THE WALL

1979. Disco wasn't dead yet, but it did suck. New wave was taking over. Prog was getting hard to find.

Word was out that Pink Floyd was about to release a new album. Their last three, Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals were home runs. And this was going to be a double album. Bliss.

On the release day, we got to the record store as soon as we could, took it home, and listened...

The first track started, and it was grandiose. And the album continued... and continued...

What a disappointment. Nick Mason was relegated to timekeeper. He even played a slowed down disco beat through the interminable reprises of Another Brick In The Wall. And Richard Wright is there. Barely. We'll get back to that later.

The songs tell the story of a man, who as a child lost his father in World War II, and through a series of unfortunate events, because people were mean to him, closed himself off emotionally from the world. And somehow, because of this, he reaches rock star status. Thing then fall apart, come crashing down around him, and he escapes from his self- created shell. You've heard this before? But there were some other characters like Cousin Kevin and Uncle Ernie? Yep! Despite having a hefty helping of Roger Waters' and Syd Barrett's histories (an apparent obsession of Waters') this sounds alot like "Tommy" (which had better music. Let's hope this catharsis gets it out of Roger's system once and for all.

The music for the most part is drab and boring. It's not surprising that Mason, and especially Wright (see, I told you I'd get back to him) lost interest. The saving grace is Waters' suberb production, and David Gilmour's fantastic guitars.

Among the two albums worth of filler are a few good songs, most notably Hey You and Comfortably Numb. So pick out the good ones, and don't torture yourself playing the whole thing through very often. Or watch Alan Parker's movie based on the album. At least that's way better than Ken Russell's hard-to-watch "Tommy".