Capacity: TBA
Concert starts: 8:30pm

Address of venue: 4 Yawkey Way, Boston, MA 02215. MAP

Website: boston.redsox.mlb.com

COMMENTS

Though generations have come and gone, Fenway Park remains much like it did the day it opened on April 20, 1912. Roger Waters now brings The Wall to this historic venue, where he did initial lighting/projection tests to see whether his idea of playing in baseball stadiums would work.

The RogerWaters.com presales took place from February 13th; a small number of advance tickets were available to those who had registered their interest in this particular city. General sale tickets went on sale on February 20th through this link to Ticketmaster.com. The public sale will also see a limited number of VIP packages made available for each show on the tour. At the end of January 2012, the Boston Herald posted the picture to the right, which preceeded the official announcement from Roger's team on February 6th... Our thanks to Elliot Tayman for the concert ad shown to the right - as you'll see, if you click the thumbnail, the wall itself looks a little different...

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 sixty-four of the tour, and the 2012 tour is coming close to an end. The show was in another historic sporting venue in the US, and made all the more special due to that.

As expected with a special venue like this, there was quite a bit of press attention. The Telegram was there and they start their review by suggesting: "Breathtaking, eye-popping, jaw-dropping, mind-blowing, pulse-pounding and, even, quite possibly, life-altering. How else can one describe Pink Floyd's bassist, songwriter and singer Roger Waters taking over Fenway Park to bring his 30-plus-year-old paranoid psychodrama/rock opera “The Wall” to life?

"Not only did Waters' performance reach new heights in state-of-the-art stadium shows and the elaborate rock 'n' roll theater department, everything else this summer concert season (and, quite possibly, years to come) is going to seem pale in comparison.

"While Waters and company transforming Yawkey Way into a war zone was a spectacle to behold, it wouldn't mean anything if the music wasn't worth listening to in the first place. Thankfully, the chart-topping, 23x platinum “The Wall” is one of the greatest rock 'n' roll concept albums ever recorded and it has aged incredibly well, maybe too well.

"Reported to be 20,000-square-feet and containing more than a 1,000 bricks (which is double the size of the ones constructed in the fall of 2010 at the TD Garden), “The Wall” not only swallowed up Fenway's “Green Monster,” it reached from the beginning of left field to the bullpens..."

The Boston Globe were also there, and they also posted an enthusiastic review. "Roger Waters delivered a “Wall” at Fenway Park Sunday to rival the Green Monster itself. Waters’s stadium-size version of the production he first launched two years ago in arenas is a dramatic improvement to the show’s inherent sensory overload. In aiming for magnitude, Waters masterfully filled the huge space afforded by Fenway, providing exquisite surround-sound and a splash of visuals that stretched across the entire outfield.

"“The Wall” at Fenway wasn’t simply big; it lorded over the roughly 26,000 in attendance. But it wasn’t just the size of “The Wall” that impressed. Since beginning this revival of the last great concept album he wrote with Pink Floyd, Waters has gotten even better at stretching “The Wall’s” original themes of fear and alienation, from personal torment to global oppression.

"As big as the production was, it never felt like glitz for glitz’s sake. In short, Waters cannot be accused of committing the sins he rails against, even though he is capable of communicating on the same level as the sinners..."

Finally, Ultimate Classic Rock posted a photo gallery.

If you went to this show in Boston, 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, Terrence Reardon

Where do I begin. I did say I was going into retirement from concert attending. However, Roger Waters touring The Wall made me re-consider my retirement statement and Roger Waters performing The Wall at the TD Garden in October, 2010 was INCREDIBLE! Then ROGER WAS COMING BACK TO PLAY THIS TIME AT FENWAY PARK (HOME OF THE BOSTON RED SOX).

As I was relocating back to Massachusetts when tickets initially went on sale in February, I didn't get tickets right away. Then in May of 2012, my father and I finally decided to go for broke and acquire tickets. As usual, Ticketmaster was sold out (part of me suspect the brokers bought a lot of tickets). I found seats in section 29 in the Grandstand for $40 each. As always, my fellow New Age Outlaw and metal/hard rock loving best friend Dennis (who also saw Pink Floyd with me in Foxboro in 1994 and Roger perform The Wall at the Garden in 2010) tagged along with me to see Roger Waters perform at Fenway Park and it kicked ass.

