As many of you know, I was on a flight back to New York from Amsterdam, The Netherlands and as a result I gratefully missed the inauguration and most of the post-inkguration events; however, interestingly enough, Roger Waters posted the live official video of a performance of “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” recorded when Donald Trump was the Republican presidential nominee and while Waters was in Mexico City for a series of gigs playing his classic and beloved material — and it’s an incendiary performance with artist-made images of Trump toting a machine gun outside the White House, giving the Nazi salute and surrounding himself with Ku Klux Klan members. And the performance ended with Waters co-opting the phrase that went viral among Mexicans and other Latinos across the world “Trump Eres Un Pendejo,” which translates to “Trump, you’re an asshole.” It’s a witheringly savage takedown of someone, who needs to be taken down as much as humanly possible and as often as possible.
Amazingly, Waters and his work with Pink Floyd has managed to be as political necessary and relevant as it was when it was recorded more than 40 years ago — and in a strangely prescient fashion, much of the material describes our dark political and social realities with a urgency that I think many of us haven’t noticed until now. Let this be a reminder that resistance has to begin right now.