Pink Floyd - The Wall: Classic or Dud?

i'm glad somebody is still carrying the torch for filk, i thought the kids today had all gone nerdcore

that "squid and the whale" bit is sampled on dertbeats' "west side of the moon". it's a damn fine beat tape, although he gets better beats out of "remember a day" than anything from "the wall".

... squids, whales, lobsters...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/10/lobsters-must-comfortably-numb-cooking-rules-swiss-government/

If I was to do a top 5 from this album, it would probably be (in album order):

Goodbye Blue Sky
Hey You
Comfortably Numb
In The Flesh
The Trial

I think my favorite part of the album "Goodbye Blue Sky" through "Don't Leave Me Now", with the fascist freak-out close behind

prob haven't listened to this record since i was 17, but boy did i love it and the movie when i was 17

goodbye blue sky is definitely the one. run like hell would be in my top five

i think i was 17 when i first heard this one too, but it never hit me as hard as animals or dark side. i heard young lust for years on the radio before i ever played the wall in full, and i was shocked that it was a floyd song.

I like DJP’s list. I’d replace In The Flesh with The Thin Ice, and The Trial with Mother.

Goodbye Blue Sky
In the Flesh
Hey You
Comfortably Numb
Mother

Always intrigued me that they left the best song off the album (wiki says it was cut by "the other members on the grounds of being too personal"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9b9UhFe6Eg

It features 2x in the film, oddly.

just play the comfortably numb solos for 80 minutes, really

For me, one of the problems with The Wall (and Animals, too) is that you can't hear the drugs any more. Pink Floyd started as overt psychedelia, and even if they evolved over time, that intriguing cosmic, space-rock spirit still carried through as late as Wish You Were Here.

Funnily enough I've never been big on the Comfortably Numb solo. When he does this endlessly on the '80s live records it's yawn-worthy to me. But then soloing Gilmour is the least I like about mighty Gilmour.

The Wall: once a classic, always classic. Nothing "dates" if you know how to keep the jadedness which the passing years throw at you at bay.

IMO "Comfortably Numb" is *far* from the best Gilmour solo on The Wall. (Let alone the best in his recorded career.) If I had to pick one from this album, I'd probably go with "Mother."

The solo on "Comfortably Numb" is not only Gilmour's best solo, it's the best guitar solo in the history of guitar solos.

there's gotta be some middle ground on this

gilmore play guitar pretty

there's gotta be some middle ground on this

I'm not a stan but it's p good and sums up a lot of what made him effective?

"Comfortably Numb" is a genre as well as a song and the solo is a big reason why. it rules

what other songs/bands are in the comfortably numb genre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUmBTdmjMn4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lsCEgcRozY

was thinking of Queensryche, in particular "Silent Lucidity"

would say King's X is at least connected to the genre too

For me, one of the problems with The Wall (and Animals, too) is that you can't hear the drugs any more. Pink Floyd started as overt psychedelia, and even if they evolved over time, that intriguing cosmic, space-rock spirit still carried through as late as Wish You Were Here.

― Melomane

you can't hear the drugs on the mid-section of "dogs"? really? i mean, animals is a bad trip, but for me at least it sure as hell is a trip

maybe it's just me, but i _really_ enjoy gilmour's solos on "the final cut". none of them have anything to do with the songs... i should just make an edit of only the solos from that album and see what they sound like!

ah! already exists. here we are, "the final cut", just the good bits!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXkxJ-1oGbY

missing 'not now john' tho

what other songs/bands are in the comfortably numb genre

not my favorite Floyd song!

what other songs/bands are in the comfortably numb genre

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, April 29, 2020 10:56 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

'plainsong' by the cure has always struck me as a mix between 'comfortably numb' and joy division's 'atmopshere'

FZ 'Watermelon in Easter Hay'

Purple Rain

just kidding

"Silent Lucidity" by QRhyche

"Brothers in Arms" (among many others) by Dire Straits

maybe even

"The Confessor" by Joe Walsh, although that one actually builds and rocks the f' out.

"The Road to Hell" by Chris Rea is another that got that icy blues/synth pad thing Floyd worked too.

Scorpions: "Wind of Change"

echo & the bmen -- "killing moon"

I don't think Purple Rain is out of bounds at all. xposts

so if we're going down this road what differentiates "comfortably numb" from "every rose has its thorn"

being better?

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