In anticipation of seeing the show in Boston at Fenway, I saw the performance I went to in October 2010 on YouTube and said "will he top that" and also The Wall Immersion Box Set and the 1980/81 shows to get me up to speed. Then came July 1. I drove from my house in Wareham, MA (part of Cape Cod) to Whitman to meet up with my buddy and off we went to the show at 5:30. Getting to the show was (unlike last time) SMOOTH SAILING AND CLEAR SKIES heading to the train station to go from Braintree to Boston to avoid traffic. Once at the Braintree T station, I ran into a few Floyd fans also going to the show and they helped me get the right train passes (unlike the 2010 going to and fro disaster). We get there a good 1 hour and 45 minutes before showtime and I set the record eating two Fenway Franks (the Red Sox hot dogs) and drank a bottle of Barq's Root Beer to wash it down. Also a Quart of Water and bought TWO T-shirts pictured). I held off the program as I already bought one in 2010 and feared that it was going to have same photos and contents.

The show, let's just say, was even more mindblowing than what I saw in October of 2010 (even to those of us in the audience not under mind altering chemicals (my friend and I have yet to try what's called drugs or alcohol or nicotine for that fact)). The view we had was superior to what he had in 2010 this time in the Grandstand. We ran to restroom as the lights went down and the guards on stage throwing Pink down and the Spartacus tape effect (I can't help but think of the parody used in Monty Python's Life of Brian "I'M BRIAN", "I'M BRIAN!"). Out of restroom I sprint and right when the trumpets start playing and we sit just as the pyro goes off and the band starts playing and Roger got a deserved standing ovation.

Musically, Roger has put together a stellar band for this tour and the band played tonight as if it were the last show that would ever go down.

A few changes (vocal phrasings, vocal deliveries and modified visual bits and the odd bit of Roger's performing being projected on The Wall itself. Musically, the addition of Another Brick II Reprise was a nice touch, sounded like classic Dire Straits but a stellar coda in lieu of Harry Waters' synth and GE Smith's epic guitar solo from the show I attended in 2010 was a bringing in full circle sort of thing to me. The visuals that were updated from the 1980/81 visuals and some of the stuff projected on the wall was hard to put in words (tributes to soldiers were superb, I'm grateful and thankful that my father came home from Korea during Vietnam era and I got to have a father, and I thought of how lucky I am to have a parent survive the perils of war).

Let's then say during intermission, another restroom run and a bottle of Lemonade and I would not get dehydrated as it was humid tonight.

The inflatables and performances were incredible. I do know some people did gripe on key changes of "One of My Turns", "Don't Leave Me Now" and "Run Like Hell" all performed a whole step lower than on either original album or 1980/81 Wall shows but I think they were excellent. Unlike the last time I saw them play "Nobody Home" and had the crowd finish the "13 channels of (expletive) on the TV to choose from", Roger sang it in full joy. Robbie Wyckoff did a great job singing David Gilmour's parts and Snowy White, Dave Kilminster all did great and G.E. adding a slide guitar to "Mother" was an excellent touch. Once the show was over with the last strain of "Outside the Wall", I said "IT WAS WORTH THE EXTRA CASH" and Roger sounded better than the show I previously attended! Also the crowd cheered for Roger for what seemed like ten minutes. Then the band intros as they walked off and Roger continued to thank everyone and he was so into the show.

Now going back home from show was smooth sailing. Unlike the departure from TD Garden in 2010, leaving Fenway was a success. All in all it was a great show and a great night. I will still see some shows from key artists but it will hard to top what I saw from Roger. There's nowhere you can go to from this classic masterpiece. Go see this SHOW, NOW!

CONCERT REVIEW by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Mark LaPointe

I've the time now to discuss my whirlwind tour following Roger and his FANTASTIC band. I'll try to make it short, but my memories of these truly incredible shows are not.

