Pink Floyd Music:

		List Price: $58.49		Label: EMI Int'l Salesrank: 112385 Released: August 14, 2001
		Our Price: $80.00
		Used Price: $29.95
		Media: Audio CD

Editorial Review:
Japanese remastered reissue of 1979 album packaged in a limited edition miniature gatefold LP sleeve.

The Wall Reviews:
Great Concept Album, One of the Best of All Time, But So-so Sound Quality!
2006-02-11 - They call this one of the digital remaster series and while you can hear that the sound quality is an improvement over the original, when you compare it with the other digital remasters that are out there, this one pales in comparison. The sound volume levels are still very low and it makes you wonder if the reason for this is that they did the best that they could with a severely deteriorated master.

Still, the mini-lp gatefold sleeve replica design is first class and they even have in addition to all the lyrics in both English and Japanese, great round art fall-outs that resemble what was on the original vinyl centres. And now to the content itself which is truly brilliant composition by mostly Waters and then the rest of Pink Floyd.

Ironically, if you truly want to understand the album, you'll need to get the movie that was done much later with Bob Geldof playing the lead role as Pink, the rock star with the troubled childhood and subsequent life experiences coupled with drug and drink addictions which eventually lead his mind into a slow, inevitable decline into insanity.

I read from an interview with David Gilmour who plays some incredible guitar on this album (as a guitarist myself, I'm not ashamed to tell you that the guitar solos on "Comfortably Numb" bring tears to my eyes each time I hear them: simply beautiful music and soloing with great heartfelt expression)in a guitar magazine how Pink is really Sid Barrett, that early founding member of the band who slowly went mad after drugs and drinks and what Gilmour believes also was something to do with his childhood and genes as well. He would actually go on stage and play just one chord all the way through the set. I read that he would go to a clothes store and purposely order a pair of trousers that was 4 sizes too big and then tell the sales assistant,"Thanks! Just the right size!"

Just like on "The Wall", the whole story is quite sad because like Pink, Sid Barrett was a true genius; he used to write most of the material of Pink Floyd's early albums (check out the brilliant "Piper at the Gates of Dawn") just like Roger Waters did on their later albums, their true creative genius on their earlier works was Sid. He could write great psychedelic lyrics and music but then alas began his downward descent into insanity.

"The Wall" has a unique combination of sound effects (dive bombing war planes, baby cries etc) and great harmonies and even classical themes in addition to the rocks themes that tell the story of how a rock artist eventually loses his mind after having to deal with the early death of his father and the subsequent smothering mother, a rigid and cruel education system and then after drug and drink addiction, the unfaithfulness of his wife led him to self-mutilation and full-blown insanity.

This is Roger Waters' and Pink Floyd's tour de force album and surely one of the best concept albums ever. You have to listen to this one from the beginning to the end at one sitting to truly appreciate its genius. A true work of art and this version is still probably the best one of "The Wall" that is out there until they do a better remastering job and improve the overall sound quality of the recording. Hopefully they'll do the same for "Dark Side of the Moon" soon too. Recommended.

Not so hot now, derivitive and more a Roger Waters album
2005-05-17 - I saw the movie soon after high school and was duly impressed: the animation was spectacular. The movie was dark story concerning the growing emotional detachment and isolation of a rock star, Pink, who gradually descends into a fantasy world of fascist leanings. Perfect stuff for highschool I thought and a story that lent iself very well to the big screen. However, even though Pink Floyd was one of my favorite bands since Meddle, I never bought the album. I'd heard it to death from my friends and though I was impressed at first, I became less so with each subsequent listen. The Wall has a lot of problems, both in its scope and in its execution. As a larger work, the concept is derivative of the Pretty Things far superior SF Sorrow (the first rock opera): the alienation of a boy who loses his father in WWII and his emotional breakdown. Musically, most of the songs with a few exceptions (Comfortably Numb is among their best works) seem to be filler: they perhaps further the storyline but aren't that compelling. In fact many are dull. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that Roger Waters hogged the song writing and prevented Rick Wright from making any musical contribution what so ever, which led to his leaving the group during the recording. Perhaps this has something to do with the over the top production of Bob Ezrin, surely the most overrated producer on the planet.

Pink Floyd for me have since the Syd Barret days been primarily about the music, which was often groundbreaking and moving. I've never given their lyrics as much weight although some were excellent, but for me they've always been secondary to the music. With the Wall the lyrics are the main focus, the music takes a backseat and the album suffers for it. There is a tremendous amount of filler music whose only purpose is to act as a backdrop to the lyrics/storyline. With some notable exceptions, the music is either weak piano noodlings or overly theatrical bombast with little subtlety. Which of course something that producer Bob Ezrin is known for. Most importantly The Wall just doesn't sound like Pink Floyd. After the wonderfully complex and even darker Animals, I expected more of the same sonic density, but instead I got what is essentially a Roger Waters solo album with help from the other Floydians and studio musicians.

