Viva Roger

21 Feb 2007, Media City, Dubai. The concert was going to start at 8:30 pm, but we were there from 4:30 pm to take the front lines of the standing area. Everybody spoke Persian there, in that time of the day, no other nationality intended so soon for the concert, but for the Persians it was very different. I had heard that some of them were there since 10 am that morning, just wishing to be in the front line. It was probably the only opportunity for Iranian fans to see Roger, because that was his last world tour, and for many of us, it was the first time attending a rock concert or even going abroad, so it seemed natural to be so greedy about the standing situation.

There were two entrances to the venue and since we had ITN tickets the security guided us to the western entrance. The arena was a fenced area with a thick green canvas, so the only thing we need to do was following the fence across the southern street, where we passed the VIP entrance section to find the other box and there was it in the west. I gave my confirmation email print and got our 3 tickets, and the first thing to do was to kiss them firmly!

The security took our tickets and let us in, we thought that we entered the arena directly and rushed in but there were one more level to it. There were another line there beside a long bar table with phillipinas behind it, normally you can see them everywhere in Dubai, serving beverages and sandwiches. They were also selling t-shirts and hats of the tour, in a very poor quality, each for 100 Dirhams (1 dirham = 0.22 euro at the time), and I didn't want to pay it through the nose, so we just sat down chatting with some other Persians who were quite the same age and older than us, in contrast with the eastern entrance which were full of young and teenage Persian girls and boys.

The first surprise and the first lesson was that, as our tour guide in hotel had warned us about not taking any kind of camera to the venue, we left everything in hotel, but some people there had their cameras with themselves, it seemed the security wasn't very tough about the rules. And that was the lesson I had learned in the military service before but had forgotten it: Take the risk god damn it and don't obey everything you're told! Most of the time no bad things happen. So we should pass the time drinking, chatting, reclining on the ground...



It was about 5:30 pm that suddenly we heard the sound of a guitar from the inside, and that was enough for the crowd to shout and scream their passion. They were equalizing the instruments, and unexpectedly, the Dm chords of Another Brick In The Wall started and God, he was Roger singing: "We don't need no education..." everybody jumped like a spark cheering and whistling I started to scream too. We were hearing Roger live, and then the intro of Shine On you Crazy Diamond started to play, and that was when I couldn't keep myself up anymore and started to explode my dizzy happiness into tears. Mani said, shame on you, it's bad! don't cry! and I stopped pouring out my feelings, what we all have learned to do professionally in Iran: to keep our feelings deep inside.

Around 6:00 pm they gave us our bracelets, in a silly way. They asked everybody in the line to come to another table to take the bracelets, so suddenly there were no lines, so if you had come sooner, you weren't the first entering the arena, everything got disordered and everybody tried to get back in his own place in the line, but it was impossible.



10 minutes later they opened the way to the arena, there we were! A not very big steep ground, with VIP seats in the highest place in the south and we were rushing down towards the stage in the north. We could take a good place to stand. Right in the middle of the stage about ten meters far from it.


So we should pass another 2 hours waiting there. First we sat on the ground but as people entered the arena, the crowd pressure increased so we had to stand up to not to get squeezed by them. And that was when I started to communicate directly in English with people around coming form everywhere, Lebannon, Portugal, Belgium, Canada, Malaysia, Brazil,... gathering there for one thing. Bruno was a young Portuguese software engineer coming there with his friends, we had a great time, and I'll never forget the way he was speaking about unpleasant political situation, drunk, happy, easy, he spit in my face as he spoke and how he was astonished when we told him that we have two armies in Iran!

People were very good and kind to each other, everybody was joking and having fun and enjoying their time, even Persians that rarely you can see them being so kind to each other inside Iran, now they were really supporting each other. Some kind of unity and friendship that I had never seen before. People who had one single intention at the time, one single common reason to be there.

The screen during these two hours was showing a table with and old radio on it, a bottle of liquor and a glass, and an ashtray filtered with a sepia light seemed like an old piece of movie. The radio was playing soft rock music but I didn't recognise none of the songs. A hand came to the frame filling the glass and taking shots of it and sometimes changing the channel to another song. What a nice idea!

