Pink Floyd - The Wall: Classic or Dud?

I say just listen to The Downward Spiral or The Fragile.

On the other hand, the post-Barrett Pink Floyd albums I like best are _More_ and _Obscured By Clouds_, so take that as you will.

That being said, if you are around my age (30-35), the damned thing is completely ingrained in your psyche and punishes you whether you want it to or not. I can sing every song, and I hate them all.

Avoid the live version like an an envelope of anthrax, tho'.

Have I mentioned that my worst experience under the influence of marijuana involves said RW fanatic throwing on a PF record? My buzz, as they say, shit the bed. The ONLY good thing that came from these hellish experiences is learning that _Piper at the Gates of Dawn_ is damn good. The popular Waters albums keep me from approaching the unpopular Waters albums.

What was said earlier, about _The Wall_ being w/ you regardless of love or hate? So true, it hurts. Forced exposure to music does NOT engender feelings of fondness for it. Combine that with NUMEROUS reminders that, hey, this music is GREAT, you HAVE to like it ... well, why don't you just kick me in the head a few times?

It's...okay. I'll take "Comfortably Numb" and maybe a couple of other tracks; Ezrin's production and Gilmour's guitar = worthy in general. But it's hard to love and even harder to care about. My NIN reference up above is due in part because I think a slew of people who obviously wore that album into the ground did a lot better work in later years when they started making albums (Tool and Radiohead are other candidates).

Im just all about the funk today, I need help yesh.

(i'm pretty sure btw that i've *only* ever heard it from living next door to fuckin dudniks who play dud ass music at at maximum sonority levels.)

It's only, at best, the third best Pink Floyd album.

Actually, I think the movie kinda ruined it for me. It's a fine film, don't get me wrong -- but it sort've clouded my impressions of the album.

It's one of the very, very few rock albums that actually has a story to it.

Wha? There are *dozens* and *dozens* of concept albums. What about Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars, Quadrophenia, Tommy....to say nothing of Kilroy Was Here and Music from The Elder? Etc. Etc.

Listening to the album for a couple years, sure, that's fine (but then why did it become so popular already in 1980?)
But as for the movie, seeing a movie 6-7 times although you didn't enjoy it the first time. I mean, who would bother that?

Never heard any Gilmour solo stuff other than "Blue Light". Where to start?

That statement is an insult to the intelligence of millions upon millions of people. To really get what's going on? Isn't it eye-bleedingly obvious? War is bad. Daddy left me, and I'm sad. Mommy didn't love me enough, so I have woman issues. I'm so famous that I hate myself. The whole album -- and, indeed, all of Roger Waters' big "theme" records -- is like Freud turned into a Dick and Jane book. See Roger build a wall. Oh, how deeply metaphorical! God, it took me years to understand that!

The word "wanker" applies to perhaps no one on the planet quite so manifestly as it does to Roger Waters.

Dud.

I take it that you must have loved the Pumpkins' Machina: The Machines of God.

Dark Sides is overated dreck, too.

[sorry that was a cameo appearance from me in 7th grade]

[still though it's better than 'the final cut', that shit reex]

now that i've put everyone asleep, the WORLD IS MINE!

I also listened to it about a week ago, and realised that it's a huge crock of shit. It's too slow and morbid and pointless. The songwriting wasn't as good as I remembered, and guitarwork certainly wasn't as good as I remembered, and the whole thing reeked of "look how clever I am".

Full marks to the guy who said it's a clud. Yes, it's a classic, as it speaks to the disaffected teenager as well as anything, but it's also a dud, because it seesm to appeal to this lowest denominator, and go no further.

On the other hand, I suppose a classic is something you would listen to over and over again, and a dud is something you would never want to infect your eardrums as long as you live. Since I don't want to ever hear The Wall again, I would have to say dud.

But I have fond memories of this album . . . aaaaaaaaah!

Rock masterpiece.

Final cut wasn't great though, and neither was the division bell.

Great guitar solo nobody ever mentions: "Is There Anybody Out There?"

"Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Send your answer to Old Pink in care of the funny farm."

"Old Pink, Carolyn is on the phone."

let's all go to the laser-dome.

Try pre-maturely grizzled middle-aged rocker depression, actually.

....in Chalfont".

About sums it up

Is the movie necessary to provide context for the album? Part of me feels it might be, say for someone who knows nothing about it. Then again the giant animated vagina sequence DID scar me for life.

no, particularly since the movie didn't come out until three years after the album

I rather like earlier Floyd, but this is the album where the music truly broke under the weight of Waters' pretensions.