1st show: Hartford, Ct
Well, I can honestly say that I have never had better seats at a show, 4th row with Roger directly in front of me. A surreal experience indeed. My friend took a pic of me with Rog in the background singing Mother (and even in the circular screen). This will be on my wall very soon. To boot, we even had the most attractive identicle twins I have ever seen directly behind us. Felt like I was in a Bud-Light beer commercial. One of them had the hots for David K and he noticed them at the end - ha.

Anyways the show was fantastic and the house cheer for Rog at the end was louder than Fenway and Philly combinded. Seriously - that loud. The only crowd to match was when I saw him in Providence, RI in 1999. Roger was touched, I could tell.

2nd: Fenway
Sound was fantastic, crowd was a bit meat-headishy. Everyone should have drank maybe three less beers (that cost $9.50 a pop) than they did. Roger was happier than I'd ever seen him. You should have seen GE Smith beaming with Rog at the end. Roger hugged him when he sang "some gather together in bands". I think GE is the new Andy Fairweather Low in Roger's life.

3rd show: Philly
Certainly the best show of the three. The band was ON that night and the sound was out of this world incredible. The night before I met a few of the roadies, at the Holiday Inn, and we drank together all night. They shared some fantastic stories (that I will not share for obvious reasons) and said the tour was nothing they've ever witnessed. One guy said he was to tour with Springsteen after Quebec - which he called a vacation compared to this tour - haha.. 23 trucks carry the load each night with 24 hour work-in two shifts. The guys I talk to were carpenters by trade and one a long journey man that worked for the tour company Roger employed. I saw the tour booklet they carried around. It has nine pages of credits at the begining! Over 200 people employed!

Anyways, the most important thing I heard was that Roger was a gentleman and he treated them all very well. He would even stop in and have lunch with a few of them he liked, and he talked to EVERYONE. That was certainly nice to hear. Way to go Rog, or was it Reg?

I certainly hope they filmed Philly because it blew us all away - especially the people that have seen the show before. The highlight for me was...everything. It was that good. Just an amazing show. So sad to see it all end. I think there is a slim chance Roger will tour his next album, but of course I will be there if he does. Haven't missed a tour since 1984. The best of the shows I've witnessed over the years was the 84 show with Clapton and Kamen and this Philly show.

CONCERT REVIEW and PICTURES by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Ed Lopez-Reyes

For those who are either native Bostonians or adopted sons and daughters of Beantown and its surrounding areas, Roger Waters' 'The Wall Live' at Fenway Park was as much about 'The Wall' as it was about Fenway itself. New England states tend to share their team spirit: Fenway is home to the Boston Red Sox. Revered as a sacred, historic place from the lighthouses of Maine to the casinos and mansions of Connecticut, it's the one house of worship that cuts through religious, ethnic, racial, and social classes in the region.

For those unfamiliar with Fenway and its beloved baseball team, you should know: people pay megabucks to sit in some of the most charmingly uncomfortable seats, sometimes directly behind a pole (yes, with a fully obstructed view); the space between rows is so narrow there is absolutely no way one can leave their seat without creating a ballpark wave – or at least something that resembles one from a distance.

In this context, the announcement that Waters would be playing at Fenway was met with a mad planning rush: inevitably, the architecture of the park meant some seats would be substantially better than others and most people realized there could be production challenges, particularly with respect to sound. Buying seats when the show was announced (during the Holidays) meant working around tight budgets.

The sighting of the actual 'wall' at Fenway was tricky: while the 'wall' would normally sit opposite home plate in most ball parks and stadiums (the batter's area, for those who don't follow baseball: the very tip of a relatively triangular playing field), at Fenway the stage had to be placed somewhere along the Park's left field due to its odd architecture. Compared to other baseball stadium shows, Fenway's 'wall' was smaller than most: Fenway is the nation's oldest ball park in use, and is second-to-last in attendance capacity. Given the geometric oddities and the challenge that fitting this production into Fenway presented, it was difficult to expect a perfect show: once you walked into Fenway you could tell that the speakers were placed in areas that (though probably equidistant from each other) were bound to create echo and other acoustic challenges.

