Taking Sides: Post-Floyd Roger Waters v. Post-Waters Pink Floyd

That said, I really liked some of Radio KAOS as a kid...

that being said, i do remember Pros and Cons as not being as bad as the reviews (essentially an extension of The Final Cut which is "not bad"/"pretty good"... -nb: i haven't heard it since freshman year of college), and "on the turning away" is not even a bad song... it's basically vangelis' "chariots of fire" with lyrics.

...

No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It's not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there'll be
No more turning away?

I'm mentioning this only as a FYI and not actually recommending that you listen because...

A very apt description, but seriously....solo Waters records are just dire! He needs Gilmour to reign him in.

Prefer them to Lou Reed's solo albums? Possibly! (I've never heard the Squeeze album, but would like to, actually.)

I actually quite like "On the Turning Away" just as a tune. I think the two things that diminish it the most are a) the overblown, anthem/get-out-the-lighters quality to it, and b) as stated above, the plodding beat throughout, but especially once the song picks up.
If the song had an even slightly quicker pace to it, that would have served it well...

revive

Curious to hear Selzer's take.

As I said on another thread, I've always thought "Pros and Cons..." was a pretty good album, and certainly something that I'd rather listen to than anything Pink Floyd/David Gilmour has done since Waters left.

That said, I thought Waters' lyrics were great when I was in high school, but most of them seem pretty trite these days. "Amused to Death" actually has some pretty great songs, but "Radio KAOS" is an almost complete disaster, with only the halfway decent (and totally schlocky) "The Tide Is Turning" to redeem it.

That's my take, anyways.

Roger Water does have an amazing talent for communicating w/ teenage boys.

Post-Floyd Waters is way worse.

Still wondering what I was on in 2003 when I claimed that post-Waters Pink Floyd was better than "The Wall" though. I am no huge fan of "The Wall", but still.....

Besides, I still stand by everything I've said about "The Final Cut". If I were to rank all Pink Floyd albums ever, only Ummagumma would be below it.

I quite liked "not now john" as it

1) sounds like a rip from "give peace a chance"
2) Seems like it's about Johnny Rotten during the filming of "the great rock and roll swindle"

that's it.

in 1987 I saw both the Radio KAOS tour and PInk Floyd's Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. I used to listen to both records and probably liked Radio KAOS better. However, I was 12 years old. The concerts were pretty much the same! Waters actually showed the video of Arnold Layne as if it was a request to Radio KAOS, which I loved as I was already a Syd freak. It was my sense that that was Rogers way of saying "see, we started this without Dave"! At this point I give more credit to Pink Floyd solely for working with Anthony Moore, but I can't say I rate either. Learning to Fly is a nice pop song though.

also to Gilmour's credit...I bought a DVD of him playing live in 2002 or something, it was 3 dollars at Housing Works, and he coveres Syd's Dominos and Terrapin, and had Robert Wyatt do the "Hello...is there anybody in there" part of Comfortably Numb. They're such big rich superstars that I just like being reminded of them as having some heritage with british art-rock figures like Wyatt and Anthony Moore.

has there been threads that discuss waters playing dark side of th moon on th feb 2 saturday nite live but due to th strike et etc....

Further evidence in the Waters/Floyd battle:

- Guest stars: Stephen Hawking vs. Marv Albert

- "Theme" concept albums (Division Bell) are usually better (or just less embarrassing) than "story" concept albums (Pros & Cons, Radio)

I think "Pros & Cons" is kind of a missed opportunity--there are plenty of good melodic ideas throughout, but they mostly pop up for one verse and are gone instead being developed into actual songs.

Anyway, post-Waters Floyd wins for listenability, but Gilmour's post-Waters solo albums "About Face" and "On an Island" are better than either of them.

Just made myself sit through The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking. Horrific.

The first time I heard the terrible arrangements of PF songs he was doing on tour with Radio KAOS I got completely off the bus with Waters, also the fact that he mimes on his live shows, just...nope.

Got his recent one on now. It's an album I don't ever see myself being able to get into, but it's at least about 1000 times more tasteful overall

I did a couple of listens of mix lists with some of Water's solo records with Gilmour Floyd and some of DG's solo tracks. Not everything meshed, but there was a couple of seques between tracks where you could hear how one part of Floyd's music would work on the classic records with the other part of Floyd.

I wonder if there’s a fantasy 90s PF album playlist out there like the Beatles Everest.

Pros and Cons. Worst... Album... Ever...
― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Friday, September 5, 2003 7:35 PM (fourteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Prose and Cons' cover art inspired the cover of a top-10 ever album, American Water, by the american waters, Silver Jews' David Berman

(malkmus being the american gilmours)

https://rogerwaters.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/725/which-parts-of-which-songs-is-roger-mimings/p1

"There were times I wondered if he was miming 'cause it sounded so much like the record but I don't know & don't particularly care. I just being there in his presence."

If you're going to mime on stage, do yourself a favour and book a studio session and cobble together the best you can still do with same microphone you'll use for whatever parts you do sing on the night, don't lift it from the original 40 year old multi-tracks FFS

(The previous post was directed squarely at Dolly Parton obvz)

Nick mason has said that Waters thinks that the individual who writes the lyrics is the writer of a given musical work, and anything purely musical any other individual does is secondary or even less consequential than the act of producing lyrics… and Waters is also utterly disinterested in any music made at all past 1975… he had Nigel Godrich work on his late 2010s record but had never heard or even heard of OK Computer, the most goddamn Dark Side record ever made other than Dark Side.

