Capacity: 15,000
Concert starts: 8pm

Address of venue: Batman Avenue, Melbourne, Australia. MAP

Website: http://www.rodlaverarena.com.au

COMMENTS

Due to exceptional demand during the presale period, Roger's tour of The Wall stays for a second night at the Rod Laver Arena, which Roger last performed in back in 2007.

The Visa pre-sale ran from Monday July 4th at 3pm through to Thursday July 7th at 9am (closing sooner if the allocation runs out). An additional fee will be added to tickets bought during the pre-sale period. The general sale of tickets through Ticketek began on Monday, July 11th at 9am. The public sale will also see a limited number of VIP packages made available for each show on the tour. Our thanks to John B 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, and what happened as the night unfolded!

Night seven of the tour, and the return of the Australian classic, Waltzing Matilda, as an additional encore - as you'll see below amongst the video clips from this show. There's also a nice close-up Comfy Numb clip...

As BD contributor Taariq Hassan told us, the Age/Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reviewed the show quickly, and their review notes that "What Roger Waters has to say is too big for rock'n'roll. Music is just the engine behind his staggering installation of bricks, film, fireworks, costumes, bricks, inflatable villains, one immense flying pig and more bricks. As a rock show, The Wall is more show than rock.

"It was hard to complain about that in the hair-raising assault of In the Flesh, which placed us in the flaming cockpit of a crashing World War II bomber via surround sound, pyrotechnics and mind-blowing projections. As spectacle, The Wall delivered on its promise as a landmark arena event, as the titular metaphor for personal alienation rose brick by massive brick between band and audience, each song a theatrical set-piece familiar from Pink Floyd's blockbuster album, videos, and movie of more than 30 years ago. But the thematic sense of dislocation sometimes felt too complete as the show progressed, the 12-piece band literally obscured by iconic Gerald Scarfe animations until, by The Trial, we were watching a big movie - Bob Ezrin's pre-recorded orchestration and all."

If you went to this show in Melbourne, 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 by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Taariq Hassan

Last night at 'The Tennis Centre' here in Melbourne Roger waters blew my mind. He is Pink, forget the clever forgery by Gilmour. I saw the AMLOR tour shows twice here in 1988. I have never seen Waters live before and I am a far gone obsessive FLOYD HEAD.

This was a- effing - mazing. There were a lot of fat chavs, rednecks, and bogans there all watching/filming the HUGE spectacle through the tiny screens of their mobile phones while skolling overpriced booze, buying AUD$50 t-shirts with the words "we don't need no education" emblazoned on them and talking the whole way through the show. I was with Roger when he said "who let all this riff raff into the room ?!!" That is why LSD and hashish were invented. So you just sit there, shut the fock up and really focus on the event, man. Sadly my acid/hash days have gone but I can still dribble out of both sides of my mouth and implement other life skills and other handy stuff like that.

It seemed that "The trial" was being mimed by Waters but otherwise he seemed to be singing all of it live and the the production was better than most shows I have ever seen. The band were red hot and the technical aspects of the show were staggeringly flawless and gobsmacking. Only Leonard Cohen live in 2009 could be rated at the same level of quality, value for money, with similar emotional and artistic impact.

I will be going to the Saturday show too. :-)
'scuse me while I kiss the sky!
I just hope Roger Waters makes one more new studio rock LP and tours it here. "Amused To Death" was released 20 years ago!!

CONCERT REVIEW by BD CONTRIBUTOR, John McAlister

We had seats in the 8th row on the floor which gave a fantastic perspective of the band that I could not get from the elevated seats at the back of the arena the previous night. I wasn't aware how much acting (badly) the band members had to do particularly in the second half of the show. There was a bit of banter between the wall builders and back-up singers from time to time as they got through what would be the second half of the first set. They really seemed to be enjoying their work.

Great show of course, I did feel Gilmour's voice was needed on 'Mother' and 'Comfortably Numb' and that they did feel like a cover band from time to time. My only slight criticisoms would be the start of the show had some strange rant about the character pink being called 'spartacus' didn't seem to make much sense to me and the pregnant pause between it and the trumpet before 'In the Flesh' seemed to grate. The extra song after 'Brick 2' about a tube passenger killed in the 2005 bombings was touching albeit not very melodic. The Wall tonight largely fell backwards towards the band instead of forward on the previous night, probably one of the few unpredictable parts of the show.

I didn't expect an encore after "Outside the Wall" but we got one with the full four verse version of Waltzing Matilda, credit to Roger for learning all of the words. He finished of the night by saying "Good on Yer" nice touch.

We stayed after the show to kick up the red paper cut outs that descended in the thousands during the last part of the show and to take photos of ourselves with the piles of bricks being retrieved. Didn't want to leave after such an absorbing and intoxicating show.

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!