Outside the Wall

Kicking at the Bricks Four Decades Later, Thanks to Goodwill

For those who care, Pink Floyd's magnum opus, The Wall, is as colossal and dividing as its title. A bloated triumph of rock histrionics propelled by loads of major label cash, dressed in the caustically psychedelic imagery of Gerald Scarfe, and enabling Roger Waters' biographical projections of mental breakdowns to march over four album sides like Scarfe's legions of hammers. And I was utterly marinated in it during high school.

Four decades after my sophomore year, my wife found a copy of The Wall for $7 at the local Goodwill. An original 1979 Columbia Records pressing, the pale white bricks of the cover wearing time's patina, with original inserts intact and all four sides shiny under thrift store fluorescents. A quick check on Discogs confirmed the bargain, and a physical version of my teenage soundtrack re-entered my life. Although it sat next to our stereo for a couple of weeks before Nancy decided to check out whether the vinyl rated VG or VG+.

She pulls out one of the two LPs, squints at Scarfe's squiggles that serve as a track list on the label, and puts on "Comfortably Numb," one of the few songs that she knows from the album. She's a Piper gal. UFO Club light shows, bikes with baskets and bells, and gnomes in their homes. We both converge on Meddle and the accompanying Live At Pompeii. We sing along with "Fearless" and go "awww" at the Afghan hound in the film.

I'm in the bathroom as Roger Waters plays the doctor-in-the-house trying to rouse a checked-out Pink, and as soon as David Gilmour soars, I start singing along, word for word, walking into the living room in time to air guitar the first solo, note for note, then choke up a bit over "the child is grown, the dream is gone." I pantomime the second guitar solo all the way to the fade. Quite a way to end Side Two.

"Who's on vocals?" asks Nancy.
"Roger Waters for the verses, David Gilmour on the chorus," I reply.
"Waters sounds a bit like Kermit," she observes. I agree.

I hadn't thought of it that way before, but then at one point Waters walked on water as the visionary of the group who went his own way to realize his art. Sometime after that the ego and grandiosity became visible, although I suspect my real reason for setting aside Pink Floyd for decades was getting to college and discovering noise rock, ethereal, goth, shoegaze, industrial, experimental, and a bit of free jazz.

We skip around the other three sides, Nancy deciphering the Scarfe scrawl while I autocomplete the titles from memory, picking a suitable test drive track. "Run Like Hell," with its tight slapback-delay guitar and pitch-bend-inflected synth solo, is surprisingly 80's for a record made in 1979. I finally see the smaller mirror image of "Comfortably Numb" in "Mother," Waters and Gilmour trading vocals with another signature guitar solo. "Goodbye Blue Sky" is as forlorn and apocalyptic as I recall. And then "Young Lust."

"I don't care for this blues rock posturing," Nancy states. She doesn't care for the bluesy tracks on the Fairport albums either, and she absolutely loves Mississippi John Hurt and Lightnin' Hopkins.

"Yeah, I think they were 'genre shifting' to show the arena backstage thing - fans, drugs, booze." I offer.
"Is that what the album's about?"
"Yeah, the album and the movie – a burned out rockstar having a mental breakdown."
"There was a movie?"
"Bob Geldof starred in it. He shaves off his nipples in the film."
"They showed that?!"
"Not directly, no."

And then I regale her with my osmosed folklore of Pink Floyd's disintegration and return: Waters firing Richard Wright ("The nice one" in Nancy's book, and I concur), churning out The Final Cut as a Floyd LP even though it's really a solo album, leaving the band in a huff, the remaining guys wanting to carry on, Waters objecting, getting sorted in court, then us each independently seeing the no-Waters band in the 80's, replete with inflatable pig.

"Did they ever play again as a band?"
"Yeah for a Live 8 one-shot. I saw a photo of the four in an embrace after the performance. Roger's absolutely beaming, and the other three are doing side-eyes."
"I was thinking of taking this over to Jed the next time I trade in records at Little Axe. Should we keep it?"
"Nah, I've heard enough to reboot all my neural pathways. It's done its work for me."

Then Nancy puts on the latest Tara Clerkin Trio LP, Somewhere Good, which she had pre-ordered and had been featuring regularly on her weekly radio show. We went to see them when they played Portland a month or so ago, and some of what I hear on Side One lines up with what I remember from that show. Unassumingly groovy beats and bass, interlocked samples, and Clerkin's unaffected vocals that soar, not like a radiant Liz Fraser but more like a playful Sarah Cracknell. And the vinyl itself feels open, afloat, confirming a suspicion that the 1979 OG Columbia Records pressing is a bit mid-frequency forward.

"Silently" wraps up the first half of the LP. Nancy returns the record to its sleeve and checks out what's new on the Criterion Channel while I start chatting with machines about Pink Floyd. We save Side Two for another day.