So I listened to Pros and Cons before the holidays and plan to —God help me— listen to all of his other solo records, and jesus christ is his shit so so bad! but immediately I must ask you guys, what other music does his shit sound like? the answer I can produce to that end is: broadway/musical theater. And this must be because a.) he doesn't listen to music; b.) his concern is wholly narrative, or whatever cause in which he's presently trying to show that he doesn't like tyranny or capitalism, and so he lets Michael Kamen or Patrick Leonard do whatever they want; c.) if he doesn't listen to music past 1975 and ostensibly opposes very obvious symbols of a bourgeois western cultural milieu, he's still middle class enough to associate "big statements" with "serious" formats like opera and musicals, so that's the format he uses, in fact the only format he uses.

Just wait until you get to his actual stinker opera…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87a_Ira_(opera)

So I listened to Pros and Cons before the holidays and plan to —God help me— listen to all of his other solo records, and jesus christ is his shit so so bad! but immediately I must ask you guys, what other music does his shit sound like? the answer I can produce to that end is: broadway/musical theater. And this must be because a.) he doesn't listen to music; b.) his concern is wholly narrative, or whatever cause in which he's presently trying to show that he doesn't like tyranny or capitalism, and so he lets Michael Kamen or Patrick Leonard do whatever they want; c.) if he doesn't listen to music past 1975 and ostensibly opposes very obvious symbols of a bourgeois western cultural milieu, he's still middle class enough to associate "big statements" with "serious" formats like opera and musicals, so that's the format he uses, in fact the only format he uses.

― veronica moser

"Is this the life we really want?" is actually a decent record

My big problem with Roger Waters' stuff is the fucking racism
Looking at you, "Watching TV"

One of the performances of Ça Ira is on YouTube. I wouldn't hit play on this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYKL-eS-PKs

I must ask you guys, what other music does his shit sound like? the answer I can produce to that end is: broadway/musical theater.

Didn't he once have a famous (Roger Waters style) rant about Andrew Lloyd Webber? In fact, he even wrote a lyric about Lloyd Webber I believe? I think we know why.

used to know a guy who was a massive Waters/Floyd fan with the emphasis on the Waters, his post-Floyd solo stuff was his absolute favourite, he even considered Dark Side to be kind of pre-peak early work. When I told him my favourite Floyd was the Barrett era he reacted like I'd told him my favourite meal was a bowl of cat sick.

My favorite Floyd is the Barrett era *and* I love the post-Floyd solo Waters deeply.

As Vic Chesnutt & Widespread Panic put it, "I guess it takes all kinds."

Watching T.V. has that questionable "yellow rose" refrain, of course, and then it has this verse, which I couldn't process or understand at 17 but which gives me chills at 35.

Her grandpa fought old Chiang Kai-shek
That low-down no-good dirty rat
Who used to order his troops to fire
On the women and children
Imagine that
Imagine that...

Watching T.V. has that questionable "yellow rose" refrain, of course

i mean look at this shit

She had shiny hair
She had perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs

he was doing this crap as far back as _the wall_. _the final cut_ starts out with _the post-war dream_, which has an anti-Japanese slur. in _watching tv_ he makes the curious decision to eulogize the tiannamen square protests by sexually fetishizing one of the women protesting. i can't believe i used to _defend_ this crap. oh well. live and learn.

Didn't he once have a famous (Roger Waters style) rant about Andrew Lloyd Webber? In fact, he even wrote a lyric about Lloyd Webber I believe? I think we know why.

― Please play Lou Reed's irritating guitar sounds (Tom D.)

there was a q magazine column, "who the hell does roger waters think he is?" roger waters, among other statements (for instance, shit-talking sinead o'connor for being a bleeding heart), accused lloyd webber of ripping off the ascending and descending riff from "echoes" for, what is it, phantom of the opera? to which lloyd webber's lawyers responded, essentially, "it's a fucking ascending and descending riff. maybe for someone with waters' limited songwriting skills something like that is novel and unique. it's not. if there's any question remaining, lloyd webber does have evidence that he wrote the riff in question prior to 1971. any allegations that lloyd webber plagiarized roger waters are false and potentially libellous, and we will address further accusations of this nature accordingly."

let them fight imo

kate is right, "Is this the life we really want" is his only good solo album. I like the Wall and the Final Cut too. Pros and Cons though is unlistenable dreck and I never warmed to Amused to Death which is just cringy

Amused to Death has some fantastic songs on it. Radio KAOS is my favourite of the solo albums, the concept hangs together really well and seems to serve the songs rather than the other way round. Pros & Cons is variable but the last two songs on it are very moving. I never really warmed to Is This The Life.... As for The Final Cut it's one of my favourite Floyd albums, I'll take it over anything from the Barrett era of the group.

kate is right, "Is this the life we really want" is his only good solo album. I like the Wall and the Final Cut too. Pros and Cons though is unlistenable dreck and I never warmed to Amused to Death which is just cringy

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm)

i will stan _music from the body_

but mostly for ron geesin, roger's songs suck

As for The Final Cut it's one of my favourite Floyd albums, I'll take it over anything from the Barrett era of the group.

Your judgemental yardstick should be "which song has stopped more wars, "Corporal Clegg" or "The Fletcher Memorial Home"?