I agree with most people here in that I used to listen to and enjoy this a lot when I was young, but haven't felt a need to hear it for years and years now. I still haven't ever heard Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.

The film, at least, set off great a controvesy over the rumour that if one shaved off one's eyebrows, they'd never grow back. A whole generation watched LiveAid trying to determine if Bob Geldolf was wearing eyebrow-toupees.

As for the album as a whole, I'm often amused by the idea that Roger Waters thought people would indulge him to the extent that he could do a double album about how horrible his life had been. On that level I can enjoy it because it's so titanically ridiculous. But there are too many words on it and not enough spacing out, so I'd rather listen to "Dogs" or "Echoes".

One thing that's always disappointed me about The Wall is that the extended movie version of "Empty Spaces" is nowhere to be found. I mean, the heaviest song on the album and it's not on the album at all! Gaah.

"heaviest"?

I saw a bootleg vinyl copy of The Wall: The Soundtrack a long time ago at a record show. It had "Empty Spaces" on it, and dammit, I wish I had bought the damn thing for the twelve bucks or whatever.

Damn you, Pleasant, I was just about to say..

a long time ago a friend bought me an 80 min. CD xfer of the digital audio from the Wall LD, and since that day it has become, for me, the definitive version of the Wall which I listen to. It includes "When the Tigers Broke Free" and the "Empty Spaces" and loses a couple of trivial things. It has bit of dialog and sfx from the film mixed in brilliantly, and by comparison, listening to the traditional album feels, well, flat.

only annoyance: Bob Geldof's voice on "In the Flesh" isn't as good as Roger's.

I just like the part where it fillls him with the urge to defacate. Because really, your misanthropic concept album doesn't really become high art until you garnish it with a poop joke.

"heaviest"?

Big and loud and guitar-y without being an utter heap of shit like "Young Lust."

Dud.

Either it hasn't aged well...or I have.

The only things lazier and more self-indulgent than this record are the vast majority of shit posts on this thread. At least you could hope for a few brave defenses of this -- that perhaps the fascist fantasies were kind of an interesting take on what stadium rock had become by 1979, that as insufferable as Waters was by this point the music he wrote (esp. the stuff w/ Gilmour) is uncommonly tuneful. Or perhaps, to really zoom back for a second, that The Wall was the exact point at which The Beatles Moment (from the standpoint that pop, culture and society went hand in hand) went up its own ass, never to return really.

Instead, let's all bitch about Roger.

Regardless, I haven't listened to this for ages, though YouTube has some frankly excellent live vids of "Young Lust," "Run Like Hell" and others from 1980:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcGY53APNiM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYd6mCAcQw8&mode=related&search=

Maybe people here can find new ways to complain about these.

Ok, I'll expand on that thought for a second.

Watch the video of "Hey You" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1yD9avOGgM

Nothing happens for the first four minutes -- it's just some stuffed animal in "pain" while the song drones on and on. When Roger comes in to sing the finale, he's singing behind the 30' wall w/ the band in a cage-thing behind him.

It's utterly impossible to look at this video without thinking how much it's all about HIM. Yes, calling the record solipsistic isn't anything new. But if you think about this in a broader, cultural context, The Wall just might have been the moment at which pop music, despite all its portent, went back to being what it had been until The Beatles:

Entertainment.

My two cents anyway.

i go back to this album every few years to feel like a 13 year old and it works for that. classic

classic for all the right reasons.

I went through a phase of hating it, but now I think maybe it's just a good album unnecessarily bloated into a double.

Sampled by Kate Bush, therefore classic.

What sample?

apparently the helicopter sound in waking the witch is from the wall, but they sound different to me. in fact, i'm not sure I remember a helicopter sound in the wall at all

in fact, i'm not sure I remember a helicopter sound in the wall at all

Right in between "Another Brick In The Wall (Pt.1)" and "The Happiest Days of Our Lifes" (when the Teacher character is screaming STAND STILL, LADDIE!. Or something.

oh right. well it might have been the same helicopter sound from the same source, but it doesn't sound lifted from the album per se.

