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October 9, 2013 by Simon Sweetman

Classic Albums I Can’t Ever Listen To Again: #1 Pink Floyd, The Wall

Wall pfIt’s the worst kind of indulgent, fawning, horrid yawn-fest plodding prog-rock as (reluctant) stadium fare. It’s a smart conceptual album – if you’re a dummy. It’s borderline nonsensical, spreading strange tones of racism, homophobia and smash-the-state politics under some strange guise of the war-affected when actually no one ever simply told Roger Waters to shut the fuck up. At least not until The Wall was released.

Oh but I loved it once. More than once, even. In Hawke’s Bay it was practically issued out by the city council to teenagers, along with army-surplus school-bags and a felt pen. As if, in some irony according to one the album’s themes, an authority figure of dubious credentials was about to stand over you and force you to scrawl the words ‘Pink’ and ‘Floyd’ and ‘The’ and ‘Wall’ on the bag. And off you went with your double-album or long-play cassette.

The iconic album cover, the film – absurd, the cartoon imagery – a couple of flowers fucking, turning into rats and eating each other. Oh fuck off!

It wasn’t just totally acceptable to listen to The Wall growing up in Hawke’s Bay aged 15. It was required. You live in that town with its so-pleased-with-itself aura, butter wouldn’t melt and there’s gold in them there hills. The best thing you can do is listen to Pink Floyd. It’s either that or sniff some glue. Most of Hastings has done both, probably a great deal of it continues to do one, or other, or both.

Yes, the guitar solo on Comfortably Numb is good. Yes, Another Brick In The Wall (Part II) was so fucking cool the first 1500 times you heard it. Yes, the best songs on the album are actually Goodbye Blue Sky, Vera, The Thin Ice and Empty Spaces. And yes, it’s all some pomped-up/pumped-up dress rehearsal for The Final Cut. A better album by quite some way, if not only for its relative brevity. And still an interminable bore and an absurd thing to cling to.

Pink Floyd’s best work is the set of “lost” albums between its debut and The Dark Side of the Moon. And yes, that’s revisionism. And it’s another topic for another day. But it’s also the truth. As I see it.

As I hear it, and I haven’t done such a thing in a long time – and never will again, I’m so sure of that, The Wall is the worst album the band ever did. Partly because it’s a glorified solo album by a megalomaniac who just couldn’t cope with his super-tough millionaire rock-star lifestyle. Daddy fucked off early, mummy was never told to shut the hell up. Roger Waters spent half his life and them some pouring out some facsimile of his soul to whoever would listen. Problem is: heaps of people did. And far too many still do.

The band’s nadir is their classic album. This classic album is the band’s dark moment. Their jump-the-shark absurdity that couldn’t have been better assembled by a team comprised of Christopher Guest, Chris Morris and Banksy.

Wouldn’t it be good to think it was all some giant prank? Instead of a cry-wank as thin-concept thick double-album for dullards.

Ninety minutes of some rich tosser’s therapy barked out of the speakers at you. When you bought this album you really paid for it. Big time.

The Wall is forever trapped inside a red Sony walkman, hanging on a belt around some stonewash jeans. Unlaced basketball boots beneath it, peddling along as a flat-deck truck drives by with farm-hands hanging off the back yelling ‘homo’ at whoever they can, high-fiving in self-congratulation as the beautiful homes of Havelock North blur into the background and the ugliness stops after a slow-motion pan, pausing briefly to spit in its own face.

Fuck you Roger Waters. Fuck you Hawke’s Bay in the early 1990s. Fuck you The Wall.

This was originally published as part of a series on the Phantom Billstickers Facebook Page

Posted in Blog, Miscellany and tagged with Classic Albums I Can't Ever Listen To Again, Phantom Billstickers, Pink Floyd, The Wall. RSS 2.0 feed.
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15 Responses to Classic Albums I Can’t Ever Listen To Again: #1 Pink Floyd, The Wall

  1. Ken says:
    October 9, 2013 at 11:55 pm

    I spend exactly no minutes a day trying to order Floyd’s output in any way that makes sense, but every now and then I pop Wish You Were on and admire it’s weary anger and clean sonic punch. But I did go to the film of this years ago and a more revolting narcissistic pity party you could not hope to attend. I had my doubts about Roger Waters going in but by the time I got out they’d hardened into convictions. What a knob.

    • Simon Sweetman says:
      October 10, 2013 at 1:11 am

      I like Wish You Were Here still. And Animals. And everything pre-Dark Side.

      • Ken says:
        October 10, 2013 at 2:23 am

        They’re a funny old band. Not my poison, but I’ll acknowledge that what they do is trickier than it sounds. I too suffered Hawkes Bay Floyd trauma only with Dark Side. If the damn thing wasn’t the rock and roll version of the Book of fucking Kells you could almost find it intriguing, like Neu or something. Once you’ve heard it blaring out the back of some surf bum’s Kingswood 50 million times the magic has gone.

  2. Peter MacKay says:
    October 10, 2013 at 3:56 am

    … as if it’s you that had the skill and determination to play for Australia.

  3. Amnar says:
    October 13, 2013 at 4:59 pm

    “Pink Floyd’s best work is the set of “lost” albums between its debut and The Dark Side of the Moon.” – This.

  4. spotty says:
    October 18, 2013 at 8:32 am

    It did seem to catch a moment with you, they tap into that suburban malaise, anger at the concrete sameness of the Hawke’s Bay Bourgeois.

  5. Ronaldo says:
    October 19, 2013 at 1:53 pm

    It has it’s moments. On paper, this is the perfect album. On record? It needed anyone but Roger Waters. But alas, another day for that subject. Imagine what Syd Barrett had done with the Wall? Oh, but you would shit all over, wouldn’t you Simon?

    P.S. I was born in Napier. Same week as Cobain died. Funnily enough, Hawkes’ Bay will never, ever change. Your description is the best anyone has ever put it – except for how deep the self-righteousness runs. Which is Waters-esque, funnily enough.

  6. BG says:
    October 24, 2013 at 9:01 pm

    You lost me when you said The Final Cut was a better album. The Final Cut simply isn’t Pink Floyd, it’s a Roger Waters Album with Gilmore and Mason used a guest musicians. It’s simply terrible.

    Yes the Wall is not as great as WYWH, Dark Side or Meddle (their best album) and telling was the lack of influence (and playing) by Wright. Richard Wright was the guy that created the Floyd sound and is noted that Pink Floyd’s best albums were when he was at the peak of his powers (and not being bullied by Waters)

  7. Blaxter says:
    November 10, 2013 at 10:29 am

    There was such a lot of mystique about this album and specifically the movie when I was at high school. Dad was a big fan of Pink Floyd, DSOTM was in the vinyl collection growing up and I felt compelled to watch The Wall movie after he stayed up late one night and cut out all the adverts whilst recording it on VCR. After countless viewings and awkward conversations about it with various people who were enamored by the subject matter, the weird imagery offered by the visual masterpiece, the lyrics offering clues like some sort of DaVinci Code mystery had me stumped until one day I figured out that it was basically psychology 101 for bogans that would never move from Levin or Hastings to attend Uni.

  8. mcchuckle says:
    October 29, 2014 at 3:31 am

    i haven’t been able to listen to this album for 25 years. which is about the time when i watched tommy (the who).

  9. mcchuckle says:
    October 29, 2014 at 3:31 am

    i haven’t been able to listen to this album for 25 years. which is about the time when i watched tommy (the who).

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