Pink Floyd
Is There Anybody Out There The Wall Live 1980 - 81

Beyond the wall of music, beyond the five senses towards a global experience.

“Is there anybody out there The Wall live 1980 – 81” is much more than just a sonic representation. The Wall live is the manifesto of a spectacular yet gigantic collective psychoanalytic session with its signs, symbols, and identities, performed by Pink Floyd only 29 times between '80 and '81 in just three countries: Germany, the United States, and England. And so, particularly in the "planet" set up at London's Earls Court (from which these two CDs are taken) the nightmare drawn by Waters takes figurative forms: banners reminiscent of Nazi-like motifs flutter on stage, urban screeches, Brechtian echoes, and Gestapo orders are heard, crossed hammers walk, iconographies of our loves/hates as common institutions are throned; the mother and the animated teacher by designer Gerard Scarfe. Out of this emerges a work of apocalyptic and colossal dimensions (the scenic apparatus of The Wall live representation was perhaps the most lavish and grandiloquent of all time, with a wall of 420 bricks built by a team of workers that slowly removed the band from the audience's view) with an orchestral exaggeration attempting the most claustrophobic path possible to translate into music the existential paranoia of Waters' three "daughters": alienation, obsession, and incommunicability. Though limited by music alone (I am not sure if the live DVD in question was also published) these two CDs project the listener's mind and reflections on the infinite potentialities of mass communication and the detonator effect of such a gigantic echo chamber capable of absorbing the nightmares of legions and legions of fans all over the world. Perhaps this is one of the few cases where the conformism of tastes finds its deepest justification in a musical and meta-musical substrate: the studio version of The Wall has totaled over 23 million copies, with an increase of 2571 per year (remember it is a double vinyl/CD; I personally and obsessively own it in both forms), and this obviously is not by chance because, as I mentioned before, The Wall is the musical iconography of the darkest and most mournful fragment of existence; the (not only) sound emergence of Waters' troubled and obsessed psyche, so little different, if you look closely, from the mental labyrinths of each human animal...

Looking at the musical side instead, it is practically impossible to isolate one song over the others: certainly live "Comfortably Numb," despite its unchanged beauty, sounds different from the studio version, if only for Gilmour's solo, (by his own admission the most beautiful ever written in Pink Floyd... and how right he is...) here, albeit decidedly more alive and magnetic, seems, however, devoid of an actual emotional impact (the solo version "Delicate Sound Of Thunder" or "Pulse" version is decidedly superior). Or "Run Like Hell" (where Waters cheers on all the weak people in the audience "... all the weak people in the audience...") which from this point on will become the concluding warhorse of the Gilmour, Wright, and Mason trio. "The Trial" loses a bit for the lack of vocal sound effects (in the studio the different voices of the teacher, mother, and finally the judge are distinctly better). Other songs dare I say are even better arranged than The Wall in the studio; I think of "The Thin Ice" where Gilmour's singing is much more heartfelt and passionate or "Another Brick In The Wall part. III" here really more roaring. There are then two songs that in the original version are missing (because discarded at the last moment): "What Shall We Do Now" and "The Last Few Bricks" ; the first is a fairly short song that erupts after the screeches of the claustrophobia of Empty Spaces; it's a very short hard rock piece, but always in the Watersian sense. "The Last Few Bricks" is, on the other hand, a kind of "medley" or sound collage of 3 minutes, derived from scenic needs: the completion of the wall by the workers during the conclusion of the first part of the show.

The band is manifestly subjugated by Waters' stylistic and interpretative egoarchy; after all, the conception of both the concept and its representation can be said to be practically his work; Gilmour's contribution, at the compositional level, limited to just 3 songs ("Young Lust," "Comfortably Numb," and "Run Like Hell," the latter two, to be fair, are among the album's highest peaks), in the live representation resolves itself (according to him...) "only" in the role of musical director (and excuse me if that's little...). I only wonder how (and how much) The Wall would have changed with greater compositional participation from Dave; let's not forget that, although not endowed with conceptual gifts, this guitarist has built the most beautiful melodies of Pink Floyd (evident, besides in the classics like "Wish You Were Here," also in the almost entirely his "The Division Bell"). As for the other two band members here (and not only here...) there's little to say; Nick Mason, we know, is a drummer without infamy and without praise and with little imagination and, as someone might contest, of all the things Pink Floyd have done, he can be credited with nothing more than a moral merit of membership. Yet as always, the extreme technical simplicity of good Nick in the face of 2 partners like Waters and Gilmour does not compromise the excellence of the final product. Rick Wright, on the other hand, as he will say in an interview attached to one of the two booklets, appears more to bid farewell to the fans (his discord with Waters had now reached its acme...) than for participative conviction: in fact, soon after there will be the schism within the group and the keyboardist will be dismissed from the "Roger Waters Band" in favor of the more technically gifted Michael Kamen who, besides playing the keyboards, will also arrange the orchestral support of that controversial and fascinating elegy "The Final Cut".

The artwork is meticulously curated (although the cover, in my humble opinion, could have been better); two illustrated booklets with dozens and dozens of live photos, and moreover personal comments from the 4 members, as well as from the other "co-creators" of the apocalyptic representation. In short...this double CD, albeit certainly animated by commercial intents (among other things, it has a certainly not political price...) will not disappoint historical Pink Floyd fans, nor will it disappoint the band's more superficial admirers because The Wall, in the small/large microcosm of progressive/psychedelic rock is so fascinating that it seems an unsettling diamond: the subjectivity of beauty transmutes into objective beauty. Because it’s true, “Is There Anybody Out There” is nothing more than the reproduction of mercantile speculation on human phobias, with all the accompanying telephone trills and dialogue fragments. However, it’s a speculation that always and in any case moves, one has to admit it; and this is enough to enthuse and convince. And then, remember that history is a spiral; it's testified by the fact that after 26 years, that wall has never fallen, and indeed with each new listening, with all its horrendous symbols, attraction towards the nightmare is reborn…