Pink Floyd - The Wall: Classic or Dud?

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.

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.