THE WALL

To start I must state that before I had heard this album I had no idea that rock, or music in general could be more than a verse, chorus, verse, chorus collection of individual ideas. I was wrong. Rock in its best form is a cohesive epic story put to music.

The first time I heard the wall I had dug it out of my dads old CD collection, the bricks on the CD cover and the fact that it was two separate disks brought an element the unknown, I had to listen. I put the disk in the player and hit play, I did not hear anything, and then there it was loud and in your face. The first four chords blared out of the speakers and drilled into my mind, the Hammond organ screeched in the background and then. "So ya, Thought ya, Might like to go to the show. To feel the warm thrill, of confusion, That space cadet glow. Tell me is something eluding you, sunshine? Is this not what you expected to see? If you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise." And I did want to know what was behind the eyes, and so I clawed through the disguise.

Suddenly I was swept in to a tragic story as I witnessed the birth of a child at the end of "The Thin Ice." I felt the pain that the child suffered as his father left him to go to the first world war and the even greater pain of his never returning. I commiserated with how mean his teachers were and moaned along that I didn't need no education. I understood how his mother could not understand him or take his fathers place in his life, I suffered with him as England was being bombed, and grooved along to his "Young Lust" of his teenage years, and understood the warning of how that turned out with him no longer young and falling into chronic depression with none of the rock star amenities consoling him in the least. I was right there with him on the brink of suicide. And then the first disc came to an end.

My hands trembled as I inserted the second disk. When he called out hey you he was talking to me. He was asking for me to stretch out my hand and help. Then there was the question is there any body out there. I wanted to call out "YES!" I wanted to help but I could not. The mood became darker and darker until "is there any body in there, just nod if you can hear me, is there anyone home" and then there was help for this miserable soul, one of the most amazing solos I have ever heard. From there he comes out of depression, but things get a little hazy, there is some kind of fantasy world with crazy neo Nazis and giant talking worms. I think it represents his fears and past or something, but that's the mystery, it can be seen so many different ways. Then at the end he is put on trial with a giant fanciest worm as judge and a jury of his mother school teachers and other assorted enemies. In the end the he is convicted of showing feelings and so his wall that he built gets torn down, and he is left wandering defenseless in the wild.

This was the first prog I had ever heard and I didn't even know it was prog, but it laid the seeds for me, and therefore at least to me personally it is one of the most important records I have ever heard: 5 stars.