Capacity: TBA

Concert starts: 8pm

Address of venue: Schijnpoortweg 119 - 2170 Merksem (Antwerp), Belgium.  MAP

Website: http://www.sportpaleis.be/

Tickets for this concert are on sale now, through the venue, Go For Music, and other normal agents.

Our thanks to Eric Van Den Bergh for 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!

A country famed for its wonderful, diverse beers amongst many other things was the host for Roger Waters and his band, giving the capacity audience a great time with another superb show.

For those who have been keeping an eye on the tour thus far, there will have been no surprises in store at the show - no changes to the set, or new visual or audio treats - but then it is difficult to improve on what seems to be fairly much perfection.

Stockholm in Sweden is the next stop on the tour, tomorrow night.

To see a local newspaper's review of the show, go to the website for "Het Nieuwsblad". Our thanks to Didier Delboo and Dany Vandenhoudt for their help with the above info.

CONCERT PICTURES - courtesy of BD contributer, Yuval Martin

CONCERT REVIEW and pictures - by BD contributer, Robin de Krijger

Yesterday I attended the concert of Roger Waters in Antwerp (Belgium). It has been quiet a year for me. Last year I have seen David Gilmour in Amsterdam and Roger Waters in Lichtenvoorde (outdoors). And now again Roger Waters in "Het Sportpaleis".

For me it was a great change to compare this concert with the outdoor concert of last year. The setlist was complete the same, but there where some changes that I'll mention later on.

We arrived at noon at the venue: we've planned to make some touristic trips in beautiful Antwerp. The weather was great (about 25 degrees celcius). The concert started at 8:15PM with a radio on a big screen switching channels to hear music from Vera Lynn to Abba.

Then "In the Flesh" started spectacularly, with lots of fireworks at the end. Great way to kick off a concert! The shortening of "Shine On" was the same as last year. I don't like it very much, but, on the other hand, I prefer the short version of Roger over the acoustig version that David Gilmour played last year. Still the original version should have been played. Why didn't you, Roger?

The thing that struck me the most in the first set, was the arrangement of "Set the Controls": in my opinion, it changed a lot. During the "Final Cut" songs and "Have a Cigar" I have looked closely to notice lip syncing. I could not notice it. And Roger was in close up on the screens.

"Leaving Beirut" and "Sheep", the last two songs of the first set, were great. The giant, really giant, pig during "Sheep" draws the attention. Too bad, the song was really great and that should have drawn the attention.

The second set "Dark Side of the Moon" kicked off after a 20 minute break. "Dark Side of the Moon" stands as a rock. No comments here. It's just one of the best albums ever. The encores were all from "The Wall". All in all, a great experience. But... why does Roger play so many songs he played on the "In the Flesh" tour as well? Why not "One of these Days" instead of "Set the Controls", "Hey You" instead of "Mother", "Run like hell" instead of "Comfortably Numb"? And I would have liked a few more songs from "Amused to Death" as well.

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Benoît Bertrand

Un Sportpaleis bourré pour ce concert belge de Roger Waters!

Le show est réglé au millimètre, l'utilisation de l'écran géant est vraiment géniale, les effets pyro et lumineux sont de toute beauté. Le son était légèrement trop fort, moins clair en tout cas qu'il y a 3 ans, au même endroit.

Mais comment dire, j'ai eu un peu l'impression que Roger manquait de punch. C'est vrai qu'il faisait très chaud, et qu'il a été se réfugier souvent près des ventilateurs, sur le coté droit de la scène.

Le public également, était très amorphe et avait l'air ébahi par tous les effets. Il ne s'est vraiment réveillé que juste avant la pause. Roger l'a-t-il senti ? Il a ponctué "Sheep" d'un "Thank you" qui avait l'air tellement déserpéré, enfin il venait d'entendre le public !

J'ai été un peu déçu par la version (très) courte de Shine On..., et le solo final de Comfortably Numb, moins élancé et virtuose que lors de la tournée précédente.

Have a Cigar a donné l'impression (??) d'être chanté en play-back, ce qui est bizarre pour un artiste aussi perfectionniste. Si c'est le cas, pourquoi "chanter" ce morceau ?

Au total, il chante lui-même beaucoup moins que lors des tournées précédentes.

Enfin, vous l'aurez compris, un très beau concert, très bien maitrisé, mais qui m'a laissé sur ma faim quant à la réelle volonté de Roger de nous faire partager tout son talent. Difficile à expliquer, en tout cas, de la part d'un vieux fan inconditionnel. Ah oui, j'oubliais, la setlist est évidemment la même que pour les autres dates. Peut-être n'aurais-je pas dû lire tous les commentaires précédents, et bénéficier ainsi plus d'un effet de "surprise" ?

