It might be the least enjoyable Pink Floyd album. The whole premise of a "rock opera" is pretty fucking stupid in the first place, because it's the wrong audience, the wrong atmosphere, and the wrong dynamic range. Pink Floyd were able to do it better than anyone - including Roger - but by working within the "rock" genre (a misused term but it'll suffice), it just ends up being a musical. It's about as edgy as Cats. The Ring of the Nibelung is 17 hours long, and there's no filler. As soon as you say it's "rock" you're immediately locked in to multiples of 44 minutes - is it a single album? A double? A triple? This is how it starts and here's where it ends - now you just need about an hour of filler and it will be a "rock opera". The music-buying public at large has favored shorter and shorter formats, because they know filler when they hear it. As Phil Spector put it, LPs are "two hits and ten pieces of junk." I'd be content with a Wall EP:
1. The Thin Ice
2. Mother
3. Hey You
4. Is There Anybody Out There?
5. Goodbye Blue Sky
6. Run Like Hell
7. Comfortably Numb
If we'd raise taxes to fund arts education programs in public schools, maybe "rock" audiences would acquire an appreciation for real opera.
This show was hilarious - there was a problem with the hydraulic platform used to bring up Mason's drums for the 'fascist' section which meant the MC Gary Yudman had to improvise in his slow voice for 10 mins, with the crowd getting increasingly impatient. They finally got going only for the drums to slowly start to descend again, Waters laughing at Mason's apparent peril. It's nice to have a decent recording finally.