I don't appreciate being led by the hand through The Wall via "music concrete"
Its extremely off-putting and unnecessary with such a work
and Its too much Roger Waters pretension, story-telling and ego; not enough Gilmour brilliance; or Rick Wright accessibility.
Also, everything classic by the Floyd, with the exception of Dark Side(A notable exception, I know) invoked the memory of Syd, and this was never going to be another Dark Side.
Maybe when they recorded/wrote with him in mind, they had him on their mind, overlooking them, therefore filtering out all this Waters Bollocks.
Although mild applause for 'Pros and Cons'

Gilmour brilliance

i'm still trying to wrap my head around this...like trying to imagine dry water.

Oh please. Dave Gilmour is an exceptional guitarist -- like him or not.

Gilmour brilliance

i'm still trying to wrap my head around this...like trying to imagine dry water.

-- Lawrence the Looter, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 00:05

cold.

dark side doesn't invoke syd? what's "brain damage" about then?

Richard Wright was more or less thrown out of the group by the time, which is why "The Wall" doesn't work out. It would have benefited from synths being more prominent, like on "Dark Side Of The Moon" and "Wish You Were Here".

-- Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, February 10, 2006 6:36 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^^^^
every now and then, geir is 1,000% OTM.

i love the wall and find it to be a very potent work. some fantastic songwriting and arrangements with a really cohesive narrative holding the whole thing together. the concept is definitely the product of a very self-absorbed individual, but it works well in terms of touching on more universal themes, such as loss, loneliness, and lethargy.

Only makes sense to me in context with the movie. As a musical item it is frankly poor.

Well, it predates the film rather significantly, you realize.

Then what I really meant is that the movie is definitely a classic but the soundtrack is dud.

"Comfortably Numb" plus a load of stuff I never need to hear. Might be interesting to listen to it all thru again now. Remember the film being A Bit Rub.

kind of sad, people who don't get how much this album rules

Nobody Home

the obligatory hendrix perm
and the inevitable pin-hole burns, all down the front of my favorite satin sheets

shirt, not sheets, I think.

Gotta admit the TV sample kicking in at the end of Nobody Home is pretty poignant

album is all about The Trial, obv

....FILLS ME WITH THE URGE TO DEFECATE!!!!

Yeah, "The Trial" is freakin' superb.

i've got wild, staring eyes
and i got a strong urge to fly

lots of urges examined on that album

roger rapping through a megaphone in racist terms during "waiting for the worms" is a watershed moment in hip hop history

when i pick up the phone
-surprise, surprise, surprise
there's still nobody home

^^^yeah this

dud, okthxbye

good, leave, because you suck

kneejerk hatred of the wall is BORING

To paraphrase an ILXor, The Wall's a great album, but I cannot for the life of me foresee any future circumstance that will ever lead me to listen to the whole damn thing ever again.

This immensely overrated and uneven record is about 30% brilliant, 40% passable, and 30% dreadful. I fucking love "Comfortably Numb." I have a soft spot for "Nobody Home" even though it's pretty stupid. The parts with Roger Waters screaming get annoying after a while.. yeah, I get it.. he's going crazy.. shut up and sing. I can no longer listen to the medley of "Another Brick Part 1" "The Happiest Days Of Our Lives" and "Another Brick Part 2" due to becoming absurdly overplayed on US classic rock stations.

It gains points for containing reversed hidden messages which stands as one of the scariest things I've ever heard on a rock album.

It gains points for being briefly discussed in the "Chip's Party" sketch on MTV's The State.

It loses points for containing 81 minutes of music.. had there been 2 less minutes it could have fit onto a single CD, thus making it so that record stores wouldn't be able to charge $29.99 for something that should be worth closer to $8.99.

The parts with Roger Waters screaming get annoying after a while

Have you head The Final Cut?

"The Gunner's Dream" has the best Waters scream since "Careful With that Ax, Eugene".

Hey, that rhymes.

i say neither classic nor dud, but i really like "Goodbye Blue Sky", "C Numb" and a couple others

billstevejim, who's immensely overrated this album in like the past 20 years? just curious. all i ever hear or read at best are high-handed dismissals like what you just wrote

I'm convinced that at least a quarter of the people who hate it so much now liked it at one point in their lives.

I absolutely love the first seven songs, the stretch through "Goodbye Blue Sky". The rest of the first cd is pretty poor, I think, with dreariness like "Don't Leave Me Now" totally killing the momentum. It doesn't help that the only song on here I really hate is "Young Lust", which, given how many plays it got on 96 Rock back in the day, seems to have been a highlight to someone. The second cd is pretty great, but the skits ("Bring The Boys Back Home", "The Show Must Go On") rub me the wrong way now, reaching for theater and falling short. But man "Hey You" is great: I love that acoustic sound, like they managed to get all the echo off the strings, so that it sounds like rubbing against a resonant zipper (hey, maybe we're back to young lust again).

