Capacity: 16,000
Concert starts: 7:30pm

Address of venue: Globentorget 2, PO Box 100 55, S-121 27 Stockholm, Sweden. MAP

Website: http://www.globearenas.se/

COMMENTS

Roger's tour of The Wall stays in Sweden for a second night at the Globe Arena, now known as the Ericsson Globe. A night in Copenhagen follows before the production arrives in the UK for a number of nights.

General sale tickets were available from TicNet.se. The public sale will also see a limited number of VIP packages made available for each show on the tour. Our thanks to Jan Andersson for kindly sending over a scan of the ticket (which you can see to the right).

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!

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

Night twenty six of the tour, and the final night in Stockholm. Our friend Simon Wimpenny has revealed that it was a "great show tonight, Roger was totally out of synch on the machine gun, at the end he fired into the roof and a few feathers fell down after hearing a chicken squawk!!! The crowd were VERY reserved, Roger did what he could do to get them going but failed, saying "wow you can hear a pin drop in here" - there was still silence!"

More on the show will follow, and the tour now moves to Denmark for the show in Copenhagen, before arriving on UK shores for quite a few concerts!

If you went to this show in Stockholm, please let us know what you thought of the event, and if anything interesting or different happened if you've been to previous shows and can compare.

CONCERT REVIEW and PICTURE by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Simon Wimpenny

We headed out to the venue around 5:30 and got there around 6. Had a 5th row ticket for tonight but went to watch the first half of the show from an empty seat on the right side of the stage just for a change. Sound wasn't great there but I love the view when your in that block right next to the wall, especially when Roger comes right over to the side of the stage.

Not sure what they've done to the sound but when the subway train comes along and you hear the gunshots at the end the sound is now only heard through the rear quad speakers and it sounds very odd, it's real quiet and doesn't sound anywhere near as good as it used to be! It's been like this for the last two shows so we'll see if it was a glitch or not after tomorrow's show in Copenhagen.

I'd spoke with Dave K before the show about the vocals on Hey You from last night, he said it was definitely Robbie and he'd been listening to Gilmour earlier that day and was trying to perfect his singing! He'd done a damn good job! Dave also mentioned that Rush were playing in Stockholm and a lot of the road crew were here to see the show tonight.

The crowd again were very reserved, Roger saying before mother “wow it's so quiet in here you can hear a pin drop” and you could! It was deadly silent and even after his comment there was very little feedback from the crowd, Roger just grinned to himself and carried on with his intro to Mother. There was a good 10 seconds of feedback during the middle of Mother, didn't cause any other problems, was just very audible to the audience. Forgot to mention last night that just before he started to play Mother when he was talking about that “fucked up young Roger” he played the first few notes to WYWH before stopping and going straight into the opening chords of Mother.

Roger's still adding little nuances to his performance, and audible “sniff” has for the last few shows accompanied the line “a silver spoon on a chain” during Nobody Home as he mimics the snorting up of some substance. He also continues to move his middle finger in a sexual way during the line “trying to pick her locks” tonight though picking someone out on the front row and bending down to do it at them!

Roger tried his best to get the crowd on their feet tonight but to no avail, he laughed to himself a few times as the odd person shouted out in between tracks. Even the line “can you stand up, stand up” and his hand gesturing for people to stand up didn't work at all! His timing to the machine Gun fire was totally off tonight, he didn't try to correct it either, I'm not sure if the click track was off or what but the first gunfire noises came and he then pointed the gun and “shot the audience” as there was silence, he then lowered his gun and the gun shot noise returned, first time I've seen him mess this up. He did however point his gun in the air and made a few extra shots and not only was there the sound of a bird squawking after it had been shot but a few feathers dropped down from the roof adding to the effect!! I kid you not. Who said the wall on Broadway wouldn't work as a comedy!!

The crowd were so polite that at the end of Waiting for The Worms when Roger normally throws down his shirt and armband on to the stage he threw it all up in the air to then see it land in the arms of two people in the front row, what happened next? Yup the people stood right up and handed it back to the security in front of them! Imagine that happening in the US? I think not.

