Capacity: approximately 250,000

Concert starts: 8pm

Address of venue: Plaza de la Constitución S/N, Centro, Cuauhtémoc, 06010 Ciudad de México, D.F., Mexico. MAP

Website: www.visitmexico.com/en/zocalo-mexico-city

COMMENTS

Following the pair of concerts that Roger is performing in Mexico City, a free concert has been announced in the middle of the city before the production heads north of the border to the pair of weekends to be held at Indio, California. The Zócalo is the common name of the main square in central Mexico City. The plaza used to be known simply as the "Main Square" or "Arms Square," and today its formal name is Plaza de la Constitución (Constitution Square). The concert takes place at 8pm on October 1st.

As a guide to capacity, Paul McCartney gave a free concert here on May 10, 2012 in front of 250,000 people as a part of his On The Run Tour.

Normally we would have ticketing details on the show page, but as this is a free concert, there is no restriction on who can attend, and there will be no physical tickets or other admission requirements. Thus, there is no ticket scan to the right, where we would normally look to have one included. 

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!

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

The final night of Roger's 2016 dates in Mexico City took place last night as a free concert in this central square in the city. The set list above is as shown on the Setlist.fm website, and appears that Vera and Bring The Boys Back Home were not performed as encore songs. If you went, please let us know what you thought of the show.

CONCERT REVIEW and PICTURES by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Brion Hoke

Over the past four days I saw Roger three times. Twice at Foro Sol and tonight in Zocalo Square. The band was amazing with Jon Carin's harmonic melodies and the trio of Dave Kilminster, GE Smith and Snowy White bringing our much beloved music to life.

I have been so lucky to see some amazing shows over the years. The Wall, Dave Gilmour in Orange, Pula, Verona, Chicago and Tienen and Roger's Dark Side Tour, but of all the shows I truly enjoyed this one tonight the most. I love to make new friends and enjoy music with peaceful people and here tonight that was the case in Mexico City. This is a beautiful city with great people and truly amazing things to see, thanks Roger for showing me how great Mexico is!

CONCERT REVIEW by BD CONTRIBUTOR, Daniel

Hi guys, love to give you some details about the free show in Mexico, I was there and it was impressive. The stage was a 90 meter wide screen and he played not only songs from TDSOTM, WYWH, A & TW. He also played Set the Controls, One of These Days and Fearless (whatta supprise). The show was practically the same as the two before in Foro Sol with the difference that he did not play the acoustic versions of Vera and Bring the Boys. The visuals in the screen were half psychedelic and half political messages, which I think pretty much describes Mr. Waters' musical personality.

The show started with a video, a long one actually, of the surface of the moon with some sounds, more like a teaser. Then started with Breathe, after that the played Set the Controls and One of These Days to go back to the dark side with Time, The Great Gig in the Sky (sang on duet by the two lady singers (Lucius), Money and Us And Them.

Then it was time to Fearless, the visuals were very political on this one with images of Martin Luther King and other activists.

Then it was time for the Wish album, he invited a veteran in a wheel chair to play Shine on your Crazy Diamond parts I to V and he did it splendidly. It was followed by Welcome to the Machine, Have a Cigar and Wish You Were Here. None of them versions were far from the album versions.

Then the screen became the Battersea Power Station and four smokestacks came on the top of the screen, it was time for Animals and they played Pigs on the Wing pt 1 and 2 with a small guitar solo in between. It was time to bark and Dogs started, sang by Robbie instead of Carin (as In The Flesh DVD). Then Pigs was played with special dedicatory to Mr. Trump, it had strong visuals ridiculing Donald, at the end of Pigs the screen showed several quotes from Mr. Trump taken from his interviews and a bunch of his, now proven lies said during the debate, all of this Spanish and to end with a big message saying TRUMP ERES UN PENDEJO (Trump you are a fucktard in Mexican Spanish).

He then jumped to The Wall songs with The Happiest Days of our Lives, Another Brick Pt. 2 Mother, and Run Like Hell. During Mother and the iconic phrase "Mother should I trust the government" the screen showed a big message saying "RENUNCIA YA" (Quit now) a message for current Mexican president Peña Nieto who under his administration have lost several people with no clue of their whereabouts. Run Like Hell visuals were pretty much the same from The Wall Live, which was definitely one of the best moments of The Wall shows.

