 | |
List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Sony
Salesrank: 1127121
Released: April 18, 2000 |
|
|
|
| Media: Audio Cassette |
|
Editorial Review:
Exactly what was Pink Floyd's The Wall? Rock opera? Concept album? Performance art? Mere entertainment? While the truth may lie in a combination of all of the above, during the band's tour of 1980-81, The Wall was a bona fide spectacle. More than anything, Is There Anybody Out There? captures the volume, the bombast, and the grandeur of these famed performances with remarkable accuracy. Meticulously recorded, these concerts are astonishingly faithful to the band's studio versions and flow out of the speakers with practiced authority and absolutely fantastic sound. That said, there are few new revelations to be gained from hearing The Wall live that can't be gleaned from the studio version. Some moments do have an additional spark, however. "Run Like Hell" is launched with blistering intensity, and the first notes of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1" will surely raise a shiver. The release also includes two tracks ("What Shall We Do Now," "The Last Few Bricks") left off the original release due to space constraints. Essential for Floyd fanatics as well as those wishing to hear just how terrific a live concert can sound. --S. Duda
Is There Anybody out There? The Wall: Live 1980-1981 Reviews:
a classic 
2008-10-10 - i was one of the few lucky enough to be at the fisrt long island show on feb 24 1980.not that i had a ticket. all the money i had(about300.00)could'nt get me a ticket. luckily,myself and 9 others paid a ticket taker $25 apiece to slip us threw without a ticket.10 minutes before showtime.those were the days.absolute classic recording.thanks again mr. ticket taker 28 years later.
Pink Floyd at its best!
2008-10-06 - This is as far as I know the last live recording that the original members of Pink Floyd did. It is an awesome concert of their smash album "The Wall". Excellent recording Love it!!
Hey You!
2008-09-23 - Can it be 28 years ago that I saw The Wall live? Wow. Time flies, and while I'm sure many of the details have been lost to my memory, the impact of this show will remain with me all my life.
I've never been a rabid Pink Floyd fan like some. I have most of their albums and appreciate their work, but I would never have planned to see them live if my college roommate hadn't made the effort to get tickets. I'll always be grateful for that, because I feel like I'm one of a select few on the planet who witnessed what has to be the most amazing multi media extravaganza ever. I know that the Berlin version of this was even bigger, but was essentially a mishmash of artists (more like a pageant than a self-contained performance) and, frankly, without David Gilmour's pristine vocals and weeping guitar, it's just not the same. And I also understand that the Berlin show was fraught with technical problems that weren't present in the flawless version I saw, which I believe was the very first show they did in L.A.
This live recording is absolutely fantastic, and highly recommended. I've always found the original album to be fairly suffocating, especially in the later stages, but the live sound version gives the music some space and breathing room, and contains the patented technical mastery that PF is known for.
The musical virtuosity of this band was really amazing, and it's definitely on display on this CD. I remember being incredibly impressed by the fidelity of the sound system at the time. During the "One Of My Turns" sequence when the groupie enters the room, all the lights were out, and it was like you were actually in a hotel suite. To some extent that quality is preserved here--but I certainly don't have a sound system to equal Pink FLoyd's. I was also impressed with the lighting rigs, which moved around the stage to accommodate where the performers were behind the ever-smaller holes in the wall.
It's just a tragedy that there's no film record of this show (at least one that's been released). The thing that's missing on CD is the constantly surprising, jaw-dropping visual inventiveness that accompanied the music. A crashing airplane, giant puppets, a flying pig, brilliant animated sequences. All that and a wall which throughout the first half grew brick by brick, creating a sense of tension that fed into the narrative and made you wonder--would they ever finish it in time? And how could the band behind the wall could continue with the show? And then the wall itself became a screen for Gerald Scarfe's mind-altering animation and also, incredibly, opened up to reveal a hotel room stage.
The band seemed to have spared no expense on this show, and that a complete film record is virtually lost forever is a great tragedy, but I'm so glad I have my memories, and now the live recording allows me to relive that incredible experience. I think this CD will be my preferred version of The Wall now.
Pink Floyd's classic double album performed well in concert on this double disc
2007-12-24 - Pink Floyd's live version of their 1979 classic The Wall entitled Is There Anybody Out There?: The Wall Live 1980-81 was released in April of 2000.
