TORONTO -- Still Waters, as they say, run deep.

If you'll be so kind as to pardon that little cliche -- and bad pun -- it's a fair summation of former Pink Floyd man Roger Waters' long-awaited show at the Molson Amphitheatre last night.

The sold-out concert came just 10 days into Waters' In The Flesh tour, which marks the first time the 54-year-old British rocker has hit the road since his Radio K.A.O.S. album in 1987.

Likewise, Waters has remained silent -- in terms of new music, anyway -- since his 1992 album Amused To Death, though he has been tucked away lo these past seven years working on an English and French opera, Ca Ira, which has yet to see the light of day.

It was impressive, then, that the singer-bassist could pour out such a vibrant, oddly-paced three-hour psychedelic trip based solely on his wealth of past material.

Offering something that was more a musical biography than a mere retrospective show, Waters stretched back in spells, starting from one point in Pink Floyd's varied history, only to spring forward to his own '80s solo career.

Launching the voyage with side one of the Floyd's deeply depressing 1979 opus The Wall seemed at first like a weird idea -- though the fact that the charming Waters could still get 16,000 rock fans to sing along to lovely but grim favourites like Mother was a feather in his cap.

Besides an out-of-sequence touch on 1983's The Final Cut -- Waters' last album for the band he formed with mad genius and acid-casualty Syd Barrett in 1966 -- the singer managed by intermission to trace backward through 1977's Animals (Pigs On The Wing Pt. 1, Dogs), and '75's Wish You Were Here (the magnificent Welcome To The Machine, Syd-tribute Shine On You Crazy Diamond).

Projections of old album art and a haunting portrait of Barrett were a nice touch.

But Waters and his eight-person backing band -- which included longtime guitarist Andy Fairweather-Low, Stevie Ray Vaughn protege Doyle Bramhall II, and ex-Procol Harum drummer Graham Broad -- could have played in a badly lit barnyard and still connected. Bramhall shone particularly bright, etching out his own Floyd impressions while also managing to do a dead-on David Gilmour when needed.

Set two loped further backward through the best of Floyd's 1973 classic Dark Side Of The Moon (Breathe, Time, Money). Unfortunately, Waters drew the line there -- no Atom Heart Mother or Saucerful Of Secrets for this crowd -- deciding to indulge fans of Radio K.A.O.S. and Amused To Death before wrapping with surefire Floyd hits Eclipse and Comfortably Numb.

Still, it was an effective excercise that gave fans a consumate Pink Floyd experience while letting the singer stretch his lean legs after a long hiatus.

What seemed dodgy at first -- it might have been nice to see Waters, Fairweather-Low and Bramhall in a small band without the swelled-production and solid but standard-issue back-up singers typical of post-Waters Floyd -- quickly made sense: There are basically two Pink Floyds. Until Waters' recent return, both were dormant for years.

But this was a sound reminder of where it all started.

JAM! Rating: 4 out of 5