Ever since I was first introduced to "The Wall" in ninth grade, I have been a big Pink Floyd fan--particularly their progressive rock material. Now...I know that prog-rock has a bad rap, but I maintain, even after all these years, that the genre did actually have more to it than lead guitarists and keyboardists competing for the longest solo and drummers with more pieces in their drum set than I have jeans with compromising holes in them. Say what you will, but I have long been a fan of The Alan Parsons Project, Pink Floyd, Genesis, and the like.
When I was living in Chicago, however, my roommate, an opponent of all things arena-filling and mainstream, told me that Floyd's first release, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," would forever dismiss "The Wall" as sopping with self-indulgent egoism. I have since come to appreciate "Piper" and psychedelic rock as a whole a great amount (see: The Beatles - "Magical Mystery Tour," The Doors - "Strange Days," Cream - "Disraeli Gears"). And so, I just put "The Wall" on, just to see what would happen.
In reality, we have to submit that there are two Pink Floyds--Syd Barrett's (and his band that continued his work after he left; see "A Saucerful of Secrets") and Roger Waters'. Syd's Pink Floyd was an adventurous bunch, pushing the boundaries of sound and their label's faith in them. Under Barrett's manic direction (for those of you unfamiliar with the Pink Floyd story, he left the band shortly after Piper's release after suffering a mental breakdown induced by his drug addiction) the band created an album that flew in the face of what everyone thought they should be doing, and it became the anthem for a scene that had already caught the creative interests of the Fab Four. But without Barrett, the group handled the whole psychedelic thing like a bored fish out of water. Five years after Syd's departure, the band finally seemed to have ground under its feet--and lots of it. They released an album you may have heard of called "Dark Side of the Moon," which remains one of the best selling records of all time, thirty-seven years after its release.
But to listen to the first two albums and everything following "Dark Side," there's not too much to indicate that (for the most part) the same people were behind it. "Piper" and "Saucerful" obscure themselves in Eastern rhythms and abstract lyrics, almost hiding behind walls of reverb and effected keyboards. "Dark Side" and everything that follows is relatively straightforward. Guitar solos litter nearly every track, and the lyrics are much more concrete, albeit retaining a little bit of a haze. The keyboards are less strictly atmospheric. The studio tricks are still there, but they are used less to obscure and more to shine the tracks up. The long instrumental passages remain, but they are less like clouds blowing in and more like an overture. To put it to the Western, mainstream viewpoint, the later releases are more "musical" than experimental. It seems to be more composed than it seems to have been randomized. Where Barrett's Pink Floyd was more abstract, Roger Waters' sought grandeur (some might say delusionally so).
Which brings me to "The Wall" -- the concept album of all concept albums (concept albums are also a bad rapped musical form that I am not entirely opposed to). While "The Wall" is guilty of many of the things it is accused of being -- self-indulgent, bigger than big, contrived, over-produced, etc. -- it is also a masterpiece in its own right. It is the peak of Pink Floyd's ambitions; but that doesn't mean it's the best. Most of the album is perfectly done. The music itself is masterfully done, with the exception of the "The Trial," which is less rock opera and more straight opera, which doesn't rightly serve the group's strengths -- most notably David Gilmour's guitar work, which is incredible throughout the record. It mainly seems like Roger Waters was unsure how to end the project, and to be fair, it's mostly his own fault for building everything else to be so big that it takes an orchestra-backed piece with Waters imitating the voices of the judge, the school teacher, the mother, the ex-wife...(you get the idea) to end everything with a bang. As far as the story goes, it is a fitting ending. Musically, however...not so much. But given that the most contrived that album gets is twenty-five tracks into a twenty-six track record, I'll allow it. Most everything that proceeds the finale, with the exception of some poorly conceived vocal delivery, is pure prog rock goodness. And I love it.
"Dark Side of the Moon" and "Wish You Were Here" are still better, though. Four out of five.