The wall fall was the same as the night before, the first few rows falling forward straight away, then the remaining rows teetering backwards and forward before it all coming down forward onto the stage. Honestly, I think they've perfected the fall too well now, there's no randomness to it, it's all perfectly controlled, it all stays within the barriers and there's very few bricks that have to be thrown backwards to the rear of the stage before the band come out. If you're gonna tear down the wall, TEAR it down without the random precision!

Make sure you check out Simon's blog at SimonWimpenny.blogspot.com where you'll find full details of all his travels, along with more pictures and videos.

CONCERT REVIEW and PICTURE by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Jan Andersson

Saw The Wall concert in Globen 5/5....awesome...the very best concert ever. The sound, the show, everything was good. Sat in the second row in the middle right in front of the stage. The audience was typically Swedish, very polite and silent. But we all liked what we saw.

CONCERT REVIEW by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Jochen Klug

My, oh my…

I attended both the May 1st concert in Oslo as well as the May 5th in Stockholm. The first date, the one with the malfunctioning hotel room just sort of blew me away. Everything was new; my eyes flickered all over the place, trying to pick up as much as possible. I have managed to avoid spoilers before the show, so that took some effort… Being there with a couple of friends, we all had waited for so many years for this to come true, so to be fair, I guess anything could have happened, we would have loved it anyway. I thought that the sound was a bit better in Oslo, but that could have been due to the fact that I was in row 10 there as opposed to row 1 in Stockholm. The show as such was of course the same, but I was so glad that I went two nights, it made the experience so profoundly deeper.

My main comments after these to nights boils down to this:
- The imagery is very strong. It becomes very clear to anyone that walls and wars do things to us that should not be able to do. On seeing the gallery of all those lost, not only in WWII, and the children, tears came to our eyes, all three of us. Let me also add, that the imagery on BTBBH actually made me look upon the song from another perspective, it suddenly got a new, broader and important meaning that I had not experienced before.
- I salute the fact that the music, the singing and the solos are being performed in a sort of “true to record”-style. One could think that it would be tempting for the musicians (as for Roger) to bend the string a bit more and make it more unique for this performance. It shows a great respect for the fans to play it the way all us thousands want to hear it, we want to sing along not only to the lyrics, believe me… And the way these musicians play it… Top Class!
- In the second part, with Der Röger shouting at us, calling us pathetic and being as despotic as any tyrant, it is obvious that his point is made. It is actually kind of creepy to hear myself screaming “YEAAAH” when he asks for the paranoids in the audience and to see some people standing up to make them self an easy target when he aims at us with the machine gun. How far could he take this? What would we be prepared to do?

As commented before, the Swedish audience, in general, is a very quiet one. That's just the way we are I guess. Do not take that as a sign on lack of interest, rather that we really do want to savor the moment. In Oslo, we stood up more, clapped hands and I would say that Run Like Hell was the climax of that. As said, I was seated in the first row and had no idea what took place behind my back. I tried to stand up on a couple of times, but you know, when you're the only one, it's not quite the same. (and speaking of Rush, they played the night after in Globe Arena (yes I was there as well), drummer Neil Peart has also commented earlier that the lasting memory of the Swedish gigs are that they are quiet…)

The show got generally good reviews in both Oslo and Stockholm, but in both cases, they made the comment that the transfer of the Wall Theme from Rock Stardom to criticism on contemporary walls in the society as well as between people does not work all the way. I agree to some extent, but that does not mean that Roger Waters fails at what he attempts to do. Neither does it in any way reduce the fact that this is a show that will be hard to beat in any sense.

So, I finally got to see the hotel room, but what will stay with me from Stockholm is that Roger commented that in the old days he used to be “a grumpy man” after the shows, but that this show warmed his heart and that the feelings are totally different now. I bet it is, he got pure, quiet Swedish love to nights in a row.

CONCERT REVIEWS and PICTURES by other BD CONTRIBUTORS

Hopefully coming soon - we welcome all contributions!

YOUR HELP NEEDED! We want to cover Roger's concerts the best we can, to share the experience with everyone, especially those who won't be able to attend the shows. We'd love to see ANY pictures, tickets scans, reviews, newspaper reports, and anything else you come across for this show - we look forward to hearing from you!