ROGER WATERS

I'm pretty surprised to see that Radio KAOS has a lower rating than Pros and Cons. Respect to that one, this has a stronger concept even if not properly a masterpiece of literature. From a musical point of view it features more sax than guitar, but after the poor (IMO) performance of Clapton on Pros and Cons this is not a bad thing. Also the sax is played by Mel Collins.

When it was released it caused different reactions within the Pink Floyd fans: from one side Waters' style is still recognizable. Gimmicks are everywhere but less invasive than on Pros or on Final Cut and his singing is helped by a number of singers including Clare Torry (The Great Gig in the Sky voice) and Paul Carrack.

The counterpart is the horn section. It's very well played and arranged, but the funky parts are a bit too much for a former Floyd's album. Just to make a comparison, Gilmour's About face contains only one "funky" song, even if it's the main track: Blue Light. Radio KAOS has at least three tracks full of funky accents. Not bad, but this is not what Floyd fans are used to look for.

Speaking about the songs, none of them is outstanding on its own, but effectively the album follows its route and all are good contributors to the final result. Only The Tide is Turning, played also at the closure of The Wall concert in Berlin, has something more. Another good track is for me "The powers that be". This is the seed from which Amused to Death probably came from. The guitar here sounds very similar to what Jeff Beck will later do on What God Wants.

I don't think it's an album for collectors only. The average quality of the songs is acceptable, there a story concept and is played by skilled musicians. Some songs are poppy, most have funky contaminations, as I wrote, but if this is a weakness for Pink Floyd fans, can be appealing for all the others.

One of the biggest, historically relevant shows out there...what's not for a progger to like?

Well...the nitpickers (and that often involves me) could have a field day with The Wall Live in Berlin.

As one of those who just had to have everything Pink Floyd and their individual members put out, I obtained this just about as soon as I had enough cash to do so. And then I put it on...and much of it I just didn't enjoy much.

Fast-forward 15 years, and now I can let go some of my previous expectations and enjoy some of the pieces on here just as they are. And as others have noticed, when you can do this, you realize how big of a spectacle and production this was. It really has everything: gigantic puppets, the Scorpions rolling in on a limo (yep, the stage was THAT big!), Waters trashing a bedroom (in One of My Turns), and, of course, one enormous wall.

Although I would never buy any Joni Mitchell or Cindi Lauper music, I have to admit they are decent here, as are almost all the guests. (One exception: I will never, ever, appreciate anything Sinead O'Connor is involved with!) Overall, it's just a fun experience.

Unfortunately, the music is not great (both as performed, and as written in places). The orchestra is a bit much, as is the inclusion of so many guests. The best parts are ones in which you just see the piece as put on ten years earlier for the first live performances.

My highlight for the album lasts only about 15 seconds, but it's one of the most memorable live things I've seen (in person or on DVD): at the end of Another Brick...II, a guy dressed as the teacher (complete with three tufts of hair sticking up against a bald cranium) totally rocks a keytar solo. It's so ridiculously over-the-top that it's hilariously entertaining. Skip what you must, but don't miss this!

Overall, I'm moderately glad to have it in my collection (mostly to satisfy my Floyd completionist needs), but I rarely come back to it. Far from essential, but the best video of one of the greatest rock shows ever performed (even if I'd much rather have a DVD from the original Wall Live tour).

Can you imagine how different music history would be if the rest of Pink Floyd, when offered the choice of doing this or The Wall, had decided to go in this direction? Maybe it would have ruined the band's career; Roger would have gone solo anyway, he would have had a mild comeback with a Gilmour-less Wall, and his solo career would be treated better by history. Or maybe Pros and Cons might have ended up a big hit in the hands of Pink Floyd, and it would have been as big a hit as The Wall has ended up being. I can't help but giggle a little bit at the thought that, instead of frat boys singing, "We don't need no education," they'd be singing, "There were arabs with knives at the foot of the bed!"

