Pink Floyd - The Wall: Classic or Dud?

kneejerk hatred of the wall is BORING

To paraphrase an ILXor, The Wall's a great album, but I cannot for the life of me foresee any future circumstance that will ever lead me to listen to the whole damn thing ever again.

This immensely overrated and uneven record is about 30% brilliant, 40% passable, and 30% dreadful. I fucking love "Comfortably Numb." I have a soft spot for "Nobody Home" even though it's pretty stupid. The parts with Roger Waters screaming get annoying after a while.. yeah, I get it.. he's going crazy.. shut up and sing. I can no longer listen to the medley of "Another Brick Part 1" "The Happiest Days Of Our Lives" and "Another Brick Part 2" due to becoming absurdly overplayed on US classic rock stations.

It gains points for containing reversed hidden messages which stands as one of the scariest things I've ever heard on a rock album.

It gains points for being briefly discussed in the "Chip's Party" sketch on MTV's The State.

It loses points for containing 81 minutes of music.. had there been 2 less minutes it could have fit onto a single CD, thus making it so that record stores wouldn't be able to charge $29.99 for something that should be worth closer to $8.99.

The parts with Roger Waters screaming get annoying after a while

Have you head The Final Cut?

"The Gunner's Dream" has the best Waters scream since "Careful With that Ax, Eugene".

Hey, that rhymes.

i say neither classic nor dud, but i really like "Goodbye Blue Sky", "C Numb" and a couple others

billstevejim, who's immensely overrated this album in like the past 20 years? just curious. all i ever hear or read at best are high-handed dismissals like what you just wrote

I'm convinced that at least a quarter of the people who hate it so much now liked it at one point in their lives.

I absolutely love the first seven songs, the stretch through "Goodbye Blue Sky". The rest of the first cd is pretty poor, I think, with dreariness like "Don't Leave Me Now" totally killing the momentum. It doesn't help that the only song on here I really hate is "Young Lust", which, given how many plays it got on 96 Rock back in the day, seems to have been a highlight to someone. The second cd is pretty great, but the skits ("Bring The Boys Back Home", "The Show Must Go On") rub me the wrong way now, reaching for theater and falling short. But man "Hey You" is great: I love that acoustic sound, like they managed to get all the echo off the strings, so that it sounds like rubbing against a resonant zipper (hey, maybe we're back to young lust again).

I've grown to appreciate, if not like, most of their albums, including Animals and the stupidly obvious, literal Dark Side of the Moon, but I've always hated The Wall. I'd rather listen to late seventies Emerson Lake and Palmer.

ok, I take back what I said about "Bring The Boys Back Home"; just listened to it fucking loud and it sounded great.

Then what I really meant is that the movie is definitely a classic but the soundtrack is dud.

it is not a soundtrack

this was my favorite album on earth when I was, like, 13. I only listen to it once a year now but I still enjoy it, sure there is some boring stuff but the highlights on here are pretty high, I mean, REALLY high...Mother? Comfortably Numb? I love PF pre-Dark Side like anyone else and listen to that more often, but those songs are exceptional. No-one makes records this overblown now. I dare someone to try!

"Mother" is such a wonderfully fucked-up song.

billstevejim, who's immensely overrated this album in like the past 20 years?

copied from wikipedia: In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed The Wall as #87 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

I consider the Rolling Stone canon as the ultimate example.. I can understand why Wenner included it so highly, as it's beloved among classic rock fans (as opposed to Pink Floyd fans.. most hardcore Floyd fans familiar with the entire catalog don't consider this one of their best albums.. I've never been given that indication anyway).

Yes I enjoyed this record when i was 13 but I was also listening to a LOT of classic rock radio at the time..

I still enjoy at least half of it.

I loved it at the time, and I've continued to love it. I'm aware of how somewhat preposterously bloated and ludicrous much of it is, but that doesn't diminish my love for it one iota.

Yeah, I may never actually listen to it again, but the impact that it had on 13-year-old me cannot be overstated, and for that it remains Classic forever.

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