Another Brick in the Wall #1

It starts with "...we came in?" Then we go to the real show. My favourite, and possibly the greatest, rock opera of all time, The Wall in which we follow the story of Mr. Pink Floyd.

I had the recent privilege to see Roger Waters perform The Wall live. It is officially the best concert I've ever been to. At 68, Mr. Waters still knows how to throw a good show. If I had the opportunity, I would totally go again.

Roger Waters performing "The Show Must Go On"

For those who are unfamiliar with the general story line of The Wall, it follows thusly:
Our main character is Mr. Pink Floyd, overprotected by his mother, abused by his school teacher, and cheated on by his cold wife. We follow his story growing up, becoming a rock star, his own infidelity to his wife, his violent tendencies, and his struggles with the wall. The wall, in this case, is an emotional wall built by the emotional stunting of his life. In the end, he goes on trial to figure out if he should tear down the wall or not.

"In the Flesh?" sets the tone and the scene of the world we are about to be immersed in.  A world where feelings are hard to come by, where conformity is the only way, and where "riff-raff" is put into a shooting line.

We find out that the band performing is actually a "surrogate band" to tell us Pink's story, and not Pink himself, since he "isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel." Should we take this to mean he's strung out on drugs? Or that he's recuperating from recently bringing down his (emotional) wall? Most likely, it's as the song says, "to find out where [we] stand" when it comes to Pink's story. This is probably because (as we find out later) he had a hallucination in which he was a fascist Neo-Nazi-esque dictator and started setting soldiers on fans at one of his concerts. But maybe this is just the world Pink lives in, since the surrogate band wishes to have everyone shot.

"Trust Us" - The Symbol of the world in which Pink Floyd lives

We'll continue to follow Mr. Pink Floyd's story in another post. This is just one of many considering how much there is to talk about this two-sided, inspired album.