After finishing The Final Cut, Pink Floyd didn't even bother to tour the album, and Roger went straight into the studio to work on this. At this point, Roger was clearly convinced that, not only was he great than Pink Floyd, but he was so beloved and popular that he could take whatever abstract rant he had in mind, set it to a minimal amount of melodies, and the public would gladly take it and ask for more. Apparently, Roger somewhat succeeded in that vein, as this album has amassed a sizable cult following to this day. You know what, though? I don't care. This album BLOWS.

The instinctual reaction of a thousand Roger-holics may be to flame me with accusations of being a simpleton who only likes "catchy pop songs." This is, of course, a ridiculous claim, as any reasonable reading of my reviews will show that my tastes go far beyond such things. I also want to specifically point out that I often enjoy it when rock albums have obscure concepts, and I take enjoyment in attempting to uncover not only the superficial concept (or the plot) but also the deeper, "abstract" meanings behind them. Furthermore, I've found that it's easier for me than for most others to uncover the meanings of such albums: I understood the plot of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway after just two listens (and had a good grasp of the deeper, spiritual ideas within just a few more listens), and I've even glimmered meaning and substance from the majority of Yes' Tales From Topgraphic Oceans. It says something, then, that for the most part, I don't know WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON in this album. Apparently, it's a bunch of surrealistic dream sequences with a common theme of marital infidelity, rife with Roger's weird lyrical twists (though these are VASTLY inferior to his work in Floyd). At least the concept of The Final Cut, the pain of losing a loved one to war when you know that it won't mean anything in the long run, is something that a great many families can relate to. But this ... um, who exactly is supposed to relate to this? Well, I guess if you like to cheat on your spouse, but do you think about being attacked by Arabs in the process? Um. Guh. And fans of this here album love to go on about how Roger's emotions just poor out all over the place ... huh? I get a nice emotional twinge in the penultimate track, "Every Stranger's Eyes," but I can't get myself to care about the rest of this album's subject matter at all.

This could be forgivable with strong music, but compared to the ones on this album, the melodies on The Final Cut were Beatles-quality. In addition to liking that album's lyrics and concept a lot, I really liked some of the melodies, and there were a lot of neat twists that I enjoyed. Here, though, the only significant element in this album's favor is the presence of Eric Clapton, whose gimmick-free but emotionally charged and technically flawless style of playing is totally different from Dave's but sounds just fine to me. There is a lot of enjoyable guitar work on this album, and the fact that Eric's able to come up with so many good solos, given how little he had to work with in the "meat" of the songs, only speaks to his credit.

In any case, if you're a really big Roger fan, you might love this, and if you do, more power to you. But for the rest of us ... just stick to The Final Cut. Or even A Momentary Lapse of Reason ...

After a series of not the best of solo alumbs, Roger went back to his roots, and decided to make an album that I feel is the closest to The Wall that Roger will ever perfect.

This album is another concept album, based on the idea of a monkey watching the news on t.v. and pondering the decisions of human beings (I do this all the time, we really have amused ourselves to death.)

This album also contains some interesting musicians, e.g. Jeff Beck, Randy Jackson (that black guy that judges on American Idol and was bass player of Journey for like 5 minutes) & Flea (although his performance was cut out, sadly cause he's a pretty good bass player).

An amazing album that is very underlooked. This also matches whatever Pink Floyd were trying to do (although I do love The Division Bell).

1. The Ballad Of Bill Hubbard - Very Shine On You Crazy Diamonds. Amazing guitar solo from Jeff Beck. I never really cared for Jeff Beck (mainly because he's Slash' favourite guitarist, and I hate Slash), but this album has made me see him for an amazing guitar player. The voice clips add to the atmosphere. I like the way it ends abpruptly.

2. What God Wants, Part I - Very interesting lyrics.Sounds like late Pink Floyd.

3. Perfect Sense, Part I - I like the intro of this song. Quite beautiful piano intro. Roger's vocals are very eerie with a very whispery tone. Great lyrics. The female vocals are amazing and the way the chord sequence flows is amazing.

