Roger Waters - The Pros & Cons of Going Solo

That's fair enough. We're all entitled to our opinions.

 

Us + Them (2020) - which I'm watching right now - is another strong contender for best Roger Waters album, and again, it features mainly Pink Floyd songs.

 

Roger Waters and Pink Floyd are inextricably intertwined. It's hard to separate one from the other, when Roger Waters' solo albums also sound like Pink Floyd albums.

 

  1970: Music from the Body (with Ron Geesin)

  1979: The Wall (with Pink Floyd)

  1983: The Final Cut (with Pink Floyd)

  1984: The Pros & Cons of Hitch Hiking

  1986: When the Wind Blows (with Various Artists)

  1987: Radio K.A.O.S.

  1990: The Wall - Live in Berlin

  1992: Amused to Death

  2000: In the Flesh - Live

  2010: The Wall - Live

  2017: Is This the Life We Really Want?

  2020: Us + Them

 

Mind & Body: ***

Final Cut: ***.5 (I'll make a few happy people here )

Pros & Cons: ***

KAOS: *** (too bad of the 80's production, though)

Amused: ****

Ca Ira: ***

ITF: ***.5

Really Want: ****

Same for me, and I will listen to the new album as soon as I can.

The soundtracks are a different story ... in many ways, it was some folks simply trying to make use of the music, but Antonioni going around saying "too sad ... too sad", it meant it was a mistake. Doing two films with Barbet Schroeder was right, specially as the first film "MORE", was very well done and thought out, using the music from the girl's cassette player instead of an imaginary soundtrack for the girl's mind, something that would hurt the "tripping" feel in the movie and how it was done ... it was her story ... and we felt it inside and out, so to speak ... and this is what she heard and tripped to, and that makes it a very well done and thought out idea for a film, something that we are too silly about ... we're stuck on the "imagery" of the Hollywood ideal that the music is just some tapestry to make the film prettier and the music, quite often has nothing to do with the film itself ... except that it makes us believe this moment is sad and that moment is funny and weird!

That's crap film making, and cheap and it ruined many films, because the director was not very good about using the music, which was an addon, and not a cohesive and proper part of the design and conception of the film! It was not "organic", as it were.

Both Zabriskie Point and The Valley suffered from having been taken from the director's hands and the music horribly chosen and used and not meaning anything more than just ... a typical (and eventual) MTV crap ... ZP went through so many hands and changes that its original story got changed and corrupted into a style that is not Antonioni, and he wanted his name removed from the film. TV is a film, whose continuity and story does not make a whole lot of sense, and the music appears misused except for a couple of moments. But by the end of the film, it's hard to not think it was a mess ... and a gross misuse of some of the greatest actors in the French Theater and film at the time, alongside a couple of folks from the best of the English theater.

The only way, that PF's music would be infused and properly used, was in THE WALL, although it getting cut up and the material taken out somewhere else broke the original story, and created some confusion along the way ... TW is weaker without the original material about WW2 and the album labelled as TFC is even weaker without the whole story around it. But TW, and its power and appeal in the movie, was outstanding and is probably one of the best "soundtracks" every created and used ... mostly because the majority of the music was "true" to the story and a part of it!

If you look at the other 2 soundtracks as just "songs", they will be terribly disappointed ... and deservedly so. PF had no control of it at all! And Barbet Schroeder was probably too drunk trying to do TV to be able to stand up and make his film ... but there are some good things in it, and one of them is the cinematographer, who went on to win an Oscar for his work, and it is pretty! In many ways, this film is more about the cinematographer than it is about Barbet's story.

How am I disregarding those four good Roger Waters albums?

 

If I was disregarding them, then I wouldn't have posted this thread.

even on the Wall, Gilmour and Ezrin arranged a few things. 

Waters has got 4 good albums, you can't just disregard them like that... 

Are you serious!?? "Our Song" is just a collection of silly noises - sounding like someone with indigestion -  and not really a song at all.

That's true, although the concert doesn't  feature any other members of Pink Floyd in the flesh.

Yes, it's a live album and it's one of the best concerts I've ever seen, having watched it again this afternoon. 

 

I wasn't sure if I'm still allowed to post the full concert here, so I've provided the YouTube link instead.