I've grown to appreciate, if not like, most of their albums, including Animals and the stupidly obvious, literal Dark Side of the Moon, but I've always hated The Wall. I'd rather listen to late seventies Emerson Lake and Palmer.

ok, I take back what I said about "Bring The Boys Back Home"; just listened to it fucking loud and it sounded great.

Then what I really meant is that the movie is definitely a classic but the soundtrack is dud.

it is not a soundtrack

this was my favorite album on earth when I was, like, 13. I only listen to it once a year now but I still enjoy it, sure there is some boring stuff but the highlights on here are pretty high, I mean, REALLY high...Mother? Comfortably Numb? I love PF pre-Dark Side like anyone else and listen to that more often, but those songs are exceptional. No-one makes records this overblown now. I dare someone to try!

"Mother" is such a wonderfully fucked-up song.

billstevejim, who's immensely overrated this album in like the past 20 years?

copied from wikipedia: In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed The Wall as #87 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

I consider the Rolling Stone canon as the ultimate example.. I can understand why Wenner included it so highly, as it's beloved among classic rock fans (as opposed to Pink Floyd fans.. most hardcore Floyd fans familiar with the entire catalog don't consider this one of their best albums.. I've never been given that indication anyway).

Yes I enjoyed this record when i was 13 but I was also listening to a LOT of classic rock radio at the time..

I still enjoy at least half of it.

I loved it at the time, and I've continued to love it. I'm aware of how somewhat preposterously bloated and ludicrous much of it is, but that doesn't diminish my love for it one iota.

Yeah, I may never actually listen to it again, but the impact that it had on 13-year-old me cannot be overstated, and for that it remains Classic forever.

I dont know... I think it just rubs me the wrong way. When I was around 13 (is this the obliged age to listen to PF for the first time in your life?) an uncle lend me his vinyl collection of Pink Floyd and I listened started listening to them by chronological order. I made a whole ritual out of it. I would listen to only one album every 3 days. And after getting increasingly excited after the brilliant run of 'Meddle->Dark Side of the Moon->Animals->Wish you were here' smashing into 'The Wall' was a very dissapointing experience. Everything released prior to Wish you Were Here started sounding knackered to my ears. I still kept my ritual and still listened to every subsequent album for three days with hopes I would find a diamond somewhere, but asides a few great songs the overall result seemed offensive. It wasn't until I saw the movie a few years later that I was able to enjoy the music. Perhaps I just lacked the imagination to construct my own paranoid fantasy while listening to it.

paranoid fantasy is writ large in the lyrics. i started listening to it when i was 10 and it made sense to me, spoke to the gathering angst the same way the cure and joy division did

Heard it played on BBC Radio One around the time it came out, with Waters interviewed in depth between the tracks.

Some of what he had to say was interesting, but I thought the music was bloody awful then, and age hasn't improved it for me one iota.

I'm 28 and I still haven't heard this album all the way through. I'm going to soon, as I've got the movie queued up in Netflix and most of my friends tell me I should probably see the movie rather than hear the album first anyways.

Ever since I heard 'Piper' my journey down the Pink Floyd discography got derailed for solo Syd and stuff like Soft Machine/Robert Wyatt/Kevin Ayers. You listen to a Pink Floyd song about insanity, "Brain Damage" and it's boring, and then you listen to a Syd Barrett song about insanity, "Dark Globe", and it's just about the most heart-breaking thing ever.

It shouldnt be fair to compare the two but post-Barrett Floyd seems to be pretty preoccupied by Syd so the opportunities keep showing up. Does the Wall have a lot of Syd references too?

most of my friends tell me I should probably see the movie rather than hear the album first anyways.

Most of your friends are wrong. In a perfect world, the film wouldn't exist.

Syd's referenced specifically as "Old Pink" in the afore-cited backwards message during -- is it "Empty Spaces"?

I just saw the movie and I think I agree with you. Pretty dull; a few cool images (which I had already heard about ie. burned cigarette, flower fucking, kid meat grinder, etc.) and a whole lot of glamorizing of some junkie fuck who the whole time I was hoping would OD and die. The music was pretty cool though, it really felt like it was big and deep and serious and dramatic. Well produced, but not too terribly memorable. Which kind of sums of the movie too. Maybe if it was all animated it would have been able to go more places.

