Pink Floyd - The Wall: Classic or Dud?

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 . . . )