4. Perfect Sense, Part II - Very ballad like & quite epic. I like the way he justaposes war and football (their both useless and futile basically).

5. The Bravery Of Being Out Of Range - Very In The Flesh. Great chorus. Now this is the Roger Waters that I love.

6. Late Home Tonight, Part I - Very Wall like with great instrumentation. I like the chanting at the end of the song. The bomb sound is quite suprising.

7. Late Home Tonight, Part II - Great ambient like intro. Some great orchestration arranged by the late great Michael Kamen. Very much like When The Tigers Broke Free.

8. Too Much Rope - The sound effects and orchestration at the start are very eerie. It reminds me of The Thin Ice. Great lyrics. Interesting vocals from Roger.

9. What God Wants, Part II - I like how the main theme is brought back. The gang vocals are very reminiscent of The Wall.

10. What God Wants, Part III - The sonar sound is obviously taken from Echoes. Another amazing guitar solo from Jeff Beck.

11. Watching TV - Great lyrics. I love how the song dramatically changes in the middle. Great lyrics, very comical & dark. The best song on the album in my opinion.

12. 3 Wishes - I like the weird quite intro. Another dark and comical song. I love the dark atmosphere that surrounds the song.

13. It's A Miracle - Love the lyrics in the song. Very funny, even though this song is quite sombre. I love the comical stabs at Andrew Llloyd Webber (for those who don't know, the riff in Phantom Of The Opera was stolen from Echoes). The ending is very eerie with the fading choir.

14. Amused To Death - The intro is very drony. A nice calm way to end the album. Roger's whispery voice adds to the calm atmosphere of the song.

When Pink Floyd went their seperate ways (basically as far away as Roger as they posibly could), they continued as a 3 piece (a pretty good one at that), while Roger complained and moaned about them non stop.

He released some solo albums during the time he was moaning and this was one of them.

The only reason I bought this album because it was cheap and I had just heard all thePink Floyd albums and wanted to see what Roger's solo stuff was like.

Yea, this is a really good album, the songs were put together well, it was amazingly produced and the concept was interesting.

The concept is very weird and confusing, ver much like Joe's Garage by Frank Zappa, where the the story was quite stupid but funny and was more tongue in cheek if anything. Basically the story evolves around some welsh boy who is able to use radios to set off nuclear bombs. It was a bit weird and very weird, but quite interesting nontheless.

1. Radio Waves - A bit annoying, but suprisingly catchy. Almost too 80's. Roger's voice sounds terrible in this song.

2. Who Needs Information - Now this is the Roger Waters that I lov. Great chorus and very Pink Floyd. Almost like something from the latter era of Pink Floyd (the one that Roger always complains about, but could never match up to.) The song does go on a bit though. I really like the ending though.

3. Me Or Him - A nice wee laid back song. Very much like a slow song on The Wall or one of the better songs off of The Final Cut. I like the narrative sections.

4. The Powers That Be - Very Pink Floyd. Great chorus.

5. Sunest Strip - A wee bit annoying and a bit too bluesy. The chorus isn't too bad but it's way too Bruce Springsteen or Dire Straits (I hate that band with a vengance).

6. Home - Has an early Michael Jackson Thriller vibe to it. The chorus is amazing. Proababbly the best song on the album. Clare Torry also appears in this song, out of early retirment to do some more screaming (she only like did one song, FAIL).

7. 4 Minutes - There's a great sense of tension built with the bomb ticking noise. I like this song. It really does have an amazing climactic end. This song reminds me of a Jim Steinman bat out of hell interlude.

8. The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid) - Nice way to end the album. Nice and calm, almost ballad like.

CONCLUSION: This album seems to be given a hard time. But I say, give it a chance, it's not that bad.