The plot of the Wall is unoriginal and just too long and ultimately boring. It's just so much puerile pop-psychology about building an emotional wall because school sucks, Dad died and Mom is overprotective and then tearing the wall down, who cares? The Wall doesn't move me at all, it's story pretentions are too facile, it's music too showtune grandiose to move me in any significant emotional way. Unlike previous Pink Floyd albums, the Wall sounds childish, not childlike, and less adult. It's whiny, self absorbed and worst of all maudlin. There's a silly and cinematic or theatrical drama to the whole thing that I find very unappealing and cartoonish. As a movie the Wall was more successful because of the visual element and tremendous animation, but as an album, well... The music isn't very interesting: its mostly filler and bombast, and the storyline is just so much depressing and self-absorbed navel gazing. Just get over your pathetic rock star self Rog. After the Wall the Floyd as far as I was concerned was over, they never did anything that interesting again and Roger Waters solo career has been one bomb after another. The Wall marks the death of Pink Floyd as a viable band. Download it or rip it from a friend.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?,
2005-05-11 - Actually if I were going to go beyond the idea of a concept album with "The Wall" I would be more inclined to call it an oratorio, similar to Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" or "Passion Play," rather than a rock opera like "Jesus Christ Superstar" or the Who's "Tommy." That is because the over riding unity of the songs in "The Wall" is thematic rather than narrative in nature. The bleak double album is Roger Waters' meditation on the walls human beings build up to ensure their survival in the post-modern world. It is also something of a departure from the group's previous albums, most notably "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "Wish You Were Here," it that the group's signature cosmic rock sound is giving way to some more traditional pop music sensibilities. The compelling electronics and other special effects that had become key components of Pink Floyd's music, and which put "Dark Side of the Moon" on the chart for literally years, now takes a back seat to the themes and lyrics (although there are still some choice moments, such as when Gomer Pyle shows up on "Nobody Home").

The "story," such as it is, concerns a rock star named Pink (no subtlety here, boys and girls), who is disgusted with the lesser human being he has become as a result of his celebrity. The key song in the album is "Comfortably Numb" (co-written by lead guitarist Dave Gilmour), which is one of the classic rock songs about alienation, although obviously the title begs to have it labeled a song about intoxication by the drug on your choice. But the context for lyrics such as "You are only coming through in waves/Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying" is clearly about the despair of being disconnected from humanity. It is also a lament about the lose of childhood, which remains in Waters' vision the time when we are at our best as human beings:

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, the dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb

The music for "Comfortably Numb" is both operatic and eerie, a paradox that is nonetheless accurate. The relentlessly depressing picture of a rock star's life would have you worrying about the mental health of Roger Waters if it were not for the suspicion he is writing as much about the life in general and former Pink Floyd lead guitarist and main songwriter Syd Barrett as it is an attempt at catharsis by Waters after spitting on a fan during a concert for daring to applaud during an acoustic number. I always was struck by the start of "Mother," with one of the very best examples of a caesura with the extremely effective pause between the first line, "Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?" and the second, "Mother, do you think they'll like this song?" There is a world of meaning in the vocal silence there that I have never forgotten.

There are two pitfalls to "The Wall." The first is that Pink Floyd released a rare single with "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," which mean that school children rebelling against the system now had something to sing throughout the year while waiting for the end of the year to do Alice Cooper's "Schools Out." Consequently, in the popular consciousness "The Wall" was boiled down to the following potent lyrics:

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Yet taken in its totality it can hardly be said that the primary purpose of this double-album was an attack on the educational system in England. In song after song the "character" is blaming others for his troubles, so it is not surprising that teachers end up on that list. But the success of the single made it seem this was what the whole thing was all about. For that matter, there are more songs concerned with the threat of nuclear destruction ("Mother," "Goodbye Blue Skies") than education. By the time you through Waters' paranoia over Great Britain becoming fascist ("Run Like Hell") the whole indictment of education seems like just another, well, you know what (which would be the point, right?).

The second concern is that the disparity between the highs and lows on this album are rather substantial. It is rather like sitting through an opera and some of recitatives (e.g., "Goodbye Cruel World") to get to the arias (e.g., "Hey You"). The best tracks on this album are as pretty good, but you still have to sit through some less than stellar sections (e.g., "One of My Turns"). The loose narrative is not enough to help us connect the dots and I suspect it is only by really getting totally into the album and trying to achieve consubstantiality with the creative vision of Roger Waters that you can really make sense of it all. This is why the production values of "The Wall" as performed by Pink Floyd in concert tended to replace the psychological dimensions of listening to it in the dark in your room.

The key thing here is that there are moments in "The Wall" that match its ambition. The sum is greater than the total of the parts, but there is certainly nothing wrong with that being the case.

The most involving Floyd Album
2005-03-10 - Like most Pink Floyd albums "The Wall" demands patience and concentration from the listener to give it's full effect. This album is very much a Roger Waters work from start to finish and rightly so because in my opinion it's his, and Pink Floyds best work ever! If you have never listened to any Floyd before and simply jump in on any given track you might wonder what all the fuss is about! Like previous Floyd work The Wall uses sound effects such as planes, voices, babies and bombs as backing. This is not an album you can put on as some light backing music but one you have to listen to and if you do you will hopefully see why this is one of the best selling records of all time.
At the end of the day it's all down to the material. The wall not only features some of the best lyrics ever written but also the best music, all put together with the effects mentioned before to tell the story of Pink from losing his father (killed in action in World War 11)to being drugged as a rock star to ensure the Show Must Go On (Waters on the Animal Tour) The title refers to the barriers we all put up to protect ourselfs from others and the descent into madness if taken too far. For a perfect visual of all this watch The Wall DVD !!

Sometimes you can't explain why certain music is good. This album however benefits from Dave Gilmore the guitarist being the perfect foil for Waters mad rantings. The sheer feel and emotion in his playing gives the songs even more impact and prove that sometimes 1 + 1 = 10 ! All I can say is that in 30 years of listening to some great music from the likes of the Beatles, The Stones, Van Halen, The Beach Boys, Oasis and newer bands like the Libertines and Kings of Leon etc, this is still the best thing I have heard.

Good remastering
2001-11-26 - Very good remastering!Great sound.1994 year remastering.
All replicas from the LP edition