Maybe my problem is I watched it sober.

Anyways I still haven't listened to the album. Wonder if that will ever happen...

this is great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYtGsvoBVw8

that song has it's own lengthy wikipedia article!

It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black '44.
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while.
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.

And kind old King George
Sent Mother a note
When he heard that father was gone.
It was, I recall,
In the form of a scroll,
With gold leaf and all.
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around.
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free.
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusiliers Company C.
They were all left behind,
Most of them dead,
The rest of them dying.
And that's how the High Command
Took my daddy from me.

this album is better than everything that will be on this list
Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

Sorry if this has been posted before, but this is pretty cool, cover by an Iranian-Canadian band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIP38eq-ywc

Some background:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100805/ap_en_mu/us_people_roger_waters

man the first eight songs on this are pretty much untouchable---the cymbals on the "Mother" solo are so great

but "Young Lust" remains a maximally rank turd, alas, & it's a spotty album thereafter

The Wall is spoiled now for me as I will always think of the BBC Floyd documentary with Gilmour calling it 'a bit of a whinge' in his Tim-nice-but-dim accent.

I have to revise my comment of a year or so ago. Tracks from this have been popping up on my Pandora David Bowie station, and every single time this happens I find myself really liking them. I'm still not sure I can handle the whole thing at one sitting, but track-by-track it seems awfully good (and on my Bowie station it's going up against Bowie, Iggy, and Led Zeppelin most of the time, so we're not talking weak competition).

...and I guess I'm not the only person who knew The Captain and Tennille while growing up, but was unaware that Toni was (maybe) on The Wall.

I think the trouble with listening to the whole thing in one sitting may be that it is largely all in the same key, which makes it even more of a dirge.

this album's good but a bit overrated. like some of the interludes are just pointless. does have some of their best singles ever, though.

Sat in a bookshop this afternoon and read through Gerald Scarfe's book on the making of the Wall. It's a good read - but I'm not going to spend £30 on it.

i think rubber ring is about this thread

Live performance / movie - classic.
Album - dud.

I love "Nobody Home."

I find Gary Yudman's slowed down MC delivery at the top of the second act greatly unsettling, especially when the band crash in mid-sentence.

As a whole: dud. A track here, a track there: moments of classic.

Classic simply for "In the Flesh?" The rest of the album is a complete bore except for ABITW pt 2 and Run Like Hell. "In the Flesh?" is that good.

"Comfortably Numb" is the best Floyd track ever so not really a bore

i could do without it.

"One Of My Turns" though

Hey You also wonderful. Mother also wonderful. Really most of the songs on this are great, whatever one thinks of the overall concept/story.

pink floyd rules

i have been listening to this a lot recently.it's kind of bewildering, though. i've listened to it all week while wandering a giant open park with my dog, listening closely to all these little parts that i never noticed before. or that i forgot, i guess. and listenening front to back, there are very few tedious moments. but just now, i thought "i know i'll propose a pick only five from this album" and quickly scanned through to identify my faves. and somehow, almost the entire album seemed to be made up of transitory connecting tracks that i wouldn't think to elevate to my prestigious top five. definitely one of those albums that's greater than the sum of its parts

anyway, listening to it this week i thought i had a more interesting top 5, but i guess it's just

the wailing duel guitar/bass melody in the in the flesh's
goodbye blue sky
comfortably numb
mother
hey you

(unranked)

kinda otm

imo i enjoy it as whole ~thing~ and not so much individual tracks

though I dont listen to the album through that often these days

Classic when you're a teenager and the record sounds more deep than it actually is.

Dud when you're an adult and you realise it's a double album of a successful multi-millionaire musician whingeing and you've heard 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)' way too many times.

hmmm. here's how i wound up ranking the songs on the record. seems about right.

i was just listening to the asha bhosle version of "hey you" again. it's better than pink floyd's.

Comfortably Numb
Run Like Hell
Hey You
Another Brick In The Wall Part I
Mother
Outside the Wall
Goodbye Blue Sky
The Thin Ice
Nobody Home
Another Brick In The Wall Part II
In The Flesh?
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
The Show Must Go One
The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
Vera
Bring The Boys Back Home
Empty Spaces
Another Brick In The Wall Part III
The Trial
Goodbye Cruel World
Is There Anybody Out There?
Young Lust
In The Flesh
Stop
Waiting for the Worms

"Is There Anybody Out There?" gets extra points as a standard for guitar beginners.