I saw this in a bargain bin and felt it calling me. I was not disappointed. Roger Waters "In The Flesh" is actually a very accomplished rendition of the best of Roger Waters with brilliant bursts of Pink Floyd. It is a very different sound with David Gilmour and took me some getting used to but it is great to hear a new Floyd sound with Waters at the helm. I like what he states in the liner notes, "Dark Side of the Moon has been performed almost ad infinitum by another band.... It seemed pointless to replicate this material, instead I chose representative songs from ('Dark Side of the Moon' and 'The Wall') ... and placed them alongside more obscure pieces from my back catalogue..." the "other band" he refers to is of course Gilmour's Floyd that performed DSOTM on "Pulse" to much acclaim.

Are these renditions as good? They are different, I cannot really compare, though I miss Gilmour's soaring guitar solos. Waters does a fine job of translating the classic tracks without the aid of his fellow band members. He is great on 'In The Flesh', 'Mother', 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' and 'Pigs On The Wing'; I mean they are his songs and they sound more like the studio versions with his estranged vocal style. He was never the greatest singer but the atmosphere is bleak and appropriate with his caterwauling.

'Shine On' (14 whopping minutes!!!), the 5 tracks from DSOTM and 'Comfortably Numb' are all masterfully performed by all involved. The concert falls down for me when he plays stuff from his solo career. I had avoided his solo albums as a strategic move. If these tracks are anything to go by I think that was a good decision. Occasionally the solo stuff reaches some resonance as a good song, but it's all so poppy, although I am a bit of a fan of 'The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking Part II' which was in reality rather a bland album, apart from the eye candy saucy cover.

I had heard recently David Gilmour's solo performance "Live in Gdansk" and it's streets ahead of this, however the Roger Waters concert is not a disaster at all, I actually enjoyed this new experience of Pink Floyd immensely. Good, but not essential indeed!

A great show, and shamefully for die-hard followers of the Gilmour camp, better than his version of Pink Floyd.

Waters had the advantage when planning this show of having no other band members to squabble with over the set list. And as people have rightly pointed out, he based his choices on personal taste and entertainment value, as opposed to popularity and "fulfilling the needs of fans", like Gilmour. Sure 'Money' and 'Another Brick...' are present, but not in their usual places (as encores for example) and without such humdrum execution. Waters also includes some greatly underplayed tracks: 'Dogs' is here (rejoice!), 'Set the Controls...' (great jam with additional sax), 'Southampton Dock' (not amazing but different), the list goes on. These are much better inclusions than say, the obligatory 50% of 'Momentary Lapse...' that's on 'Pulse', where most of such songs sound the same.

This concert is well played by various musicians, which are effectively varied in age, experience and virtuosity, making for a much more interesting show with different people soloing in every subsequent song. Waters himself is doing well with the singing, and on the bass (okay, he's no Chris Squire, but if he was, it would distort the more lyrical leanings of these songs). And there's also a wealth of his solo material here, which I don't really dig that much but given that it is a ROGER WATERS concert I can hardly complain. I tend to just watch all the Floyd songs and then stop it (on their own, these still last a good hour and a half).

Well worth the effort, but too long unless you're a Waters fanatic. 4 stars.

Ha! Who'd have ever guessed that a late-period live album with one Pink Floyd band member would sound so much more "authentic" than a late-period live album with the other three members? This document of Waters' first tour in 12 years is so much better than P*U*L*S*E that it boggles my mind. If it weren't for the inclusion of a new song at the very end (the oh so dragging Each Small Candle) that totally destroys the momentum of the show, this would be an easy ***** and a strong candidate for one of my 100 favorite albums of all time.

