THE FINAL CUT

Roger Waters "laid a brick" when he patched these "leftover pieces" together in recording sessions that effectively "Walled" himself off from the other members of his own band. Had this been a Roger Waters solo album, we would have known to expect his dour paranoid outlook to completely drain any spark of life from the proceedings. But he was putting the name PINK FLOYD on this album. As such, the other band members should have been allowed to counter-balance his excesses.

Where is Richard Wright on this album? Oh yeah, Roger did away with him during the recording of The Wall. Richard's not even on this album!

Where is Nick Mason? He's out right now. Roger criticized his drumming and he's really feeling self-conscious about it!

Where is David Gilmour? Oh, he tried to contribute ideas but they were considered "interference". He finally walked out with the retort "whenever you need a guitar solo, call me". Don't worry, he wouldn't be needing many of them. Four perhaps? And they would be shorter than usual anyway. And Roger will fade then in and out, mix them up and down whenever and where-ever he feels like it anyway.

OK, now that we know why 75% of the band is either mailing it in or completely missing in action, who are all these other people? They are the session musicians who do whatever Roger Waters says whenever he says to do it!

Of all the Pink Floyd albums, this is the only one in which Roger Waters gets credit for writing every song. Of the 12 songs on this album, only one is graced with a vocal from David Gilmour.

The album cover says it well. The Final Cut is "A Requiem for the Post War Dream by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd". So it seems Roger finally got what he wanted: the total and utter domination of Pink Floyd. And he reduced the band's dynamic range to a dull thud in the process.