Pink Floyd - The Wall: Classic or Dud?

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.

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.