The greatness of this live album lies in the details. One of the things that I got used to about P*U*L*S*E, but that never totally stopped bothering me, was the feeling of Gilmour, Wright and Masons performing as the chairmen of Pink Floyd Inc. The inclusion of "Astronomy Domine" (and on the DVD, "One of These Days") notwithstanding, the setlist on P*U*L*S*E is very tame, and strongly caters to the mindset that the stereotypical Floyd fan has of the band. With In the Flesh, though, I really get the sense that, with the possible exception of "Money," Roger chose the songs he did because he actually really liked them and considered them an important part of his legacy, and not just because they'd be expected by fans. In the liner notes, Waters basically says the he considers the three most important albums of his career to be Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall and Amused to Death, and the setlist bears this out. Yes, DSotM and The Wall are what most people think of when they think of Pink Floyd, but the way the material from them is positioned in the setlist, and the material from other albums that Waters chooses to complement them, really suggests he was playing these songs because he wanted to, not because he "had" to.

Take, for instance, the great decision to do "The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" as the second performance of the evening (after a fun "In the Flesh," where the line "Pink isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel, and they sent us along as a surrogate band ..." suddenly takes on a cheeky meaning that it lacked originally). Let's set aside that this is easily the best live performance of the song I've heard, completely devoid of the cock-rock vocal inflections Dave would use on it and the incredibly tedious jamming Dave and Rick would push forward in it (the extended soloing here, by contrast, is very energetic). Instead of using the track as an obvious encore piece (like was done when I saw Roger and his touring band in 2007), the song ends up getting treated as just another great song, and the effect is a total breath of fresh air.

After the initial Wall chunk (after "ABItW2," we have a nice run through "Mother"), there's a quick detour into The Final Cut with "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" and "Southampton Dock," complete with a final allusion to the title track in the end. And then we get the grand highlight: "Pigs on the Wing part 1," followed by "Dogs" in all of its glory. John Carin (who also toured with Floyd back in the late 80's and early 90's) does a great job on the driving acoustic lines and in the vocals that once belonged to Dave, and does an OUTSTANDING job on the atmospheric keyboard meanderings in the middle that once belonged to Rick (I think it's John, anyway; it might have been the other keyboardist doing that, I'd have to go back and watch the DVD to check). The various guitarists (more on that later) do all of Dave's aggressive electric parts very well, and Roger's bass playing is as professional as it had ever been. I'll tell you, there's no way in a million years that the remnants of Pink Floyd would have ever dreamed of doing this track in the 80's or 90's, and this track's presence makes the album golden to me almost all by itself.

After the Animals chunk, we come to the Wish You Were Here chunk, featuring "Welcome to the Machine," the title track and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." WttM is done decently enough, but the title track and "SOYCD" both (in my opinion) obliterate the performances done on Delicate Sound and P*U*L*S*E. Roger's live singing may be less pleasant than Dave's live singing in both places, but I feel Roger's passion and conviction in every note, whereas I felt like Dave was singing just because he had to. Plus, the abridgement of "SOYCD" is pretty much perfect; the somewhat tedious ending jam of the original is replaced with a depressing reprise of the opening synth meanderings, and the meat of the song doesn't neglect the more menacing portions of the original (the cool leadin to the second half of the piece is preserved well). This is "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" with no modifications to make it more "listener friendly," and I totally love that. And finally, the first disc ends with an incredible shocker: "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun!" This is a very cool rearrangement, by the way, as it has a weird saxophone solo in the middle and some gruff guitar noise in the middle.

A brief word on the guitarists on this album. A mistake that Roger could have easily made was trying to replace Gilmour with a single young guitarist who could do a spot on imitation of Dave, both in singing and in guitar style. Now, he does have such a player in his ensemble, one Doyle Bramhall II, and he certainly does a very good job on this album. The coup, though, was making sure to supplement an imitation of the young Gilmour with people who could bring the veteran understanding of the music of Pink Floyd (and solo Waters) that Dave would have brought were he not busy not playing with Roger. The two men who fill this role are Snowy White, the same Snowy White who regularly played on stage with Pink Floyd during the 70's, and Andy Fairweather-Low, a really cool guy in a suit who's played with everybody (including Roger for a bit in the 80's), and Roger couldn't have chosen better in a thousand years. It should also be noted that, while Fairweather-Low plays bass in a couple of places when Roger is otherwise occupied, Roger performs most of this album's bass duties himself, and that should say something; I really get the sense from watching the DVD of this concert that Waters took his bass-playing very seriously, and it's cool that he doesn't farm out those duties very much.