CONCERT REVIEW and pictures - by BD contributer, Sander de Kraker

This was the first RW concert I’ve ever seen, and the second Floyd-related (first one was David Gilmour in Amsterdam, in 2006).

After a one-hour journey we headed into Antwerp through the subway. There weren’t a lot of people, until we reached the final destination. From then it was just walking along with the endless stream of people. I hadn’t visited the ‘Sportpaleis’ (Sportspalace) before, and it was astonishing to see how big it was.

After approximately 12.000 people had found their seats the show could begin. Best intro I’ve ever seen. In The Flesh was great, bombastic and explosive. I didn’t notice any lipsynching during the whole show, but I didn’t try to find it anyway. Roger’s voice sounded very good, especially compared to Live8. I almost haven’t heard recordings of this tour so it was be a surprise on how the songs would turn out to be.

Mother was just great, although the woman singing was kind of overdoing it. Set The Controls was interesting, not as psychedelic as the earlier live versions. The saxophone gave it a ‘Tangerine Dream’-isch feeling, which was nice. Have a Cigar was probably the worst song of the show. Roger was continuously walking across the stage the whole show, waving and smiling at the audience.

Wish You Were Here had the great intro of the hand on the radio. The song itself wasn’t very emotional, but the acoustic slide solo was a nice difference with the album version.

The solo songs (Perfect Sense, Leaving Beirut) and the Final Cut songs were not very great musically (apart from a very nice guitar solo by someone with a cowboy hat, I couldn’t see his face), but accompanied by the video pretty nice. Roger also played an ‘air violin’ (like you’d play an air guitar). The astronaut came out of no-where, and the atmosphere fitted perfectly when it hovered over the audience. Sheep was great, the pig seemed to be flying around for ages. I even got the impression they were playing some parts twice, but thats probably not the case.

I don’t know when, but at a given time when he would introduce a song (and later on, the band), he started speaking French! Now, Belgium has 3 languages, but we were certainly in the Dutch speaking part of the country. Not that it mattered really, but it was kind of funny.

Sound quality was great, I had earplugs (which only fitted right about halfway through ‘Us and Them’, sadly). The bass was tremendous, our seats were trembling at the heartbeats of DSOTM. The only thing was maybe that the guitar was drowning the other instruments a bit, but no big deal. The quadraphonic sound had great effects (the laughter on Brain Damage was scarily ‘in my head’). The only big mistake I noticed was Jon Carin getting the words wrong on Us and Them. His voice wasn’t that great too.

The audience was very calm, and I assume this is just the Belgian way of enjoying a concert.

The laser effects were fantastic. It’s a weird feeling when an enourmous wall of rainbow colours flies through you, like madness itself. Of the encores, I think Another Brick was the best song. It sounded very agressive, with lots of bass. Comfortably Numb was not that impressive, and totally not up to Floyd standards, or even tribute band standards for that matter.

In a surprisingly short amount of time we were outside, and so was the rest of the hall. The result was a large crowd walking on the street and jamming the traffic. But everyone remained as calm as they were the whole show, so everything went smoothly.

This was really close to a perfect show experience. I’m very glad I went, even though I’m not a Waters fan.

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Marc Vanhoeck

Last Wednesday was one of those days...

I remember I bought my ticket on the first day possible, at the first minutes tickets went on sale. The result was perfect: I had a seat in the 6th row! Seat nr 1 in block 4, which was fantastic: on my left hand side there were no seats for about 2 metres. I could come close to stage if everybody would stand up.

Organization of the incoming crowd was super: guided by policemen every car could come from the highway to the parking-era in very short time, and it took a 10-minute walk to enter the hall and take your seat.

I've seen Roger a few times since his comeback-tours. I was impressed by the perfect sound quality last year in Rotterdam (Netherlands), so the surprising effect was maybe a little less. I knew what I could expect: brilliant sound. And so it was. And about the setlist, well, you can always discuss the choice of songs, but whatever. To me it is clear that Roger enjoys playing live. He seems to be very relaxed, and he's taking care of the audience by walking from left to right and back, and waving at fans at the worst places a few times.

And the audience was taking care of him too! We were very polite, we really listened to his words and his singing. No chance he would be upset by screaming fans, no reason to spit at a fan whatsoever. Why? Because this man gave us some of the most brilliant music in the history of rock music.

Was it a perfect concert? Quiet close.

Did I enjoy every minute of it? You bet.

In fact, there is only one way to do better. If David would replace Dave Kilminster on guitar, we could come close to heaven. Sorry Nick, sorry Rick, but Graham Broad and Jon Carin, they do your job as you would do it. Snowy White is part of Pink Floyd in a way, and Andy Fairweather-Low is above any comment, as well as the female vocalists. Harry Waters is the son of his father.

So the chemistry between the four lads (as we've seen on Live8) would be worth any price.