The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is known for its moments–those fleeting periods of magic that last for mere minutes shared by only those who make the musical pilgrimage to the Empire Polo Field in Indio.
While one of the most talked about moments came on Saturday night when Prince covered Radiohead’s “Creep,” perhaps the most appropriate one was when a giant inflatable pig floated above the crowd and drifted into the air over the Coachella Valley, signaling the end of the first half of Roger Waters’ set and the beginning of the end of this year’s edition of Coachella.
Waters, a driving force behind psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd, delivered the most visually stunning set ever in Coachella’s history. A shower of pyrotechnics engaged when Waters opened his set with “The Show” off the epic “The Wall.”
He and his full band, complete with powerful female backup singers,played some of Pink Floyd’s best, such as “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” “Wish You Were Here” and “Mother.”
To cap the Pink Floyd retrospective set, he ended with “Pigs,” as an inflatable porcine, spray-painted with a cartoon of Uncle Sam and the words “Don’t be led to the slaughter” hovered over the crowd before being cut loose.
After an intermission, Waters and his band came back to perform “Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety, with stellar sound throughout the entire show.
Green lights flooded the stage when the unforgettable bass line for “Money” began and with every crescendo in “Us and Them, bright white lights pierced through the crowd.
However that set’s crowning moment came at the end, when was a three-dimensional triangular prism hung over the stage, slowly pirouetting as lights projected a clear rainbow of color on the smoky haze, bringing the icon album cover for “Dark Side of the Moon” to life and turning the crowd into a living part of it.
Waters wasn’t even finished. He and the band came back onstage to rile the crowd into a fist-pumping frenzy for “Another Brick in the Wall Part II” and an ultimate finale of “Comfortably Numb.”