Despite all of this, the performance began and ran smoothly all the way through. In the Flesh will always be remembered as one of the most epic moments in the show: even though someone who hasn't seen it might consider it anti-climactic to peak during the opening track, the overall thread of the album and the live performance carries this momentum forward throughout.

It should be pointed out that there has been vast improvement in several key areas of the show that cement this momentum: when Waters' band played the TD Garden in Boston in the fall of 2010, the show's props, pyrotechnics, and sounds were nearly perfect but there was something perfunctory about the overall performance. In this return to Boston, the band deserves significant praise for the way they've fleshed the show out – paying particular attention to nuances that make the performance distinctly theirs: Robbie Wyckoff in particular has come to own his parts during 'The Wall', emancipated from any sense he's been hired to mimic David Gilmour. Mother and Comfortably Numb are two particular songs where Wyckoff shines.

While many, many fans (particularly older fans) struggle to accept the professional musicians that have become part of the overall Pink Floyd universe since Waters' departure from the band in 1985 (either touring with Floyd or its related solo acts) it may be, in all truth, time to recognize where these musicians' efforts to fill big shoes and further develop Floyd's sound in any of the aforementioned capacities have met or surpassed expectations. On this leg of The Wall Live it is Wyckoff who deserves a great deal of credit for pulling things together: and Boston was a particularly bright moment for the singer from Los Angeles (by way of Traverse City, Michigan).

Considering the evening's seamless performance, it should be stated that Fenway had the potential to cast the type of spell Wrigley Field did on Waters and the band a month before: Wrigley and Fenway share similar traits. The parks have a considerable and special history in each of their respective cities. No doubt, in Chicago this nurtured a vibe Waters felt compelled to acknowledge publicly: following Wrigley he made time to call a radio station to say so. It would be interesting to know whether he felt the same way about Boston. Boston may never know… but for local Floyd fans, there's no question there was something incredibly emotive about seeing The Wall performed in such a treasured place. Waters did make a special nod to Red Sox Nation on this historic Fenway evening: before performing Run Like Hell he altered the script projected on the 'wall' and asked: "are there any paranoids in the BALL PARK tonight?!" Picking up on this local subtlety carries significant stock with local fans, who refuse to refer to Fenway as a stadium… it is, after all, Boston's BALL PARK.

There were some criticisms. Evidently, the quality of the sound depended on where you sat: something to be expected at just about any venue this size or one restricted by architectural oddities like Fenway's.

Another legitimate gripe was raised by WAAF personality Matt Leonard (host of Brain Damage) who observed that the footage being played on the extended walls in the stadium shows is fine but a live feed from the actual show would be better: particularly when local school children come on stage to join Waters during Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2). The footage being used was filmed in Athens (and was actually originally intended to be recorded at the O2 Arena in London – which was a disappointment in and of itself to fans there) during the 2011 leg of the tour. Leonard is no stranger to shows on this tour: his criticism is not only fair but probably shared by those who've attended multiple Wall shows – not to mention the local children and the families participating in this endeavor throughout each city. The only identifiably live feed of Waters during the show takes place toward the end, just before the wall comes down – but the presence of any live feed means there's a chance any potential European dates in 2013 could accommodate this small but meaningful change to the performance.

In the end, it's been stated that Fenway Park has about 40-to-50 years of life in it before it has to be replaced. Bostonians and Red Sox fans across New England have made it exceptionally difficult – and with good reason – to replace Fenway despite previous attempts to do so. Walking away from Fenway on the night Waters played The Wall and seeing Mr. Screen through the tunnels leading to the grandstands [right] one couldn't help but realize this was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the view through these tunnels will probably never be the same… and those tunnels won't be there forever either, unfortunately.

All pictures are courtesy of Marie Lopez (www.facebook.com/marielopezphotography). Marie is in the process of uploading a load of pictures to this Facebook page from a number of Roger's concerts, from the London O2 shows last year, right through to the Quebec City tour conclusion in 2012. Well worth a visit!

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!