if any more proof were needed Floyd was expired this was it,
it was, like Gilmours solo effort, a very ambitious new product that required no input from the rest of the band
and sounded a heck of a lot like the Final Cut, except for the guitar parts (and of course that album sounded nothing like any previous Floyd album)
I liked it plenty at the time of its release even if noone else did, all the sonic details I dug from The Wall were there, he made great use of the stereo landscape to present his story as a widescreen fiim in audio form, and I liked the story he was trying to tell
I cant agree with thishogtownbro wrote:When you study English Literature, one of the first things you are taught is that ending any story with it all being a dream is "poetic fallacy". I think you can say Roger committed poetic fallacy in the case of this album.
when I see David Lynch films I hear other people make the same comment "its all just a dream so why should I care"
well, for one thing the dream tells us something about the dreamer
its like the convention of the unreliable narrator in fiction except it goes a step deeper and really tells us stuff the dreamer does not want to know about himself but the subconcious forces him to acknowledge anyway
and is an excuse for some great surrealistic images
aside from the dream structure I like the imagery, its all roadtrip imagery and I like roadtrips
being a geography geek I see the world this way anyway, and can personally relate to the hitchhiking, the travels in europe, the dream of moving to the country, the truckstop epiphanies
and I think Claptons bluesy guitar suits all this better than Gilmours more epic style would have
the tour for this was the first time I ever saw any member of the Floyd live
Roger opened with Set the Controls, and a few songs in did If, which I always assumed was included as it was an early attempt at the confessional singersongwriter mode he would play round with throughout his solo career
and the whole second set was his new album, which nobody in the audience seemed to be familiar with (or was much impressed with judging by conversations postshow)
most impressive to me was the three massive filmscreens he had set up above the stage, stretching the width of Maple Leaf Gardens, and on which he projected an allnew film illustrating the narrative from director Nicholas Roeg (Performance, Man Who Fell to Earth) and more cartoons from Gerald Scarfe ... these projections, only used for this tour, are languishing forgotten in the basement of one of Rogers mansions to this day and deserve to be seen once more
note also: aside from the sexy buttocks, the album cover was very minimalist compared to classic Floyd packaging
but the souvenir program sold at the concerts fit the album sleeve precisely and added many pages of illustrations "flesh"ing out the Pros & Cons experience
anybody who has the vinyl should endeavour to get a copy of this program