has to be seen and heard to be believed.

The same with Vera, the whole audience helping Roger along with the lyrics, it was spine tingling stuff. When the 'bombs' went off during Bring The Boys Back Home' I don’t think the crowd could believe it, the look on their faces was sheer shock, amazement and delight all in one.

Comfy Numb closed a fantastic show, Dave playing an excellent closing solo however Snowy made a couple more mistakes, the Les Paul guitar just managing to get its own back on what was a faultess second half of playing by Snowy. I’d have to listen to a recording of the show to remember exactly what Roger said to the audience but it was something similar to "you’ve been a fantastic audience, we need to take some of you up north with us, we always enjoy playing here in the south"

After the gig I managed to find Renate who'd i'd missed before the show, was great to meet up and say hi face to face, I was just sorry we didn't have more time. Tizziano drove us back to the hotel and my head hit the pillow at 2am only to be woken again this morning at 6am feeling like all of 60 seconds had gone by.

As you can probably tell from my review above I had a FANTASTIC 36 hour trip and Milan lived up to everything I was expecting and more.

I’m now sat on the flight home, just gone over the Swiss alps and the captains just anouned that its 45' in Manchester windy & raining, why am I not surprised!!!

Home,home again....well for a week anyway,then its Paris & Holland and then the fun really begins with gigs in my own country!!