Montreal first show..

 

So Bob went out to The airport to pick up Andy who was flying in for both shows from Toronto. I had a shower and headed out to meet up with Maria, Jack, Zo, Anne and Johnny around 5pm. I forgot my camera so went back to the hotel to pick it up and met Bob and Andy  as they just got back. The three of us walked up to the box office to pick up tickets and then headed back to the bar. Passed this bike as we were walking back, it was airbrushed with everything Floyd including the wall and Dark Side logos and animation!

   

 

We stayed in the bar an hour or so before heading back down to the venue.

Pre show meet up                                                                               

   

This would be the third time I've been to Montreal to see Rogers shows and the crowd are always fantastic here and tonight was no different. Maria had rolled up a small bunch of flowers for Brent the homeless guy and gave them to him inside the venue, he later put these on the stage just before he threw pick up there! Security at the venue  was the strictest id seen, no one was allowed to even rest on the front rail, not even the people sat in the front row! I was sat at the right side again tonight, right under the plane, my second favourite place.

Tonights plane video!

 

Dave’s guitar went silent during Another Brick pt1 and it was a good 5 or 6 minutes before it came back online. It was well into Another Brick pt2 when it was audible again. One of his amps went down and when the techs changed the amp the mistakenly pulled the power plug for the acoustic guitar amp so Dave never played on Goodbye Blue Sky either!

Space cadet glow during In The Flesh          Teacher                         Kids

   

The teacher puppet came down as normal but its ass caught on one of the bricks behind and this fell onto the stage, didn't take long for one of the crew to come out and pick it up and replace it on the wall, it was one of the ones with the metal frames attached as well so wasn't one of the light cardboard ones!

It was evident from the off that the crowd were going to be loud but seriously, I've never heard a crowd cheer like they did while Roger tried to introduce the track Mother. They erupted with cheers as Roger spoke French and thanked the audience. He was about to start to his speech about the video from earls court and singing double track etc but every time he opened his mouth and spoke the crowd just went wild! I've never heard anything like it at any shows before! Roger made mention to the Spitting incident here in Montreal and you can check out the clip by downloading it here thanks to Johnny P Rogers Spitting chat

I noticed that one of the bricks above me looked to be held together with bright blue tape!! i couldn't understand this and thought at least use white tape! 10 minutes later one of the crew reached out from behind the wall and pulled the tape off, it wasn't holding anything together and had obviously just attached itself to a brick without being noticed.

As i said earlier the security guys at tonight's show were really strict and they were stopping everyone from making video clips on phones, cameras and any other device. I could see them walking around and standing in two’s just looking out for people and then heading out to stop them!

I met up with Maria and Johnny at intermission and headed down to see Bob and Andy as well.

Second half was a lot better than the first, no visible mistakes and Roger was as lively as ever,

 

I never tire of the second half, especially seeing the equipment come up from the stage and the whole Run like Hell sequence. I noticed Harry came out to get onstage with Jack, his brother and Rogers younger son, He stood inside the rail rocking out and constantly watching Harry play the keys.

 

The crowd went wild yet again when Roger “found the door in the wall” and the screen went into 3D overdrive as above! Now, onto the wall falling.

Roger ducking the animation!

Remember yesterday i said that the wall at the show in Hartford & Ottawa didn't fall down at the sides just in the middle? well it was the same tonight and i know why! They had added some type of clamps to the bricks on the top of the wall on the right hand side, this now stops them falling!! so only the top couple of rows on the right side fall down and the whole area of bricks above the seats just don't move at all! this is such a shame as its just not the same, I'm real disappointed they have done this but as i mentioned earlier i thought this was the case after the people getting covered by bricks at the second Nassau show.

Wall NOT coming down at the sides!

Clamps added to the top of the wall bricks           Most of the side wall all still intact!

 

The wall fell ok in the middle tonight and it didn't take long at all for the crew to remove the bricks from the front of the stage so the band could get back on to perform Outside The Wall. The confetti fell really well tonight as well and looked great from my seat, picture doesn't do it much justice though.

