Capacity: 50,000
Concert starts: 9:30pm

Address of venue: Haachtsesteenweg, 3118 Rotselaar, Belgium. MAP

Website: www.rockwerchter.be

COMMENTS

Roger's 2013 resumption of The Wall Live tour kicks off in Werchter at a festival ground, which last reverberated to the sound of Pink Floyd back in 1989, and 1994. Roger's never performed here, though...

The RogerWaters.com presales have taken place, with advance tickets available to those who had registered their interest in particular cities. General sale tickets went on sale on November 17th at 10am via LiveNation.be, Proximus and Go For Music (exact dates and outlets can be found via Roger's website). Limited Golden Circle tickets, giving access to the square right in front of the stage, cost 90 euro (service cost not included). Our thanks to Franck for the ticket scan to the right.

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!

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 two of the tour, and the show that was, until a couple of weeks ago, the opening night. Werchter is a venue that first rang to the music of the Floyd back in May 1989. During that show I recall the flying bed (rather than the plane that Roger uses) getting stuck in a large tree in the middle of the crowd area, as they prepped for the start of the show. From the pictures and video we've seen of Werchter now, that troublesome tree is long gone!

As for the show itself, a large crowd greeted the band, unlike the Arnhem concert on Thursday which only had around 5,500 there. This was also the first of the outdoor concerts for 2013, and the upgraded projectors seemed to work very well in the dusk light.

If you went to this show in Belgium, 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 PICTURES by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Simon Wimpenny

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

Due to it being outside and the middle of summer that start of the show wasn't due until 10pm. My friend Philippe had arranged for us to park the car at a friend's parents place who owed a bar about a 20 minute walk away from the venue. All of the town centre's streets are closed when a show is on, it's a small Belgian Village that hosts three or four shows a year, the last I believe was Muse. I was staying at a hotel about 10 minutes away from Philippe's tonight as I was heading back to the airport on the train first thing in the morning and the hotel was right next door to the station. We called in the hotel so I could check in and drop my bag off; as I walked into the car park I saw another friend, Nick Waterfall and his wife, his sister and partner unloading their car, they were staying there tonight too, After a quick chat I dropped my bags and got back in the car.

We arrived at the bar around 4:30, Matt immediately took full use of the bars urinals which were actually mounted to the side of the garage that was in the middle of the parking lot! We sat at the bar for a couple of hours before starting the walk over to the venue.

Philippe, Matthijs and Matt made their way into the venue; I met up briefly with Nick Waterfall again and then headed in to catch up with everyone else. It was still only 7:30pm we had over two hours until show time. The venue reminded me very much of the one in Quebec where Roger finished the 2012 tour. It was a large open field with a few trees, the only difference was it was banked up like the field was in Quebec. The wall looked HUGE as did the stage and especially the roof! It was even bigger than the roofs that were used at the outdoor ball parks in the USA in 2012. As it happens the stage and roof are actually built in Belgium where the biggest stage builders reside, at StageCo. I also noticed the giant crane that held the wire leading to the stage that the Stuka would be going down tonight.

I found Marc Olivier in the Golden Circle and also met up with Jacques whom I hadn't seen for a long long time. I bumped into another fiend Jasper, again I hadn't seen him for a while, we caught up and I then headed out to find Matt and the others. Of course, I found them drinking beer!

Matthijs and Philippe wanted to watch the show from the back of the golden circle however Matt and I decided to not only watch the show but FEEL the show down on the front rail, between Dave K and the Hotel room in the wall. At around 9:50pm the 6 tracks pre show music started and although the sun had gone down it was still pretty bright out.

We were too close to see the fireworks go off on the top of the roof but we certainly weren't disappointed, we not only heard the opening notes to In The Flesh but felt them right in our chest! The sound was loud but not just loud, it was incredibly clear. This show just lends itself to the outdoors, the size, the loudness needed to get to the rear of the field and the size of the projected wall just make this show at home in an outdoor venue. Unfortunately the Stuka was a good 10 seconds behind the end of ITF and the crew shook their heads as they looked up when it crashed through the wall into the flames. Not only were the band enjoying tonight's show but as it was the first night of the tour, a lot of the crew kept coming out to see how good the gig looked.

I did notice the projections were nowhere near as clear as they were at the Arnhem show, they were still bright but I'm pretty sure the section we were in front of was just slightly out of focus. The rest of the wall looked better but due to the projectors being a lot further back than they were in Arnhem it still lost a little bit of the detail. There were certainly a lot more tickets sold for tonight's show, 40,000 in total I believe.

I didn't spot any mistakes by the band tonight, one of the projectors threw up the words “change the air filter” onto the wall for 30 seconds but apart from that it was a flawless show. In Arnhem they didn't put the “No Fucking Way” on the left side of the wall in the local language, I got my cell phone camera ready just in case and they did indeed do it tonight.

Roger's also now changed the “Thank You” & THANK YOU between ITF and Run Like Hell to the local language, tonight says “Danke U” he’s also changed the “Are there any paranoids……” speech to the local language too! Matt and I just couldn't believe just how loud it was all night, we were constantly feeling the bass in our chests! The guy next to me took out a pair of ear plugs and had them in for most of the show after hearing how loud it was after the first couple of tracks.

The pig was brought down into the crowd after the wall came down, and the band came back onstage for Outside the wall to see the pig being ripped to bits. It was nearly 1am when the gig finished and I have to say it's definitely up there in my top ten of the now 126 Wall shows that I’ve seen!

CONCERT REVIEWS, VIDEOS and PICTURES by other BD CONTRIBUTORS

Hopefully coming soon - we welcome all contributions!