Pink Floyd - The Wall

[space triangle]

I believe Roger felt great in the Pompeii Amphitheatre. No audience.....no headache!

[Kerry King]

^ No walls.

A concert while the volcano was erupting would have been far more spectacular.

[space triangle]

A concert while the volcano was erupting would have been far more spectacular.

And far more dangerous!

[Kerry King]

A concert while the volcano was erupting would have been far more spectacular.

And far more dangerous!

That's what I mean by "spectacular".

[space triangle]

And far more dangerous!

That's what I mean by "spectacular".

I think Pink Floyd should have participate in this:

Announcing The World’s First Public Gig Inside A Volcano

https://secretsolstice.is/announcing-th ... a-volcano/

[battra]

In 1992 I received my first CD player, followed by a second actually, but that's neither here nor there....

I asked for a copy of Pink Floyd The Wall on CD to go with it. Instead of that, my stepbrother got me a copy of Roger Waters's The Wall Live In Berlin because that's what was in the BMG catalog.

Well, gotta be honest... I didn't enjoy that version of this album. Listening to the cassette I had had gotten me through a great many trials and tribulations.

It wasn't long before I got rid of that blasphemous recording! I was 17 and I knew everything!! Right?

Also the fact that I didn't know or enjoy most of the guest artists at the time kind of mattered to me.

But I picked up the RSD version of this album on vinyl during quarantine, we had a covid issue, and I gotta say... I much prefer it now than I did then. The fact that I know who these people are and that I stopped hating folks like Sinead O'Connor on principle made a difference.

We're actually finishing up side two as I write this.

The real irony though?

I abandoned CDs and switched to vinyl...haha.

[rockfenris2005]

This is a great album, but after I heard "Is there anybody out there? The Wall Live", there was just no looking back. I prefer it to the album, which almost feels like one of the demos in comparison now.

[twcc]

Loaded in the car CD changer are back-up copies of the MFSL version of 'The Wall' ... this to me is the definitive mix. However, loaded in the next two slots are the CDs of the live version. On long journeys (remember those) I enjoy listening to both 'studio' and then 'live' although it is far more difficult to sing along to the live version.

This time next week I will hopefully have a copy of the 'Flat Transfer' from Sigma 268 and maybe, just maybe, I will load three versions into the car.

[ZiggyZipgun]

"I liked Roger's storyline. Although I didn't totally agree with it, you've got to let a chap have his vision. I just had a different view of our relationship with our audience than Roger did. Roger didn't like touring. And he felt there was no connection between him and the audience that were in front of him. I had a different view of it; I still do. And my view of what The Wall itself is about is more jaundiced today than it was then. It appears now to be a catalogue of people Roger blames for his own failings in life, a list of 'you fucked me up this way, you fucked me up that way.'" - DG, 1993

[azza200]

not seen that quote before which interview is that from?

[ZiggyZipgun]

not seen that quote before which interview is that from?

https://pfco.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk/ban ... gGW93.html

[mosespa]

I feel like that was also either in "A Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey" or "Bricks In The Wall."

Possibly both.

[Arnold Lane]

The wall is over rated IMO . Its got alot going for it but gets lost in its own spectacle . For me the good moments are outstanding and the bad moments are grim . Its not an album i can listen right through without skipping bits so i can only give this a 3

[theaussiefloydian]

I find The Wall to be kind of uneven to be honest. I don't think it's a terrible album, but I also find it a little overblown and (especially on Side 3) not very musically interesting, which makes it hard for me to keep paying attention.
(mini essay coming in... oof.)
I won't deny that Side 1 is extremely good. "In the Flesh?" is a hell of an opener and "The Thin Ice" works nicely here as well. I think it needless to say the run of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1" - "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" is iconic (though I'll never understand the inclusion of "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" on Echoes, given that's it's pretty much a transition track), and "Mother" is a perfect way to close off the side. All in all, the first side is probably my favourite.
Side 2 is also pretty solid, though I think it suffers a little (quite a bit actually) from the excision of "What Shall We Do Now?". "Goodbye Blue Sky" is a great way to open it, and the transition from that to the hollow percussion of "Empty Spaces" is one of my favourite moments on this record. This track is also one of my favourites because of its creepy atmosphere (though again in a perfect world it would have been "What Shall We Do Now?" here instead). "Young Lust" is a banger of a track. Then we hit "One of My Turns", which to me is musically the weakest of this side (I'm not too keen on that keyboard patch to be honest). "Don't Leave Me Now" is fantastically atmospheric, though I find some of its lyrics kind of make me hate Pink as a character (more on this later). Then it's time for "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3", which honestly doesn't have a lot of bite (the movie recording of this is far better in my opinion). But "Goodbye Cruel World" is again a perfect side closer - the choice to cut the song with just Water's voice saying "goodbye" is a brilliant one.
Side 3 is the bane of my existence, because while it's thematically important about half of it is - to me - fatally boring. "Hey You" and "Is There Anybody Out There?" are great (if saying pretty much exactly the same thing as each other), but then it's onto "Nobody Home", which... pffffffffff. "Vera" is a slight upturn though (slight), but mostly for the lyrics - the orchestral composition doesn't do it many favours to me and makes it sound like something off The Final Cut. Then there's "Bring the Boys Back Home", which Waters insists is important but for the life of me I can't figure out the significance of. But this side does end on a strong note, with the best song on the album "Comfortably Numb".
Side 4 begins with another track I find kinda superfluous ("The Show Must Go On"), and then it's onto "In the Flesh", which begins Pink's descent into insanity. And I know what Waters' was saying thematically with the comparison of rock stars to dictators, but the Nazi imagery is... a little uncomfortable. Then it's onto "Run Like Hell", which is a good song but also is clearly cut up a bit to make it shorter (thank God for later live performances!). "Waiting for the Worms" doubles down on that uncomfortable Nazi stuff, but it does have one of my favourite pieces of music on this album (that sort of doom outro). "Stop" is about 30 seconds long of course, but it's interesting to me that this pivotal moment is only that long. We move onto "The Trial", which has to be one of the strangest Floyd tracks ever and I think would have worked a little better if the other characters weren't just Waters doing silly falsettos. The wall comes down, and we're left with "Outside the Wall", which is also an odd track, and I feel done better on the movie soundtrack.
So now that I've complained about the music a little, I'll briefly complain about Pink. I don't know if Waters intended him to be as unlikable as he is, but boy do I hate him. It's difficult for me to feel sympathy for someone who cheats on his wife the moment he gets overseas then acts shocked and horrified when she does it to him (that and some of the lines in "Don't Leave Me Now" - I'm sure the lines about him beating her are figurative but still. Oof). Chuck in that Nazi stuff at the end and... Yeah, I just don't like Pink, and that leaves me emotionally disconnected from the album.
Damn, didn't mean for this to be this long. Suffice it to say, I am not keen on this album.

[Jimi Dean Barrett]

Lifehouse was a big project Pete Townshend intended for The Who. In the end it was scrapped, and the better songs from it went onto "Who's Next".
Imagine if the plug got pulled on The Wall? So they had to release a single album of the best bits?
Your tracklist may vary

Side 1.
In The Flesh
The Thin Ice
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces/ What Shall We Do Now? (Yes! It made it to the album after all!)

Side Two
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Is There Anybody Out There
Comfortably Numb
Run Like Hell.

Might lose a lot of the "narrative" but not a bad album. At least I didn't turn it into an EP!