It was time to close the first set with Brain Damage and Eclipse, right when Eclipse started a big prism made out of lasers surrounded the band and once the song, seemed, to be over a sax solo started and colored lasers came from the front of the stage replicating the the Dark Side of the Moon cover album.

And it was time for Waters to speak for the Mexican people and with a long speech in Spanish he asked President Peña Nieto to resign and give the Mexican people a chance for a new beginning.

It was time for the Encore and Comfortably Numb started as epic as always and ended with some fireworks during the last solo.

Then the 270 000 people that were there went back home and I bet all of them had a big smile on their faces.

CONCERT REVIEW and PICTURES by BD CONTRIBUTOR, David Baird (Toronto, Canada)

I was very lucky to have one of only 100 VIP tickets to attend a special viewing of the Rogers Waters Zocalo concert from atop of the 6th floor of the Terraza at the Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico (the only building on the main Zocalo Square with an unobstructed aerial view of the entire RW concert stage).

From atop of the Terraza, you could see the 200,000+ Roger Waters fans sprawled out below who initially filled, but ultimately overflowed the square. To get a good seat (i.e. center and close to the stage) for this once-in-a-lifetime concert event, attendees needed to arrive very early. And many did! The square was open to the public at 11am in the morning on the day of the show and was mostly full, but not overcrowded, by 4pm in the afternoon.

Rain, however, was in the forecast. The skies darkened right before the concert began. However, despite a short 10-15 minute downpour that began shortly after the concert started at 8pm, the remainder of the show went off virtually rain-free. Roger began the show under a pair of black tents which, luckily, protected most of the band from the rain, the wind, and the other elements.

Roger's free solo concert at the Zocalo (Mexico City Main Square) was the final night in his trio of Mexico concerts. Both the Zocalo show and the previous two nights at Foro Sol were truly pure Pink Floyd shows with no RW solo material played whatsoever. Roger's regular band was in top form as usual and he brought with him a huge curved 90-meter wide HD video stage show on the scale of both The Wall and DSOTM tours.

Roger began the show with 'Breathe' from The Dark Side of the Moon, then spoke to the audience briefly saying he was going to "take us back to the beginning". He then proceeded to play 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' from A Saucerful of Secrets followed by the first ever live performance by Roger (since 1971) of 'One of These Days' as well as 'Fearless' from the Meddle album.

Roger’s spectacular two hour and forty minute show was divided into 5 main blocks of chronologically divided ‘Best Of’ Pink Floyd music (1 mini-set for each album). After the Saucer/Meddle set, came Dark Side of the Moon. The setlist for DSOTM was ‘Time’, ‘Great Gig in the Sky’, ‘Money’, and by ‘Us and Them’. In a slight change from previous shows, ‘Great Gig in the Sky’ was sung as a duet between the two new blondie-style backup singers dressed in pyramid-adorned poncho-like dresses.

Once DSOTM was done, it was time to move to the Wish You Were Here set. Roger began by introducing one the new guest band members from the Wounded Warriors Project who came onstage and played lead guitar for ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5)’, which Roger dedicated to the “Original Crazy Diamond, Syd Barrett”. Following SOYCD, the band played a trio of Wish You Were Here tracks including, ‘Welcome to the Machine’, ‘Have a Cigar’, and ‘Wish You Were Here’.

Next came Animals. The highlight of the show, in my opinion, was the staging of the Animals set. After what sounded like huge giant power station machinery kicking itself slowly into gear, a loud recurring alarm/siren (like that from a large fork-lift being driven in reverse or an airplane hangar’s doors being slowly opened), four smokestacks resembling those of the Battersea Power Station rose up behind the video stage. It took more than two and a half minutes for them to rise fully and, once lit, smoke began to pour out of the tops of each of them.