The Wall is just Preservation Act 2 without any of the restraint or fun

Animals was the last "true" Floyd album.

i found LP 2 of this in a free records pile so it's the one i've heard the most. side four i usually skip as its a bit grotesque and pompous. when the big brass band starts up i usually look for another record to play.

i really love side three. "Nobody Home" is maybe my favorite song. i feel like the lyrics were a big influence on the Flaming Lips. also the song feels very similar to Neil Young's "Motion Pictures". the songs share similar chord structures and lyrical themes. disillusioned rockers gazing through a tv, cataloging the things surrounding them, searching for the post-hippie dream in the cynical self-help 70s.

"Vera" is really great too. side three rules.

Was looking at Spotify and last.fm - why is Hey You such a popular song? Definitely one of the better Wall songs - i.e. it had Gilmour vocals - but not quite sure why it has become a top ten Floyd jamb

I feel like I've been hearing it a lot on Ottawa classic rock radio for close to three decades at this point. Is it not a staple elsewhere?

the world is secretly obsessed with the squid and the whale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-81GUZH0hY

xpost I had no idea it was popular on radio anywhere. I remember when it appeared on Pulse and Echoes and thinking it was an unusual choice. Guess I didn't know shit

Ha, I'd forgotten which song he played.

xp

i had forgotten the song and also the movie, so the difficulty of the google search was at least 9 out of 10! (i finally found it when i added "talent show" to the list of words that MUST appear)

Turrican OTM

This was one of my first tapes as a young one and yeah it pretty much summed up my world at that time

totally hyperbolic question (and not just irrelevant but ridiculous to people who don't care about such things) but what concept album tells a more profound story than the wall? "waiting for the worms" predicted trump (celebrity as mental fascist asshole leader as 'syd meets hitler') better than like sf sorrow or tommy prepped us for the current nightmare

good morning the worm your honor, the c(r)(l)own will plainly show the prisoner, who now stands before you, was caught red-handed colluding with russia, colluding with russia, because he's $100s of millions in debt. this will not do. call the special counselor!

would you like to make america great again, my friend? all you need to do is purchase this red hat

MA-GA MA-GA MA-GA STOP! i wanna go home, take off this dumb hair weave and leave the show. but i'm waiting in bernie madoff's cell because they have to know (have to know have to know) that i've been putin's all this time (have to know have to know have to know . . . )

ok well if it wasn't ruined for me as an adult before, it sure is now lol

Hey you, out there on your throne
Tweeting naked on your phone
Would you resign?
Hey you, with you ear against "The Wall"
Waiting for some Mexican to throw over a bail of weed
Would you resign?
Hey you, would you pardon Julian Assange for Roger Stoooooooooooo-one?
Open your heart, J-Kush owes $1 billion yo

When I was 13 I thought The Wall was the greatest, profoundest album or statement made by anyone. By 18 I felt it was largely shite. Is it an album that people really stick with?

;_;

(whispers) yes

Agree with Gilmour when he said (in the BBC doc) adopting his best Tim-nice-but-dim voice that is was a 'bit of a whinge'

However the iconography is all-time and the free transparent sticker resided on my bedroom window for many years.

this album is lyrically more sophisticated than anything lou reed or johnny rotten threw together, but let's pretend otherwise, because reasons

tell me, is something eluding you, sunshine?

Is it an album that people really stick with?

it contains the comfortably numb solos, so yes

to feel the warm thrill of collusion

i'm glad somebody is still carrying the torch for filk, i thought the kids today had all gone nerdcore

that "squid and the whale" bit is sampled on dertbeats' "west side of the moon". it's a damn fine beat tape, although he gets better beats out of "remember a day" than anything from "the wall".

... squids, whales, lobsters...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/10/lobsters-must-comfortably-numb-cooking-rules-swiss-government/

If I was to do a top 5 from this album, it would probably be (in album order):

Goodbye Blue Sky
Hey You
Comfortably Numb
In The Flesh
The Trial

I think my favorite part of the album "Goodbye Blue Sky" through "Don't Leave Me Now", with the fascist freak-out close behind

prob haven't listened to this record since i was 17, but boy did i love it and the movie when i was 17

goodbye blue sky is definitely the one. run like hell would be in my top five

i think i was 17 when i first heard this one too, but it never hit me as hard as animals or dark side. i heard young lust for years on the radio before i ever played the wall in full, and i was shocked that it was a floyd song.

