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From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: The Wall
Message-ID: <198@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 04:56:42 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.198
Posted: Fri Oct 25 04:56:42 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 28-Oct-85 03:46:45 EST
References: <1143@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> <5602@fortune.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 54
Keywords: self-indulgent whining, divorce

> From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)

> Not to flame you, Paul (I agree with your rebuttal to Palena
> wholeheartedly), but although I've liked some of the music from "The
> Wall", I can't help but think that as a whole it is a ridiculously
> self-indulgent egotistical whining exercise on the part of Roger
> Waters.

Hey!  You're maligning here the album that made me realize that there
is other music in the world besides The Beatles and the soundtrack to
"Hair".

I can even get Kate Bush to back me up.  (Everyone here would respect
her opinion, right? :-j) She said that after she heard "The Wall" she
almost couldn't write music again, because she thought at the time that
it said "everything there is to say".

In any case, perhaps "The Wall" is "rediculously self-indulgent
egotistical whining"?  But so?  A lot of his problems are universal, and
he doesn't endlessly repeat one certain complaint or anything.  He
criticises just about everything, and I agree with him on most of them
too.  He puts it all wonderfully poetically, and the music is incredibly
atmospheric.  "The Wall" is a masterpiece of musical imagery.

> I recall reading his insistence at the time of the recording of "The
> Wall" that HE *was* Pink Floyd, that the band was his ideas, his
> vision, his music.

Well everyone knows that Roger Waters is a complete asshole, but that
doesn't mean he doesn't make good music.  Besides, by the time of "The
Wall", Pink Floyd *was* Roger Waters.  Richard Wright wasn't doing
anything anymore.  Nick Mason never did a whole lot, and David Gilmour
only does good work when he's collaborating with geniuses (like Roger
Waters or Roy Harper, and then he can be amazingly good) -- his solo
stuff is pretty medicore.  (Roy Harper has said that David Gilmour was
the musical heart of the band, but I don't believe it.)

> Didn't he go through a divorce around this time?

I dunno.  One might think so from the movie....

> I ask because two of the biggest "stars" of the moment, Phil Collins
> and Sting, bolstered their careers (and found something to write about
> endlessly) as a result of divorce, and seem to fit into that same
> category.

I don't think it's the same because Roger Waters didn't write about that
any more than any of the other issues that are themes on the album.

			"All in all it was
			 Just another brick in The Wall"

			 Doug Alan
			  nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)