Capacity: 19,153

Concert starts: 8pm

Address of venue: 1000 Palladium Dr., Kanata, Ontario K2V 1A5 CANADA.  MAP

Website: www2.scotiabankplace.com

Tickets for this concert went on sale on March 5th, through www.capitaltickets.ca and www.ticketmaster.ca. Our thanks to Peggy for the ticket scan shown to the right.

UPDATE: This show was rescheduled on May 25th from June 4th, to June 6th, to resolve a conflict with a Hockey game to be held at Ottawa's Scotiabank Place venue. All tickets purchased for the original dates will be honoured for the new dates. Refunds will be available at point of purchase, if required.

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!

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

A rescheduled show, which hopefully didn't affect too many of those with tickets. A solid performance with all the expected bells-and-whistles, and a thrilled audience... For local press reviews and pictures, visit the websites of the Ottawa Sun, Le Droit and the Ottawa Citizen. Our thanks to Dave Desjardins and John Pittman for these.

The tour now moves to Montreal - if you are going, have a great time!

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, C Wright

I work for IATSE and worked as a stage hand for the show. I managed to see the first two songs of the second set & was awestruck with the quality of the sound & video. I do a lot of shows in this venue & this was by far the best quality of entertainment I have seen. The stage manager allowed the "electrics' crew to stage right to be in place for the strike. I watched The Wall through to Comfortably Numb ten feet from the stage. An excellent performer - truly there for the audience.

The stage manager had his watch out as the last piece went into the truck. We did the strike a full 10 minutes faster than any crew so far in the tour.

CONCERT PICTURES - courtesy of BD contributer, Peggy Shanks

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Bill White

The toughest job for a writer is to capture the essence of an emotional experience. Add to that challenge the sonic and visual tapestry that Roger Waters weaves with his band of musicians and technicians on his current tour and you have a very steep hill to climb.

So, here are some more or less random thoughts:

For starters, the star of the show seems impossibly rejuvenated at age 65. He ventured to both sides of the massive stage several times throughout the evening and each time, the crowd in the immediate vicinity lept to its feet applauding and cheering wildly. Last time I saw that kind of action was when the Rolling Stones were in town and Mick was doing the cheer leading. Inevitably, with this kind of response and the almost uniform reception to every song, the highlight was Waters' comments toward the end of the concert. At stage left, bass hanging, with forearms crossed and gripped tightly against his chest, his face searched the crowd with an expression bordering on pain, Waters explained how much he appreciates Canadian audiences.  Something to the effect that "in the 60s, the 70s and the 80s I've loved to play for Canadians."

Out here in the boondocks of rock and roll, THAT statement went down like free beer.

The fact is that we can relate to a guy like Roger Waters (and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, for that matter) because we share his social values, which are quite plainly revealed in both the songs in the set and an excellent interview that appears in the stunning program for this tour. In Canada, Waters' gets the reaction he hopes for when he bashes Bush and the gang of totalitarian thugs that show up in either his lyrics or in words among the kaleidoscope of visuals that wash across the screen the during this amazing show. So it's no wonder his appreciation of the audience was so heartfelt - and the same was true in reverse.

All the world's a stage: or is it? I suspect one could write an entire review about the use of the footage featuring the actor who plays with the WW2 vintage radio, smokes like a fiend and drinks almost an entire bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Does it work? Well, yes and no - Mostly yes: as the bookend for the concert, it's a brilliant device, although the intro probably goes about five minutes too long for those of us who were in our seats when the show began. That said, Waters is right when he shows his keen awareness of the reality of Rock Show etiquette - if you want to call it that: thousands mill around in the corridors, loading up at the bar and babbling with their friends until they hear something's up inside the arena, so they head for the seats; and all that - when you're talking about several thousands - probably takes at least five minutes! But the actor-in-the-film bit didn't work that well to accompany "just a little pinprick", for example in "Comfortably Numb" - but then again, how do you top Bob Geldof's performance in the Alan Parker film?

