The Wall: Live in Berlin

by

Roger Waters

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Undoubtedly this by far one of the biggest live musical extravaganzas of all time. Waters and his band truly explode every single musical derivation and extension of every song in the album to the extreme. Bryan Adams delivers as well as Van Morrison in "Comfortably Numb." Michael Kamen arrangements and choral and orchestra conducting is more than superb. Perhaps, for me the greatest asset of this album is that it proves by far the artistical magic of the Wall and gives us at the end, instead of a sad conclusion, a hope-charged and powerful message in Roger Water's "The Tide is Turning." Surely, that song after hearing the whole CD will give you the extra-satisfaction you need to be happy to add this disc to your collection. Please WATCH THE VIDEO of the concert. If you watch the actual concert on video you will definetely want to feel like one of the hundreds of thousands Berliners who witnessed the concert, and the joy of hearing the album's will exponentially grow in you.

I only saw this show on television, and I must say the production was wonderful. It was a spectacular event, extremely well done. But frankly, I see no reason to buy this on CD. If you want the Wall, get the studio version, one of the greatest albums of all times. If you want a live version, get the new Is There Anybody Out There release. All of the songs performed by Roger Waters are done wonderfully of course, but not very different from the studio version, except for the notable absence of Dave Gilmour's brilliant guitar playing and also the work of Rick Wright and Nick Mason. The guest stars, although they add some color and fill some empty spaces, are mostly quite terrible.

There are good moments: 'Mother' is performed beautifully by Sinead O'connor and The Band, with some nicely added accordion sounds (although I couldn't help but laugh hearing O'connor sing enthusiastically "mother do you think they'll try to break my balls?"). The wonderful Joni Mitchell's work on the beautiful 'Goodbye Blue Sky' is also great, and she sings as always with all her heart. Paul Carrack on 'Hey You' is not bad either. And the Trial sequence is all done well, with Tim Curry doing a great job as the prosecutor (though the entire sequence is far more impressive when seen). As I already mentioned, the production is great. The costumes are wonderful, as is the wall itself. But you can't hear that on CD, can you?

On the other hand, most of the guest stars really don't make it. Cindy Lauper, though I have nothing against her solo music, is certainly not the person to sing 'Another Brick In The Wall part 2'. Bryan Adams, who sings on both 'Empty Spaces' and 'Young Lust' (not my favorite songs on the album but still good ones) manages to destroy them completely. Van Morrison, though I love his solo music, doesn't make it with Gilmour's part in 'Comfortably Numb'. The Scorpions make a mess out of 'In The Flesh?'. Ute Lemper is very annoying on 'The Thin Ice'. And Jerry Hall's shameful display, desperately trying to steal the show on the spoken intro to 'One Of My Turns' which has somehow became a track by itself called 'Oh My God-What a Fabulous Room' is simply awful.

'The Show Must Go On' and 'Outside The Wall' were left out completely, which is also a shame. The brilliant ending that is 'Outside The Wall' was replaced with Roger's poppish singalong 'The Tide Is Turning', which really doesn't belong there. Much of the irony and twisted humor of The Wall was lost. Watch the video, but buy the original album.