IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

You know, for a long time I've loved every Floyd live album. Anyway recently, with the huge availability of bootlegs and live recordings on the net from all eras in which this band performed, I had to change my mind a bit. Before writing this review I listened to the whole "Is there anybody out there?" and "Pulse" cd's just to get a very vivid impression of how their live sound and approach to performances changed through the years right from the 70's to the 90's. Let's face it, "The Wall" is surely a masterpiece of rock music, one of the most impressive artistic statements of the 20th century, and the recent Roger Waters' " The Wall live" world tour , which kicked off in 2010 and ended up this year, has clearly shown how this rock opera resonates in popular culture and how the thematics contained inside the plot are still contemporary, after 34 years since it was originally released. The album as we all know was originally conceived as a 3 stages act which would have included:

1) The studio album 2) The live show 3) The movie

Personally a lot of people, during the years, bashed up the movie claiming how it "didn't show what the original album was all about". I can't agree with that, but I do agree with all the reviewers who wrote about this live release affirming how it's even better than the original studio album. This is no joke. Rarely I have seen such cases in which the live rendition of the material sounded better than the original versions. "Is there anybody out there?" gives the listener a precise idea of how Pink Floyd sounded when they were at the peak of their career and how the band was always coming up with more and more powerful visual effects and bold concepts behind their shows which were becoming more and more theatrical as the years went by. What you see it's what you get, this cd is simply a rendition of "The Wall" live , which was the only feature in their shows from this era which didn't include any encores and no songs from other albums (such as Dark Side of The Moon). Anyway there are two songs which weren't included in the studio release: "What shall we do now?" (also included in the movie by Alan Parker) and "Few last bricks", which basically was an instrumental that contained other themes from the album reproposed to give time to the stage techs to end the wall construction before the last brick would be placed right at the end of "Goodbye cruel world". The performance is absolutely stunning and moving from the first notes right thru the end of the show. Waters charisma and vision behind the show is fascinating and convincing. Gilmour guitar work is at his pinnacle and the rendition of songs like "Mother" , "Hey You" and "Comfortably Numb" left me speechless. In Pete Townshend (Guitarist and songwriter from The Who) own words: "When I went to see The Wall live back in 1980 in Los Angeles, and I listened as the Floyd went into "Comfortably Numb"....well I was Comfortably Numb". The show itself was so pharaonic and HUGE for the era, that it was performed briefly in few cities around the world during 1980 and 1981. This approach to have huge and epic stages was only the beginning in Floyd's career, this paved the way to what would have happened a few years later, after Waters departure, with the monumental world tours from the late 80's and mid 90's, which gave birth to two live records: "Delicate sound of thunder" and "Pulse". These last two greatly acclaimed tours although surely were great productions with state of the art sound quality and mastodontic live visual effects, in my opinion didn't have other purposes than refill bank accounts, after the legal battles with Roger and the other guys in the band, and they were a clear demonstrantion of will by Gilmour, Mason and Wright to show the world that with or without Waters the Floyd were still alive and kicking. Let's take for instance "Pulse", both the cd and the dvd: it's impossible to deny how great both the record and the dvd are, the visual effects are stunning, but let's face it the perfomance are surely good but somehow cold, a bit sterile for how a live show should be, like gigs by a band already dead from a creative point of view, showing not so much enthusiasm while playing. On "Is there anybody out there" this doesn't happen, and surprisingly also on the Gilmour solo dvd "Remember that night", recorded in 2006. The artwork for the album is by Storm Thorgerson, the 5th PF if you like, unlike the original studio album which featured the work of Gerald Scarfe. Personally I think "Is there anybody out there?" is the definitive Floyd live record and it's absolutely a shame that to this days no official dvd has been released to accompany the cd.

A must have. 5 stars.