Our seats were in the front row of the 300 tier, high up - just a bit for my wife, who got dizzy being that close to the edge. But we met a great couple from Calabogie, Ontario - the wife of this couple started crying the moment the band whipped into "In The Flesh".! This vantage point was exactly what I wanted, so we could look down and survey the whole - often hilarious - scene below: the floating astronaut and the pig, the guys at the sound desk scrambling to cover up when the paper snow got too thick for their liking.

Despite my knowledge of the set list before the show - thanks to the Web - amazingly, every song was somewhat of a surprise. "The Final Cut" - never one of my favorites, from my least favourite Floyd LP, was surprisingly good. "Leaving Beirut" suffers a bit from sophomoric lyrics: Waters once referred to his DSM lyrics as "Upper-6th form" (i.e., 12th grade high school y'all) stuff and "Beirut" shows that he's still forcing some of his round words into square holes. Which is why, I suggest, that the cartoon screen treatment is mighty fitting. In essence, though, Waters tries his best to get his socialist/pacifist philosophy off his chest in this song, but like I said at the top here, wringing an emotional response through a word-processor is not easy; putting those words into a musical framework is an even heavier assignment. Call it a two-two draw, Roger.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Having listened to virtually the entire Pink Floyd "canon" as a young Floyd "nut", I can honestly say that this version integrates the original studio version (probably the first really good song Waters wrote and recorded) with the live version on Ummagumma - and then updated for here and now. The visual intro of the sun's edge rising was simply jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

Side note: the TV screens at the side of the stage were a bit small and given the amount of smoke in the air generated from the stage, those images were a bit hard to see. However, the same could never be said about the main screen, which uses the most crystal -clear projection system I have ever seen in my life.

Dark Side of the Moon: in 1975, it was just mind-boggling to see a band performing with a movie more or less perfectly in sync - especially with a full moon rising over the lip of the Autostade in Montreal in a fantastically clear summer night. The talk in my office today was mostly centred on "did they actually play the whole album? Because it went so fast!" (Of course it did: the recording only totals a mere 43 minutes in a world where CDs total at least an hour and often more - like DUB SIDE OF THE MOON by the Easy Star All Stars, a must-have for any reggae lover who loves DSM, too)

Obviously, the musicians are top players - all of them, and, in particular, the vocalist on "Great Gig in the Sky".  Precision never looked so easy or even, dare I note, unrehearsed, because the performance of the piece flows so effortlessly. The only new wrinkles came during On The Run - the track that I heard on FM in 1973 to go buy that album, which inspired me to track down as many PF recordings as I could find. OTR is now (sadly) missing the airplane sliding down a rope to crash behind the stage in Waters' interpretation - probably because "it's been done before". But - and this is a big but- the percussion arrangement is completely different; almost impossibly intricate; and yet the band is COMPLETELY in sync with the stroboscopic flashing of images on the big screen. Stupendous!

Laser prism - My wife Anne and I glanced at each other, eyes wide with amazement, when the laser show began spinning. But when the prism replicated the DSM cover, well, like we say here in Québec << C'était CAPOTANT! >> We freaked - awestruck. That slow inexorable turn seemed like it would go forever - and it will in our memories and our hearts.

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Mark Silverman

Last year I saw Roger Waters at the Bell Centre in Montréal on September 21. My friend and I drove two hours each way for what I thought was the best rock concert I'd ever seen. I ended my BD review by saying that Roger set the bar impossibly high. Well at this year's show at Scotiabank Place in Ottawa he surpassed it, making this THE BEST CONCERT I"VE EVER SEEN!

Due to a scheduling conflict The Ottawa Senators were to play in hockey's' Stanley Cup finals the same night as Waters' concert. Originally scheduled for June 4 - we were planning to celebrate our anniversary with Roger and 13,000 others! Then we were in limbo for several days in late May, waiting to see what solution would be reached. In the end the date was swapped with Quebec City so rather than sitting at home watching the Senators lose the Stanley Cup on TV we were treated to an astounding experience.