In The Flesh

Evevrybody was getting bored. It was 8:30 and the band wasn't on the stage. The air was filled with heavy smoke of cigarettes and joints the people were using. It was making me annoyed a lot. 8:40 pm. At last they came. There in back Harry Waters with a cowboy hat, the girls Carol Kenyon (the girl in Live8), Katie Kissoon and P.P Arnold, then Jon Carin and Andy Fairweather-Low (how old he had become, he has a new pair of glasses and beard and moustache!), followed by Ian Ritchie (the sax player) then David Kilminster and Snowy White, and finally, my old man came on the stage, smiling and waving to the audience, my heart beat got faster and blood rushed to my head I was just screaming, and couldn't believe I was there, I had dreamed Roger three times I think and now he was standing there shading his eyes from the spotlights watching the crowd who were unconsiously screaming to the great charisma he brought with him on the stage. Ro...ger, Ro...ger people cried.
He went for his bass and: EINS.. ZWEI.. DREI.. ALLEEEE! it had started!

Katie Kissoon performing Mother

I was kind of hypnotised for the whole concert. It was a strange feeling I had never experienced. Song after song came and I couldn't even recall what the last one was, I couldn't keep them in my mind. It was like you are living in the present moment. There was no past or future. There was just Roger and his brilliant music I had lived with it for about 10 years. Now it was playing live in front of me. What should I say, how can I believe it was real? But it was.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun

Snowy White, playing the haunting intro of Shine on you crazy diamond

Have a cigar

Wish you were here

Southampton dock/Fletcher memorial home

Perfect sense

Leaving Beirut

Andy Fairweather-Low performing Leaving Beirut

The songs played in the first part were:

1. In the Flesh
2. Mother
3. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
4. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts II - V) (abridged)
5. Have a Cigar
6. Wish You Were Here
7. Southampton Dock
8. The Fletcher Memorial Home
9. Perfect Sense, Parts 1 and 2
10. Leaving Beirut
11. Sheep

The first part finished so fast, the only thing that remained in my mind was the surprise of the explosion during Perfect sense, when I was watching Roger doing his pantomime in the left of the stage, the submarine missile hit the oil facility in the screen and BANG! and the hot wave completed my warm thrill of confusion. And they didn't have any pig but who cares?

One problem that I had in that close distance was watch-who and watch-what! If you watched Roger, you could lose the new clips on the screen, or if you watched the clip you missed beautiful solos Kilminster and Snowy were playing! And I should say, the songs performed quite better than I had seen in In The Flesh DVD in 2000, Kilminster exactly had the mood and feeling of David Gilmour in playing, I could say I was listening to the original album!

After the first part they went for a 15 minutes break, the screen showed a picture of the moon becoming larger and larger during the time. The second part strated in darkness with "I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years..." Magnificent.

During the second part



Probably during Time



Money




Us and them



Any colour you like



End of part 2 and goodbye

We decided to get back in the second part to listen better to the songs, people were very loud and crazy in the front. We did it during The Great Gig In The Sky, and now in the back we had more focus on the music, the sound quality was much better and there were less noisy people.

The second part was the whole everlasting album of all times, Dark Side of The Moon:

1. Speak to Me
2. Breathe
3. On the Run
4. Time
5. Breathe (Reprise)
6. The Great Gig in the Sky
7. Money
8. Us and Them
9. Any Colour You Like
10. Brain Damage
11. Eclipse

It also passed so fast, what a shame, and the band gathered together and waved goodbye, but we knew there will be an encore part, so they did come back, Roger said: "You want more?" YEEEESSS, crowd said. "Ok, here we go" Roger said.

So the encore came with songs from The Wall:

1. The Happiest Days of Our Lives

2. Another Brick In The Wall (Part 1

3. Vera

4. Bring The Boys Back Home (what a glorious performance)

5. Comfortably Numb

And it was over. Roger thanked the audience and said he had a great reception from the audience and it was a great finish of the first part of his 2007 tour, and they'll go to South America and goodnight!

I couldn't believe it was over. Perplexed and sad we made our way back to the place we had arranged for the hotel taxi.

P.s. Special thanks to Ian Ritchie, Mani, Ehssan, and Mr. Reza Vaezpour for his great pictures and great favour to share them with me.