Pink Floyd - The Wall: Classic or Dud?

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?"

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.