| This was the last and most infamous of the 1977 shows, thanks to what’s known as ‘The Spitting Incident.’ The rowdy crowd clearly gets to Waters, whose agitated behavior is obvious - after being irritated by noisy audiences throughout all the North American shows, he reached his breaking point on the last night. The problems are evident when he stops ‘Pigs on the Wing Pt. 2’ after one verse due to firecrackers disrupting the intimate atmosphere he’d hoped to create with the very mellow song—they manage to get through it after a reprimanding of the crowd. Then he cracks during the last guitar solo in ‘Pigs’ after addressing the inflatable pig - you can hear him luring the irksome fan towards the stage so he can let him have it with saliva. The Wish You Were Here set goes over without incident, although he cracks up while finishing the last verse of ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ - long guitar solos during Part VIII at this last show. Later they get lost coming out of the solo in ‘Money’ and Waters has a very difficult time calming the crowd for ‘Us and Them’ - by this point the audience is ridiculously loud, destroying any subtlety the song was supposed to achieve. A rare third encore is played with the purpose of calming everyone and this rendition of ‘Blues’ doesn’t even include Gilmour, who’d wandered into the crowd to watch from the mixing board. Snowy White’s playing is great, but Gilmour’s absence makes the blues jam even less Floydian than it already was - meanwhile the road crew dismantles their gear while they're playing until all that’s left are Waters’ bass and one or two of Mason’s drums. A totally bizarre end to the tour and the end of another era for the band. |