Your parents, had they been better informed, could’ve informed these folks that they were going to a Roger Waters show, not Pink Floyd.
I’m a BIG Pink Floyd fan. While I enjoy “The Wall” very much, it was their most commercial success, thanks mainly to the 1980 film. Not that commercial necessarily means inferior. But my perennial favorite remains “Dark Side of the Moon,” with “Wish You Were Here” and “Animals” tied in a close second.
True story: About 20 years ago, I picked up a cassette (no CDs back then) of “The Wall” on the street here in Bangkok. Obviously pirated. On the little cardboard insert that listed the names of the songs, instead of “Comfortably Numb,” it read “Come for Tabby Numb.” I swear to Buddha! This was a source of endless mirth among my friends.
Another story: One afternoon, I was wandering the streets of Brno, Czechoslovakia, back when it was still Czechoslovakia and communist. I was pretty buzzed off of a couple of lunchtime beers or three – pretty good stuff. I could barely hear it, but my ears picked up what souned like Pink Floyd. I kept following the sound, and sure enough, someone was playing “Dark Side of the Moon.” I wondered whether the communist authorities were familiar with the group.
Addendum: By “commercial success,” I mean more widely successful among the general public. “Dark Side of the Moon” must have sold more over the years, but “Another Brick in the Wall” was played on pop stations a lot, and the film got the band known among people who would never have paid attention to them before.
I must agree. I love ‘The Wall’. There was a period of my Life when I’d go to sleep to it, but ‘Quadrophenia’ is my favorite rock opera.
SLK
One aspect of it that I think is masterfully realized is the use of spoken word and sound effects, integrated into the music so successfully that they are essentially hooks in themselves.
“If ye doon’t eat yer meat, ye can’t have any puddin! How can ya have any puddin if ye doon’t eat yer meat?”
The subliminal crunch after “Hurt the children any way they could.”
“Time to GO-oo!”
“Surprise surprise surprise!”
“Wanna take a bayath?” (her voice clearly echoing in the tiled bathroom).
“–we came in?” “So this is where–”
Just a few examples of many.
Also, I’d like to say that Don’t Leave Me Now is one of the most demented songs ever committed to tape.
<waits for someone to hit me over the head with Trout Mask Replica>
All the way, Hoops.
Does anyone know what movies are all playing in the background on the television at different points during The Wall? I only know one.
“Where the hell are you? Where the hell are you, Simon??!!” - Battle of Britain
“There’s someone else that needs taking care of in Washington. Who? Rose Pilcher. You know, 36, 24, 36?” - what movie?
There are a couple other quotes I don’t recall at the moment.
The line in Comfortably Numb - “When I was a child I had a fleeting glimpse, out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone…” - described something that often happened when I was little, but I could never express it. So it has meaning for me in that regard. I also liked the sound and production of it. I liked the acousticy stuff - Mother, Goodbye Blue Sky.
I’m a huge fan, but The Wall is my least favorite album. I admire the concept, and there are some stellar tracks, but it’s just too depressing for me overall. (Don’t get me wrong, though–I have the original album as well as “Is There Anybody Out There?”, and the VHS of Roger’s performance in Berlin.)
I’m not good at musical jargon or geek-speak, but one thing I have always loved about Pink Floyd is their ability to match up almost lullaby-like tunes with lyrics that can be profoundly disturbing. The stuff they write is just so cool.
“Hey You” from The Wall is a great example - starts off almost hypnotic, then you realize you’re hearing “and the worms ate into his brain” :eek: then Gilmour’s quiet, even tone segues almost unnoticeably into Waters’ screech.
Lyrically, they’re clever (Would you like to learn to fly? Would you like to see me try?); musically, they’re amazing. There’s one moment in the song Mother that makes every hair on my head stand on end for one second: when Gilmour sings “of course mama’s gonna help build a wall” and the guitar comes up. It’s an overwhelming physical sensation for me.
Aside #1 - If you like DSotM, and don’t freak out over the “sanctity” of Pink Floyd’s music, you really should check this out: This is an a cappella version. The vocalists do a very good job of honoring the album, and the vocal percussion is astounding. There are NO instruments on this, every sound is made by a human voice.
Aside #2 - The only concept album/rock opera thingie I like as much as The Wall is The Who’s Tommy - oddly, I don’t generally care for a lot of the Who’s stuff, and because of a couple really dumb songs (the Cousin Kevin one, for example) this will always fall a little short of The Wall for me. The Wall hasn’t got a bad track on it.