What can I say? The set list was unchanged , but the band was tighter thane ever (not surprising - they've played it over 60 times since I last saw the show). The graphics, sound, special effects and video were better, with several improvements, notably the pyrotechnics in Bring the Boys Back Home and the pyramid in Eclipse.

Dave Kilminster, Snowy White, Andy Fairweather-Low and Jon Carin all played guitars (Carin also did keyboards) and all except White sang as well, replicating the essence of David Gilmour's Floyd work. Carol Kenyon, PP Arnold and Katie Kissoon were the back up singers, Graham Broad was on drums, with Ian Ritchie doing amazing work on saxophone and Water's son Harry playing the Organ.

The opening effects with the radio were the same as before, cool way to begin, (especially with the hand turning off Abba!) and end - as we see the burned out rocker in Comfortably Numb.

The first set was awesome! Highlights included Shine On, Have a Cigar and Wish You Were Here. Sheep was effective, and it was good to see Canadian specific graffiti on the Pig (Let Omar Khadr Come home) As well the anti-Bush sentiments are appreciated here in Canada! The Final Cut songs went over well, and even Perfect Sense with the floating astronaut and Leaving Beirut with its politics were well received.

DSOM- Wow! From start to finish a gem. Even though it was 45 minutes it seemed to whiz by! Great to see an icon like Dark Side so faithfully executed. I again enjoyed Time (and Graham Broad's drum work). Great Gig was nailed by Carol Kenyon! Money, Us and Them, Brian Damage and Eclipse were all fantastic ("the band is just fantastic that is really what I think"!)

The Wall encores were also perfectly performed- Another Brick one of several concert highlights, Vera, Bring the Boys Back Home and finally Comfortably Numb to send us all home happy! The Kilminster guitar solo on Comfortably Numb was excellent!

This year was also more fun than last as I was at the show with my wife, who opted not to take the trek to Montréal last year. She also thought this was the best rock concert she'd ever seen. Now we have to wait for the concert CD/DVD. Thank you Roger for two chances to see what might be your last tour, with the second in my hometown.

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, Scott Evans

My wife and I went to the RW concert at Scotia Bank Place last night.....mind-blowing experience to say the least. I wasn't sure what to expect but I can tell you it may be hard for me to match that concert in my lifetime!

The artistic director (or whatever the name of the person in charge of the video/ lights/ lasers / flash pots etc) is a genius as is RW....oh and nice job tearing a strip off of George W., Tony Blair, all Republicans and any other war monger out there!!!

Here's a quote from my friend Kelly who was lucky enough to have floor tickets .... "Just outstanding. It's strange that I wasn't super pumped before the show; I only started getting excited yesterday. Now I'm a "convert", I was already a pretty big Floyd/Roger fan, but now I regard him as a demi-god. His genius is almost scary; inter-planetary for sure."

Regarding the backup vocalists, "....that was one of those rare magical moments in live performances where I almost left my body listening to her sing....it was freaking divine; from another world!"

CONCERT REVIEW - by BD contributer, J-C Gagné

So I was at the Quebec City concert on Monday and then off to the one at the Corel Center in Ottawa. I was also graced with his presence in September at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit.

Let me start by saying this, BOTH SHOWS WERE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.  To my surprise, the Ottawa crowd was quite loud. With the start of In the Flesh the crowd just went insane.

As usual, Roger has a group of top notch musicians on tour with him and Dave on lead guitar was right on key the whole show. I would still preferred to see him tour with Doyle Bramhall II *the best unknown guitarist in rock today* but he is on tour with Clapton.

Dark Side of the Moon was impeccable and Canyon's voice during Great Gig in the Sky almost brought tears to my eyes. As soon as she finished, the crowd rose to their feet and showed their appreciation by giving her a standing ovation.

And at last, the encore... There wasn't a person in the Corel Center sitting down. Coming out with Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, Vera Lynn and closing with Comfortably Numb. During the last song, the crowd went so crazy that the music was being drowned out by the cheers of fans showing their love for one of Rock's TRUE ROCK GODS.

Roger, thank you for coming to Ottawa and we hope to see you again.