I like DJP’s list. I’d replace In The Flesh with The Thin Ice, and The Trial with Mother.

Goodbye Blue Sky
In the Flesh
Hey You
Comfortably Numb
Mother

Always intrigued me that they left the best song off the album (wiki says it was cut by "the other members on the grounds of being too personal"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9b9UhFe6Eg

It features 2x in the film, oddly.

just play the comfortably numb solos for 80 minutes, really

For me, one of the problems with The Wall (and Animals, too) is that you can't hear the drugs any more. Pink Floyd started as overt psychedelia, and even if they evolved over time, that intriguing cosmic, space-rock spirit still carried through as late as Wish You Were Here.

Funnily enough I've never been big on the Comfortably Numb solo. When he does this endlessly on the '80s live records it's yawn-worthy to me. But then soloing Gilmour is the least I like about mighty Gilmour.

The Wall: once a classic, always classic. Nothing "dates" if you know how to keep the jadedness which the passing years throw at you at bay.

IMO "Comfortably Numb" is *far* from the best Gilmour solo on The Wall. (Let alone the best in his recorded career.) If I had to pick one from this album, I'd probably go with "Mother."

The solo on "Comfortably Numb" is not only Gilmour's best solo, it's the best guitar solo in the history of guitar solos.

there's gotta be some middle ground on this

gilmore play guitar pretty

there's gotta be some middle ground on this

I'm not a stan but it's p good and sums up a lot of what made him effective?

"Comfortably Numb" is a genre as well as a song and the solo is a big reason why. it rules

what other songs/bands are in the comfortably numb genre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUmBTdmjMn4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lsCEgcRozY

was thinking of Queensryche, in particular "Silent Lucidity"

would say King's X is at least connected to the genre too

For me, one of the problems with The Wall (and Animals, too) is that you can't hear the drugs any more. Pink Floyd started as overt psychedelia, and even if they evolved over time, that intriguing cosmic, space-rock spirit still carried through as late as Wish You Were Here.

― Melomane

you can't hear the drugs on the mid-section of "dogs"? really? i mean, animals is a bad trip, but for me at least it sure as hell is a trip

maybe it's just me, but i _really_ enjoy gilmour's solos on "the final cut". none of them have anything to do with the songs... i should just make an edit of only the solos from that album and see what they sound like!

ah! already exists. here we are, "the final cut", just the good bits!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXkxJ-1oGbY

missing 'not now john' tho

what other songs/bands are in the comfortably numb genre

not my favorite Floyd song!

what other songs/bands are in the comfortably numb genre

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, April 29, 2020 10:56 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

'plainsong' by the cure has always struck me as a mix between 'comfortably numb' and joy division's 'atmopshere'

FZ 'Watermelon in Easter Hay'

Purple Rain

just kidding

"Silent Lucidity" by QRhyche

"Brothers in Arms" (among many others) by Dire Straits

maybe even

"The Confessor" by Joe Walsh, although that one actually builds and rocks the f' out.

"The Road to Hell" by Chris Rea is another that got that icy blues/synth pad thing Floyd worked too.

Scorpions: "Wind of Change"

echo & the bmen -- "killing moon"

I don't think Purple Rain is out of bounds at all. xposts

so if we're going down this road what differentiates "comfortably numb" from "every rose has its thorn"

being better?

I was gonna say something about how "Comfortably Numb"=Power Ballad (Minus Romance), and I guess I just did.

killing moon is a good example because it has the major chorus and minor verse

the drug that I can hear very very clearly in the Wall is coke

that was the surrogate band

this digression prob deserves it’s own thread?
also i dunno that any of the suggestins so far are “like” Comfortably Numb but ilm thought exercises usually fly right over my head
so i guess my own subtext here = kindly get off my lawn lol

the drug that I can hear very very clearly in the Wall is coke

― veronica moser

i think "animals" has a certain variety of cocaine paranoia as well; i wonder how much of the specific sound of "the wall" is just bob ezrin being bob ezrin

the thing that surprised me most when i revisited the wall a couple years back was how much _melody_ there is in it, given that pink floyd wasn't ever really a band to emphasize melody, and given that waters circa 1979 was not exactly a man possessed of superlative melodic gifts

pink floyd circa 1977 = here's a five minute interlude of barking dogs
pink floyd circa 1979 = here's, i don't know, a fucking barbershop quartet or something. maybe we'll get bruce johnston to sing backup on it. that would probably sound good, right?