The double live album was released to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the band's masterpiece double album The Wall. The album was originally slated for release in late 1999 but producer James Guthrie (who co-produced the original album) had to literally bake the master tapes to get the sticky glue off after the master tapes had been sitting in storage for years. Also, the band had problems with their US record companies. The band had just inked a new deal with Capitol/EMI worldwide for distribution to their catalog and were set to release but Columbia/Sony for the US and Canada were initially against the album but reluctantly agreed to release the album as the band's final album with Sony in the US and Canada after the band switched labels which were licensed the music (the band have the final say on what gets released and not released).
Is There Anybody Out There? was recorded at London's Earls Court Arena during the band's performances of The Wall in August of 1980 and June of 1981, the shows were a bona fide spectacle. More than anything, Is There Anybody Out There? captures the volume, the bombast and the grandeur of these famed performances with remarkable accuracy.
These performances are astonishingly faithful to the band's studio versions although the band does get to stretch out on In the Flesh(pt. 1), The Thin Ice, Another Brick in the Wall(pt.1), Another Brick in the Wall(pt. 2), Mother, Goodbye Blue Sky, Young Lust, Hey You, Comfortably Numb, The Show Must Go On, In the Flesh(pt.2), Run Like Hell and Outside the Wall with either extra guitar solos from David Gilmour showing why he is one of rock's greatest guitarists or extra keyboard solos from keyboard player Rick Wright (who passed away September 15, 2008 and was playing The Wall shows as a paid musician after Waters fired him) or extra verses or extended musical pieces.
The other tracks Empty Spaces, One of My Turns, Don't Leave Me Now, Another Brick in the Wall(pt. 3), Is There Anybody Out There?, Nobody Home, Vera, Bring the Boys Back Home, Waiting For the Worms, Stop! and The Trial were arguably better than its studio counterparts although remained faithful to them.
Although they were kicked out in 1979 and 1982 respectively by Roger Waters due to his uncontrollable ego, co-founders keyboard player Rick Wright (God bless his soul) and drummer Nick Mason played better than on the studio version of The Wall, especially Rick whose Hammond Organ work buries that of its studio counterpart. Roger Waters didn't play much bass on this live album as he perfectly recreated the role of Pink and left Andy Bown to play bass in his place. David Gilmour's musical arrangements and guitar and vocals were spot on as well (Roger's performance of The Wall without his ex-colleagues in 1990 was pathetic).
Run Like Hell is classic with Roger Waters' classic intro and Gilmour and Waters trading vocal lines.
This live Wall album also includes two unreleased tracks. "What Shall We Do Now" was left off the original release due to space constraints and "The Last Few Bricks" was a reprise of Happiest Days, Young Lust and Empty Spaces as an instrumental for wall builders to catch up to the band.
Also, Storm Thorgerson's artwork of the four Floyd member face masks is striking (he also fell out with Waters originally during Animals) and the booklets have recollections from the four Floyd members plus road crew and stage designers with some cool pictures of the band on stage.
This live album did well for a "from the vault" release hitting #19 on the Billboard album charts and #1 on the Internet Album Sales chart and went Platinum here in the States within a month of its release. This live album has zero overdubs and is up there as one of the greatest live albums I ever heard next to Pink Floyd's Pulse, Led Zeppelin's How the West Was Won or The Song Remains the Same 2007 re-issue, Rush's Rush in Rio, Queen's Queen Rock Montreal, David Gilmour's Live in Gdansk, The Who's Live at Leeds (especially the 2001 reissue), Genesis' Seconds Out and Supertramp's Paris among many others.
Highly recommended!
Excellent Live Document Of One Of Rock N' Roll's Greatest Albums Of All Time But Couldn't They Have Released This Much Earlier? 
2007-08-14 - Why the hell did Pink Floyd decide to release this live document of one of rock 'n' roll's greatest records in the year 2000? Couldn't they have released this back in 1982 for some reason? Anyway an excellent live performance of The Wall as it was originally done back in 1980-81. This is the third live release by the band and it rocks from start to finish although nothing compares to the original 1979 double album.
