Amused by Waters (17th of September 2012)
>> Pink Floyd was the first rock and roll band which I treated seriously, although
Pink Floyd is not really a prototype rock and roll band, but still ... One could write a lot of text regarding who the Floyds are and what
they did, but so much has already been written in this area that it is difficult to expect originality here. Anyhow ... This will not
be the text about the Floyds but about Roger Waters.
I recently bought the DVD edition of a famous >> Pompeii show.
In addition to excellent live music, the DVD contains about thirty minutes of "intermezzos", the conversations of the Floyds (which
one is Floyd, afterall ? :) in the recording breaks, during quick meals, and while they were in the studio, working on
>> "The Dark Side of the Moon".
It seemed to me that I could, already in the conversations from that period (October 1971), clearly recognize the tensions and reasons which will
lead to the breakup ten years later. Besides, I wasn't the only one who noted it, the director (Adrian Maben) also asked them about it, and all
four of them avoided the answer. (Some say that the Floyds didn't breakup and they count "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" and
"The Division Bell", recorded without Roger Waters, as a part of the Pink Floyd discography. To me, it doesn't fit at all.)
Waters is in those small talks revealed as an interesting, but also pretty unpleasant person, disapproving of compromise and infinitely
confident regarding the quality of his attitude. As the other three are strong and quality persons, it is obvious how the breakup of
the band came about.
When we quarrel and fall apart, we do not understand the finality of this act, we cannot clearly comprehend the effort that will need to be
invested in reconciliation and we do not understand that it could happen to us that we get old in the dispute - the life passes that
quickly. That is how it happened with Floyds. Only this year, and after the death of
>> Rick Wright they seem to be reconciled to a degree, but
to me, this reconciliation looks like an act of old people who want to get certain issues straight while they still have the time
(Waters had his 69th birthday 11 days ago). Just in case.
As I didn'l like the "Pink Floyd" albums without Waters, I also didn't like Waters' solo albums which I heard
(weak
>> The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking
and a somewhat better >> Radio K.A.O.S. which has several
minima, but also a few maxima). I was irritated by synthetic sound of eighties which I could never sense in the
music of Pink Floyd, a lower level of musical invention, and I was also disappointed by the fact that a nice color of
Waters' voice didn't stand out without the backup by Gilmour and Wright. I didn't think much of it (I still don't).
Two or three months ago, I listened to Waters' album
>> "Amused to Death" from year 1992, which I somehow missed, and I was really pleasantly surprised. This is already an
old album, it's been twenty years since its publication so I don't really know why I write this, I guess I want to
get my incorrect opinion of Waters as a solo author straight - he really made it with "Amused to Death".
"Amused to Death" is an album with a strong political attitude, as was the last Pink Floyd album,
>> "Final Cut".
In it, Waters criticizes free market and capitalism:
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents,
Pounds, shillings and pence
Can't you see
...
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We ohhed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
A better part of Waters' critique is especially interesting today, in times when the countries like Croatia
tremblingly expect the "marks" and "ratings" of some "agencies", composed of the same greedy bloodsuckers
who started the whole crisis. It's sick. Euro is in danger, euro is saved, euro is in danger, euro is saved ...
Cmmon ... What a crap ...
Waters warns about the general situation in the world and the mangy character of the human kind (especially in "What God Wants" -
only Roger Waters is enough self-confident, egocentric and know-it-all to be able to calmly write down all that God wants, including
sex in the long list of things - is it any wonder that BBC didn't want to play it?),
And the Jews kill the Arabs
And the Arabs kill the hostages
And that is the news
And is it any wonder that
the monkey's confused
To me, the most striking song is "Watching TV" in which Waters exposes his, very emotional view of the events in
>> the Tienanmen square, during protests in year 1989.
In the present time, when the Chinese system is hailed from the most unexpected places ("if they would just buy the debt of
Europe ..."), I would recommend the Waters' view of China, at least as a warning.
Waters, no doubt one-sidedly, but also very emotionally and freedom-lovingly, paints the events on the Tienanmen square
around the figure of a girl, "yellow rose", "student of philosophy" and "the daughter of an engineer", whose grandfather
"fought Chiang Kai-shek", and who "wore a white bandanna that said Freedom now":
She's symbolic of our failure
She's the one in fifty million
Who can help us to be free
Because she died on T.V.
And I grieve for my sister
All that unpleasantly reminded me of the war in Bosnia and Croatia - people also died on TV during those times.
That manufacture hell on earth
They bought the front row seats on Calvary
They are irrelevant to me
But I grieve for my sister
People of China
Do not forget do not forget
The children who died for you
Long live the Republic
Did we do anything after this
I've a feeling we did
We were watching T.V.
Watching T.V.
We were watching T.V.
Watching T.V.
This watching of the TV killed us in the end, it "amused us to death" - so the alien scientists concluded when
they found our remains next to the TV sets, at least according to Roger ...
Album is thought to smallest detail, and the sound is layered and excellently designed to draw you in the ambient:
thunder, crickets, conversations at the table in the early evening. Excellent. This is rock'n'roll, there are
no musical and instrumental virtuosities in the degree and character typical of the Pink Floyd music (I
would emphasize here the excellent vocal performance of
>> P. P. Arnold in "Perfect Sense"
and solo guitar of >> Jeff Beck
in "What God Wants, Part III"), but the material is still, in some different manner, meditative and
ambiental. A-.
| << Lady Sao | After waking up >> |
Last updated on 31st of August 2017.