The long pieces aren't melody-driven, but when they were writing self-contained songs from Meddle through The Wall, they were very tuneful. Not a lot of choruses, now that I think about it, but lots of beautiful singable verses.

What I don't like about Water's later years is that, starting with The Final Cut (although I think it works on that album), his melodies got more and more fragmented--Pros & Cons especially is almost a collage of tune bits and abandoned ideas, without the flow he used to have.

X-post

Well yeah, Animals is all about texture over melody.

ok i revisited this for the first time in 100 years and forgot how much i love "nobody home"

side three is definitely my favorite, i get "vera" in my head all the time

lol the "tear down the wall" part of "the trial" followed up with "outside the wall" still really gets to me

"when the tigers broke free" is ok but I wouldn't call it the top of this era

i would! one of waters' best songs. i love the final cut, whatever

Released 42 years ago today, evidently.

I recently listened to this for the first time since I dunno 1990? And it is - pretty great? Like I wouldn’t chuck it on while doing the dishes or hosting a fondue party - but as a dedicated sit-down 4 sides of vinyl experience it was pretty rich. Sure Waters exudes unfun/regrettable vibes but if you embrace the ugliness of it then it’s pretty impressive. And the good song:shouty/oompah nonsense quotient is much better than I remembered.

Which, I dunno, I guess this thread probably is overall pro-Wall? But despite loving Floyd as a teen I was pretty strongly influenced by the UK music press heaping shit on this one and was surprised by how much I respected it!

I am very pro-Wall, the storytelling & throughline still (mostly) hold up for me even if it is overangsty/dour etc.

me too. the wall RULES

listened to it far too much as a lol teen but once every five years or so it still rules

saw the film before I heard the album and I'm still disappointed about that big trial scene being another version & sounding so meh on the album

xp yeah i can't see myself going again for some time - it's a heavy listen

this time i found it productive to approach it as a period piece - like, that kind of pissy male vulnerability tumbling into self-obsession feels like it comes from the same historical moment as say The Singing Detective or the 1980s Martin Amis books

finding i am increasingly turning to this kind of ~~vibes~~ reading, where the inherent flaws of a work are compensated for by the degree it might nail a certain aesthetic or mindset of the time

anyway, Pink Floyd rules and The Wall does indeed also rule

not much of a Floyd fan, most of their albums fall into "I can see why people like it but it's not really my thing" territory but The Wall always seems to convince me that maybe I do really like Pink Floyd

yep, The Wall rules

I particularly prefer the movie rendition of Mother over the album version.

I liked The Wall a lot as a young person, but since then I feel most of the best stuff on it was done better on earlier Pink Floyd albums. I saw the Wall live show a few years back, and it seems Roger Waters stopped concentrating on being a conventional rock singer/songwriter after Animals and became a stage impresario. The theatrical live show really became the centre of his work.

saw the film before I heard the album and I'm still disappointed about that big trial scene being another version & sounding so meh on the album

Yeah that part of the album is the pits. A lot of that last side is awful, but it does have "Run Like Hell." I can't sit through the whole thing, but at least half of it's really good.

AND THE WORMS ATE INTO HIS BRAIN

veg girl

what has become of you?

how can you have any pudding if you don't yeet your schneef

does anybody else in here
feel the way i do

:D

whenever i think i am tired of this album “Goodybe Blue Sky” tells me otherwise

yuuuuuuup

"Goodbye Blue Sky" was the highest placing (at #17) of three Wall tracks on my Pink Floyd Top 30 ILM Poll ballot.

The other two were "Another Brick, Part 1" and "Is There Anybody Out There?" at #'s 29 and 30. Putting "Is There Anybody..." on the list is more than a little challopsy, I'll admit. I definitely burned out on the big tracks from The Wall over the years, and it's interesting that I'm left preferring the 3 most melancholy songs.

Goodbye Blue Sky was my number 8. Also had Young Lust on there, which must have been my attempt at challops or something.

The "Records Revisited" podcast just did a two-plus hour episode on this album. It reminded me how much I love it.

I realize that your perception of this record may depend to a great degree on the context in which you discovered it. For me, it was the soundtrack to my middle adolescence (ages about 15-17). I can't separate it from that time, and it's one of the best associations I have with what was in general a pretty shitty time of my life.