Anyway, the second disc starts with perfectly servicable versions of "Breathe" (with great steel guitar from Carin), "Time" and "Money," then goes into a lengthy stretch of Waters solo material. Radio K.A.O.S. is ignored, but Pros and Cons is represented by "Every Strangers Eyes," which suddenly turns into a gargantuan anthemic classic when taken out of the dreck that made up the rest of that album. We then have four songs from Amused to Death, and they're all good ones ("Perfect Sense," "The Bravery of Being Out of Range," "It's a Miracle," "Amused to Death"). They're done very close to the album versions, sound effects and all (though "Perfect Sense" has the additional feature of a sample of the death pleadings of H.A.L. from 2001: A Space Odyssey), but they have all the power of the originals too. Keeping the ending portion of the interview about Bill Hubbard was a nice touch, too.

The show finishes off with "Brain Damage/Eclipse" and "Comfortably Numb" (the tradeoff of solos between Bramhall and White is breathtaking), before inexplicably finishing with 9 minutes of icky ickyness. And there's your great live album. An even higher grade is out of the question for various reasons (the excessively close replication of the AtD material; the roughness of Waters' voice, which can get a little wearing at times; and of course Each Small Candle), but this is a marvelous live album that belongs in the collection of every Pink Floyd fan. I also highly recommend the DVD.

When I read the reviews that has been written about this particular work I was not shure if I will spend my hard earned coin on this. I am not a big fan of TPACOH even with Clapton but the name Beck in the rooster called to my attention. I have great respect for Beckology so at first it was a reason to listen to this concept album. Let me start telling you that there is no doubt in my mind, this is a must own. Waters is a real philosopher at work telling us about the demise of civilization due to TV abuse in 1992, now in 2010 change TV for Facebook and You'll get a grasp of what was the message back then. Rita Coolidge doing fine vocals, Randy "dog" Jackson on funky bass but specially Beck is brilliant creating guitar solos that now I appreciated more than the ones by Gilmour on any Floyd album. I am not going to cover It song by song because It is a concept and you must get It as a whole package to own It but I just wanna ask for your help here: How Do I stop from listening It two times a day? I have no willpower, I am sorry, I will be Amuse to Death.

Great DVD, oh wait, this is only the CD, so, not that great.

Sometimes, several artists have decided to release a concert for both, you viewing and listening pleasure, I mean, as a CD and as a DVD, sometimes both are equally good but sometimes there is a huge difference, like in this one.

You may remember Roger Waters played a complete The Wall show in 1990 with some guest artists, and he decided to put in on video and give a really entertaining and amazing show, now that I know he will be touring again playing The Wall, I really hope he comes to Mexico City because witnessing a show like that I bet would be something unforgettable; returning to the point, there is a huge difference here if you decide to watch the DVD, you will enjoy the show, you may feel part of the Wall's characters and sing along with the guests, but if you decide to only listen to the audio CD, then you may feel disappointed, and even bored.

For those who don't know, in this concert there are some guests artist who are (or were) famous at the time, such as Cindy Lauper, Bryan Adams, the beautiful Sinead O'Connor, Joni Mitchell or Paul Carrack among others, each and everyone of them giving a piece of themselves to the song(s) they performed, does not sound very attractive actually, but if you watch the DVD you will be pleased, though if you only listen to the CD you will want your money back.

If you like The Wall, you may try this, not bad at all, but if you don't like that album in particular, neither Pink Floyd, then, for God's sake do not buy this.

I recommend watching the DVD first, before you decide to get this CD. My final grade 2 stars, anyway?

Enjoy it!