The switch in my brain that trips the Pink Floyd Trigger has been flipped and now I’m spending the day just burning through the ::pauses to check::16.1 hours of Pink Floyd I have in iTunes. And oops, but it seems I’ve not yet re-burned The Wall–which was tragically lost when my old iMac kicked the farm two years ago–so I have to make due with Wall Live In Berlin and the tracks that made it over to Echoes:Best Of Pink Floyd. And while I dearly love that Echoes includes my second favourite Wall track (When The Tigers Broke Free) and slams that ever so rockingly elegantly into One Of These Days, I have to admit that the Original Recipe Wall is probably the best of all the Wall recordings.
Except that “Tigers” isn’t on there.
The rest of the band (David Gilmour is an ass) wouldn’t let Tigers on the original Wall album because it was “too personal.”
Uh…DUH!!! That’s the beauty of it. It’s one of the most gut-wrenchingly personal and tragic songs I’ve ever heard. Frankly I think it’s right up there with Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit for personal heartbreak bottled in song.
The Berlin version of The Wall is, however, to be commended for using Van Morrison to full advantage on Comfortably Numb. There have been many a complaint that The Man was too drunk to do the song justice.
I find that ironic.
It my mind, Van sounds exactly as one who is comfortably numb ought to sound. The beauty of his voice pulls the song out of the mire of his drunk mind and it just somehow works.
And I suppose I’m done writing about music now because it’s interrupting my listening.
Have you seen the news today that Roger Waters is coming here to do a Wall Live concert next June?
NO I HAD NOT!!!!! ::begin freakout::