Roger started off the Animals mini-set by playing both ‘Pigs on the Wing (Part I and II)’ back to back, then the rest of the band joined him for ‘Dogs’, followed by ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’. Roger turned Pigs into an ode to Donald Trump where “The Donald” was mocked before the Mexican audience in some not-so-flattering video imagery (Donald was the “Charade” you are in Pigs), but the best parts, many of which are not PG-rated, are better left for those planning to attend the upcoming duo of Desert Trip shows. The ever-present floating Pink Floyd pig was launched at the beginning of ‘Pigs’ and was tethered between two of the Battersea smokestacks. An additional graffiti-adorned inflatable black pig with horns (more of a Wild Boar than a pig) was also flown over the audience during the guitar solo mid-song. ‘Pigs’ ended with a number of incendiary Trump quotes shown on the big screens (in Spanish), including a final quote from Roger which simply stated “Trump eres un Pendejo!” (English translation is also not PG, so look it up on Google if you like).

The Wall was next with ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)’, ‘The Happiest Days of our Lives’, and ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)’. Video from the 2012-2013 The Wall tour was used throughout this set. During ABITW (Part II) a group of Mexican school kids with T-shirts saying ‘Tear down the Wall’ in Spanish were brought out to dance and sing “We don’t need no education” alongside Roger. As a bonus, in the Foro Sol show, the song ended with a lifelike blonde smiling 4-ft tall Donald Trump piñata being beaten apart, and ultimately smashed open, by some of the bigger school children with a stick!

A politically charged version of ‘Mother’ followed, the highlight being the “Mother, Should I trust the government line?” where Roger proceeded to call for the Mexican President Peña Nieto to resign his position by splashing “Renuncia Ya” on the video screen (causing the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans in attendance to erupt in one of the louded cheers/audience responses of the night). An electric version of ‘Run Like Hell’ both roused the crowd up further and finished off The Wall set.

This set things up perfectly for Roger to segue back to DSOTM for the final two (non-encore) songs of the night, ‘Brain Damage’ and ‘Eclipse’. During ‘Eclipse’, the stage was slowly filled with thick nitrogen smoke from which a huge multi-coloured laser-based DSTOM pyramid was ultimately formed around Roger and the band. It was so large that it reached out to encompass the majority of the first 10-12 rows of the central audience and even rose to the height of the video screens themselves.

Once the concert ended and the band gave their bows, Roger took a few minutes to speak to the audience (in Spanish) from a speech, hand-written on a piece of paper. Roger’s politically-charged speech referenced many of the Mexican families he met in Mexico during his 2012 The Wall tour who had lost family members to the Mexican Drug War. Roger acknowledged the thousands of ‘disappeared’ men, women, and children (8000+) as well as the famous ‘43’ Mexican students who disappeared in the Iguala mass kidnapping in 2014. He called on Mexican President Peña Nieto, “el Señor Presidente”, to explain where the children were (donde estan?), noting that many of the missing disappeared under his watch (muchos durante su mandato). He ended his speech pointing to the Presidential balcony at the adjacent Palacio Nacional where, just a few days ago Peña Nieto stood reciting “El Grito” on Mexico’s Independence Day, stating that “War is not the Answer” (la guerra no es la solucion) and that the “President’s policies had failed” (sus politicas han fallado). He said that the Mexican people were ready for a new beginning (un nuevo comienzo) and urged the President to remember that the Eyes of the World are watching you (los ojos del mundo nos estan observando). For a full video of Roger’s speech, click here.

The encore set began by Roger asking the crowd to test their memories to see if they remember what he remembers (does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?). The trio of The Wall encore tracks included ‘Vera’ and an acoustic version of ‘Bring the Boys Back Home’. With the smokestacks of the Battersea Power Station still churning away in the background, the epic concert finale was, of course, a firework-filled kaleidoscopic Wall-inspired video overlay version of ‘Comfortably Numb’.

Before exiting the stage and sending the 200,000+ rabid Pink Floyd fans home for the evening, Roger, in his own special way, took a moment to thank the Mexican crowd for coming with a final “Muchas Gracias Cabrones!”

Next Stop Desert Trip!

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, reviews, newspaper reports, and anything else you come across for this show - we look forward to hearing from you!