THE WALL

I never owned this album and now have only the film version, though I have listened to the album version. The anticipated follow-up to Animals was a bit of a disappointment back in 1979. (In 1978, I had spent my hard- earned paper route money on Tormato, And then There Were Three and Love Beach and was not going to fork over money for a double record that held the single, Another Brick in the Wall.) Another Brick in the Wall, Pt 2 was Floyd's first number one single. I don't think that Pink Floyd was a band that fans wanted to share with the immediate world though they were already pretty huge by 1979.

When the Alan Parker film came out I was still unimpresssed with the album. I think that there is something lacking, although over the years many of its big hits have grown on me, Comfortably Numb, In the Flesh, Young Lust and especially, Run Like Hell. I would argue that it never reaches the musical depth of previous albums but ultimately, I would not criticize it for that. It is popular music after all, and popular music in the grandest sense of what it can be. From that perspective, it is quite an achievement.

Pink Floyd became a very accessible band after Dark Side and The Wall is really a culmination of the conceptual ideas that Waters and the band were developing over the three previous albums. The popularity of the band, whose music tends towards the dark side, shows that the issues grappled with are key and coming to an understanding of the themes that these albums are developing is a necessary prerequisite for understanding 'modernity.' What is brilliant about The Wall concept is its use of the image of the wall, which tied so closely into Cold War paranoia and the Berlin wall. As well, its Apollonian/Dionysian conflict is central to rock and roll, and romantic art in general.

After Dark Side, which ends on a pessimistic note but with a sense of irony, the subsequent Floyd albums ended on a positive note, the quick change to the major at the end of Wish You Were Here and that wonderful guitar riff at the end of Sheep. In the film, a young boy empties a molotov cocktail at the end and we are left to believe that there is hope that things will get better. Overall, it is an important message and a successful attempt at popularizing the band without totally losing a sense of the progressive ideology.

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