I was just listening to The Wall this morning, and I am simply in awe every time I hear it.
In your opinion, has there ever been another album like it?
Feel free to interpret the terms of my question as you will. I’ve been listening to it ever since I was little (which may explain a lot of things…) I know it forwards and backwards, but I still can’t describe the genius of it all. I’d like to hear some reasons why other people like it.
I’m a fan, but why do I like it? I don’t know. Naturally Another Brick in the Wall part II was the first song I heard off it, and that’s a good tune that expresses a sentiment easy for a youngster to get behind. 
Later on, I heard the rest of the album while spending time with my friends. We were all in a pleasant mood, if you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do. We also enjoyed the movie…wow, I just remembered that the first time I ever saw it, I asked my grandma to rent it for me and I watched it completely sober and all by myself. I didn’t really get it, but after many more viewings in different states of consciousness and many deep discussions with my friends, I totally understood where it was coming from, man.
I once had a friend tape the movie for me on to an audiocassette, so I could listen in the car. It turned out really great, because there is so little conversation or silence in the movie, and I love When The Tigers Broke Free.
Run Like Hell was awesome. I believe that some guitar magazine voted David Gilmour’s solo at the end of Comfortably Numb as the 2nd best solo of all time. I am going to try to see if I can find the article.
Dark Side of the Moon? Wish You Were Here? Animals? I’m guessing that The Wall isn’t actually most PF fans favourite.
I like bits of it (the bits with the most Gilmour input) but I find a lot of it very heavy handed. None of the lyrics are as clever as (say) Dogs, the concept is less (ahem) deep than DSotM or WYWH. Pink gets beaten down by school/mother/wife builds a metaphorical barrier of some sort. . .
Bits I like:
Comfortably Numb. Sublime guitar solo, two sublime guitar solos.
Run Like Hell
Young Lust (I don’t think this song is entirely serious)
One of my Turns (nor this one)
Goodbye Cruel Word (or this)
The Trial, though this doesn’t sound at all like what I expect (and like) in a Floyd song, which is my problem with a lot of the rest of it.
I own every other Floyd album up to The Wall but I actually gave The Wall away and I haven’t got any of later ones which I regard as really being either Waters solo albums or in Waters’ words “Clever forgeries”.
Second that Comfortably Numb end guitar solo for the greatest ever! I was thinking about that just this morning as I listened to it…
Clanger, you are absolutely right about the other Pink Floyd albums, they are just as crazy and just as good. My favorites are Wish You Were Here and Atom Heart Mother. But the reason The Wall stands out for me is the sheer size of it, four whole sides, and then the cover! And that awesome, seemingly careless black-ink-brushstrokes lettering. It’s very inspired, it really is.
The Wall is a great album and a great complete concept & story album.
The Who’s Tommy was its equal in scope and concept.
Wish You Were Here was a better album musically as was Dark Side of the Moon. I honestly like Animals and Umma Gumma better.
The Wall was probably “The Midnight Rock Movie”. I am somehow counting Rocky Horror as something else.
Jim
There’s precious little Pink Floyd that I don’t like. I have nothing to add to this thread except my undying love for their music.
I have always felt that Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to be the pinacle of the ‘concept’ album, and that all else, while it may be great, pales in comparison.
I’m with you there Kalhoun. I’m going to go listen to *Piper At The Gates Of Dawn * right now. 
This is one of those albums that my son and I get into together - and if there’s an album that will make a sixteen year old boy sit down with his MOTHER and listen to music, what’s not to love??
Pink Floyd is right up there with Rush (whom I worship).
Same with me and Kid Kalhoun! The music is timeless.
For other concept albums that, IMO, are the pinnacle of the art that evoke “The Wall” in their epic feel when I listen to them:
Jethro Tull “Thick as a Brick”
David Bowie “Ziggy Stardust”
Roger Waters “Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking”
and, in all seriousness, Men Without Hats “Pop Goes the World”
Agreed wholeheartedly.
For just the epic feel along with a general “theme album” atmosphere, I’d add:
Coheed and Cambria, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3
My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade
Quadrophenia - The Who
Try it. You’ll like it.