  

One thing I've been meaning to mention but haven't until i could get a good picture of it is how the wall actually falls and what governs which way it falls! During the building of the wall there are hydraulic rams that raise up through the middle of the actual bricks! on the end of these rams (there are 6 of them through the length of the wall) is a hammer type thing that can be made to push forward or backward, hence whether the wall falls forward or backwards! The rams obviously retract downwards at a quick rate as the hammers are knocking either forwards or backwards.

See the hammer, like a heart shaped thing at the top of the ram

Plebeians leaving the show

More pics from the show and the meet up.

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Montreal day 1…..

The gym in this hotel is the best yet! it has everything i like plus a real nice pool. I worked out for a good 45 minutes and really went for it this morning, trying to burn off al that amazing food id had at Maria and Jacks the night before!

Bob and i chilled out in the room till around 11:30ish, I then headed up to the Olympic stadium to do the thirty minute guided tour and take the Funicular lift to the top. I’d seen the stadium last time i was in Montreal but hadn't been on the tour or up the tower. I took the subway up to the stadium, took about twenty minutes and involved two tube trains. The subway here in Montreal doesn't run on metal wheels but runs on regular rubber tyres! this makes it ever so quiet, even when the trains arrive  at the platform its a lot quieter than say the New York or London subway, its all spotlessly clean as well!

The Olympic Stadium is where the infamous spitting incident occurred when Floyd played there on their Animals tour in 1977. I'm not gonna type the history of this as its well documented but this is one of the best explanations as to what exactly happened but suffice to say this whole thing was the catalyst for The Wall The Infamous spitting incident

I LOVE the building itself, its probably my most favourite building in the world! i know a lot of people think its ugly and a huge “white elephant” but i love wandering around this place, especially on the ground and seeing all the curves and shapes  of the buildings around, its like walking round a Michael Mann film location and I'm a huge fan of his!

Wandering around outside

     

The stadium building                                   

   

The tower is the largest inclined building in the world and has a large observation room at the top.

I took the thirty minute guided tour of the building and this included the stadium itself, the swimming pool areas plus some great info about the building. There were only 6 of us on the tour and we had a great guide who knew every imaginable detail about the building, a few facts below:

To hire the venue out is $110,000 and it holds 57,000 people seated.

When it was build it was $1.8Billion OVER budget!!

They replaced the roof after a huge storm back in 1998, it used to retract upwards into the hole in the front of the tower but is now a fixed fibreglass one.

It has seven swimming pools in one room and is one of the largest pool areas in North America.

   

The moment the guide opened the door to the actual stadium and i saw it i couldn't believe just how vast the space was, it was HUGE! as i posted  yesterday i took 12 pictures of the stadium and morphed these together to show just how big this place was. There's  a LOT more pictures of the building inside and out in the album below:

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I wasn't inside the stadium long before i spotted something on one of the pillars next to me, could this have been the actual spit!!

I could have stayed in the actual stadium all day and just sat and looked at the curves and shapes on the building but i still had to go up the actual tower and see it all from above!

The fernicular lift going up the tower

It was an odd feeling going up in the air but going at a 40 degree angle! the ride up took about 4 minutes and the view on the way up was amazing.

On the way up

   

The view from the top was as you can imagine, spectacular. It was a real clear day and you could see for miles around, there were only 6 other people up there so i had al the viewing windows to myself!

The ride up to the top!

The ride up the tower

View of the stadium from above             Downtown Montreal                 The 1976 Olympic complex

   

Panorama view from the top of the tower

As i was videoing from the top of the tower looking down over the Olympic village i spotted a guy on the roof of one of the building, he was rollerblading and jumping between the building! then just laying on the roof and chilling out before doing it all again!

   

Guy jumping buildings on rollerblades!

I took the funicular back down the tower and again wandered round some more outside. The flags flying outside the stadium are still the same as they were at the actual games in 1976, this means even through some of the countries no longer exist their flags still fly! note there's no Canadian flag!!

 

I headed back to the hotel on the subway and got back to the hotel around 3:30pm