A few really good songs, some pretentious filler and few tracks of utter crap? Yeah, there are plenty of them.
Just curious, do you really like “The Final Cut” better than “The Wall”. I found “The Final Cut” far more depressing and it is my least favorite Pink Floyd album. In fact I consider it a Roger Water’s project with Floyd backing. I love everything from Pipers to the Wall. I own everything except the Final Cut. I use to own it, someone stole it with a bunch of others and I never bothered to replace it.
Jim
You’ve got me there. I’ve never listened to TFC. After seeing the “Animals” tour, with Roger wearing headphones for most of the show, I felt like I lost my connection with Pink Floyd. (That, and the later, to-me depressing “Pro and Cons” tour–it just turned me off)
Years later, after picking up the MOJO special edition on the band, my interest was re-ignited. I went out and bought MLOR, DB, and PULSE. I have some kind of prejudice when it comes to Roger’s version of Pink Floyd, though,and I have to admit that I’ve never heard The Final Cut.
And you’d be correct. I’m no Floyd expert but I used to listen to them a lot more back in high school/college and read the band biography A Saucerful of Secrets. In it, it describes that Waters wanted to do a solo album but CBS Records (? As I recall) forced in the minimal amount of band input to be able to call it a Pink Floyd album for the sake of album sales.
There was also an amusing bit in the book describing the premiere of the The Wall film showing and that each member of the band came dressed in rough approximation to their contribution to the album: Waters in a tuxedo, Gilmour in a suit and tie, Mason in jeans and t-shirt and Wright blew it off entirely to go play pool.
There have been other albums in a similar vein, but no, I don’t think so. More to the point, I don’t think there has been another BAND quite like PF. Its interesting to me because music is so derivative and PF was so successful, I don’t understand why anyone hasn’t followed directly in their footsteps. Radiohead and Muse are the closest I can think of but dont really hit the mark. Seems to me that prog rock after them went towards heavy metal, which is too bad cuz I wish there was a modern PF torchbearer…
Also, I can’t believe this thread has got this far without anyone mentioning Meddle. Not only is this a great album, it has Echoes, which is PF’s best song by far.
I read that book too (it’s a good book). I don’t remember the specific story about the Wall premier, but I do remember that Rick Wright had kind of a breakdown around that time.
I love “Echoes”, but I also love “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)”, “Welcome to the Machine”, “Have a Cigar”, “Wish You Were Here” &
“Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)” even more. I am also strangely partial to “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” and “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” parts I to III. “Brain Damage”, “Time” & “Us and Them”. “Interstellar Overdrive” & “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, “Hey You”, “Comfortably Numb” and “On the Turning Away”. I know I missed at least 20 others.
I think I will go play all of Floyd tonight.
Jim
One of them is The Dam Busters.
The Wall is one of those albums that would be in my top five of “if you had to pick one album and never listen to any other music ever again for the rest of your life” kind of scenarios. Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull are my favorite bands of all time, have been for about 20 years, and don’t show any signs of changing anytime soon.
Another Pink Floyd fan here. I used to be more of a Waters fan than Gilmour fan, but that has gradually changed over the years and, like someone else here, I’ve neglected to replace the Final Cut after losing it some time ago.
The Wall is probably one of my least favourite albums despite having my most favourite song on it (Comfortably Numb) and several other really nice pieces of music. Unfortunately, the bits I don’t like, I really don’t like, and so I rarely listen to it straight through.
I’m pretty sure that the Dark Side of the Moon was more successful than the Wall. It stayed in the charts for a phenomenal amount of time.
Another favourite song would have to be Echoes. The full version of course. I love how it moves from spaced out intro; to hippie, long haired, harmonised dreamy verses; to a rocking groove; to a study in interesting guitar noises; to a gradual building of tension which is released into a nice jangly echoed guitar phrase; back to the build up of tension and into the final verse; and then to a final release of nice clean guitar phrasing together with some keyboard phrases that give a call and response feel, laid over a background of apparently endless rising voices.
One of my favourite guitar tricks involves a single coil guitar plugged into a wah wah pedal backward then some delay and reverb. Hitting the strings does nothing, but working the tone, volume, and pickup controls gives you the eerie sounds from the middle of Echoes.
I’m also a big fan of Animals. I like the venom, the agressive guitar solos, and the general groove.
Wikipedia has The Wall at 23x Platinum and DSotM at 15x Platinum.