I’m not sure exactly why, but when I first heard Green Day’s American Idiot, I thought of The Wall.
I need to add to the discussion Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Wiki article also.
It predates the Wall and had similar financial woes at first. It was extremely ambitious.
Jim
I like it a lot, although I don’t really know enough about music to say why I like it or why it is so good.
I also like several of the other concept albums already mentioned, especially Lamb Lies Down and Ziggy Stardust. The biggest difference with The Wall, for me, is that The Wall wasn’t just a record, it was a lifestyle. Looking back, my social life between the ages of say, 12 to about 17, was anchored by The Wall. I was a little young for the album in 1979, but right for the movie in 1982(?). Living outside of civilization, neither I nor anyone I knew had seen the live concerts, but we talked about them a lot (Whoa. Giant pig. Awesome.) Everyone knew it, everyone loved it. The classic rockers, the punk rockers, the pop music fans, the freaky drama club goth kids – The Wall was like the universal album. After the video release, the movie was always playing on the TV as background at parties. If you met some random kid and didn’t know what else to talk about, you could say “hey, you know that cool part in The Wall, the one where … (pick your favorite).”
Pink effin’ Floyd!
I’d say that The Wall has to be one of my top Pink Floyd albums. It was the first record of theirs that I listened to, at a time when I was quite young, so there are naturally snippets of sounds that resonate with hazy, nostalgic memories. It’s still an excellent musical achievement in its own right - a double concept album that is both critically and commercially successful is a rare feat.
Being young and full of cynicism I can identify with a lot of the themes presented - the angst, the jealousy, the loneliness, the isolation, the disconnection from humanity. The Wall is a perfect example of art born out of a dark place, as all the best art tends to be. The songs are awash with thrusting, gut-felt rage as well as drawn out pangs of contemplative melancholy. The Wall is moody, frightening, exciting. From the opening guitar blasts of In the Flesh? I’m immediately sucked in to the musical journey.
Some people quote movie lyrics in their daily routines; I quote The Wall in my own head. When the people around me are overbearing, annoying, I feel like exploding in a rage: “I DON’T NEED NO ARMS AROUND ME! (BOOOOOOWWW)”. When I’m horny and sexually frustrated I feel my muscles tensing and my fists clenching - “OOOOOH I NEED A DIRTY WOMAN.” Every track captures a unique mood. Sure, some of them tend to border on filler, but even the filler is good. Run Like Hell has quite a basic hook and is a tad pop padding but does what it does very well. Another Brick in the Wall pt 2 is decent, but suffers from overexposure. Plus, I dislike the fact that most people immediately associate that single with The Wall, because the album goes much deeper than a twangy disco-esque tune. You need to experience this track as part of the whole fabric of the record, especially the lead up in The Happiest Days of our Lives, which is excellent. I also have a soft spot for The Thin Ice - short but oh so sweet.
Comfortably Numb does indeed have great guitar solos. The track epitomises the synergy between David Gilmour and Roger Waters, each bringing their own unique talents together to be combined into something very special. It makes you want to rock your heart out and cry at the same time.
As far as the film goes, it’s a somewhat decent effort, and Scarfe’s animations are outstanding, but it could have been better. It somewhat lacks…‘polish’. Like the album, I first encountered it at a young age. The most disturbing image that remained with me right up until the later viewings were the children walking into the grinder. It’s fucked up, but cool.
Ijust stopped by to tell a story about how, after the Berlin Wall had come down, but before the reunification of Germany was complete, my folks to a trip there.
One Friday afternoon they are trying to get to Berlin before the banks close, because their cash is low and they can’t yet use their credit cards or traveler’s checks in the Eastern sector. But they didn’t make it on time, because there was a massive traffic jam on the autobahn. Cars simply stopped for as far as they could see.
Dad got some excellent video of that, by getting out of his own car and standing on the hood, with his videocamera. Seemed to be a lot of younger people out and walking around too.
So they fall into conversation with my folks, and are asked “Are you going to the concert?”
My mom and dad ask “What concert?”
“In Berlin, man! Pink Floyd is doing the Wall!”
I doubt my folks had even heard of Pink Floyd, but they just said, “Umm, no.”