Spinoff from the DSotM thread. A sprawling, incredibly self centered record with a lot of big ideas. An important record for me 40 years ago that - until this week - I haven't listened to since. I'm trying to re-process this record without its cultural baggage and without the context of the movie, which I'll probably also re-visit, but not now.

My first impression is this is an incredibly depressing record and if my own kid was listening to this at like 14 years old, I'd want to have a heart-to-heart with him about clinical depression.

The Wall is 98% product. It's really gross, imo.

One can agree with every single criticism of this record (self-indulgent, narcissistic, bloviating, whatever) and it's still not a crap record. I've heard it so much, and seen the film so many times, that I probably, like DSotM, I never need to hear it again. Bongfuel. For us in high school in 1988, we were most often on acid or mushrooms while watching it. I remember one time watching it while on acid sitting on the floor, behind the check-out counter, of a movie rental shop.

Even though I recognize the movie is probably bad, I've seen it several times and wouldn't Crap it. Maybe the conceptual bullshit just works better as a movie/play.

Haven't listened to the (double CD) album since I was maybe 14 and am fine with that.

The first time I heard The Wall was the day after I had broken my brother's best friend's arm while pitching in Little League.

My brother and his friend were at our house and they had just bought the record. They got stoned and put it on, and I listened to it all the way through next to a kid I had put in a cast 24 hours previously. I'm pretty sure I had only heard Dark Side of the Moon from Pink Floyd before that.

The Wall is not crap. I listened to it a lot in high school. Haven't really listened to it all at once except on very long road trips since about 1990, but I appreciate it. It's not my favorite Floyd, but I'm glad it happened.

I ranked this album all the way at the bottom of the Pink Floyd albums up through The Final Cut, which a) may have been an overreaction and b) still doesn't necessarily mean I think it's crap. At the very least, there are several individual tracks that are NC, WF: 0 (e.g., "Nobody Home").

I've probably listened to the record from start to finish hundreds of times in my life but none in the past 5 years or so, which seems like a consistent theme so far amongst those who have replied. I think I need to do so again before I vote.

Listening now for the first time in decades. It's really incredible it got made at all. It's so bleak.

It would be impossible to overstate the importance of The Wall to me as a kid. Military father, mother who was... a lot. My friend group ate, slept, and breathed this record. We knew every word. We drew bricks on every notebook we had for school.

We were too young and broke for tattoos, but if we'd had the means, we'd probably all have some Ralph Steadman-esque Wall tattoo somewhere on us.

I haven't listened to The Wall in a million years. No need to, but I'm glad it happened.


Here's my hot take: I think Gen X stoner kids needed Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Iron Butterfly to feel properly stoned because the weed wasn't very good. We had to get in The Head Space, Maaan. Drugs are so good now that Pink Floyd has been made redundant.

BARFFF!
I was in junior high when this was released. At the same time, the Gacy murders were in the news. Somehow, I cannot separate the two.

I like a lot of Pink Floyd. I can't listen to this and Final Cut. Both are bloated and a chore to listen to. Even before Roger went full-on nutter, I realized this is terrible music.

Sure, he gets points for ambition and fleshing out his vision, but can anyone really sit down and listen to this and not feel like shit having wasted 90 minutes?

I would prefer to organize my socks drawer than to have to listen to the whole double album again.

The three worst cases of buyer’s remorse from childhood were (1) the time I bought a (used) piece-of-garbage distortion pedal* that I’d coveted but never researched or demoed; (2) the time I bought the expensive double-CD of Uncle Meat, which my guitar teacher loved; and (3) the time I bought the expensive double-CD of The Wall, because I kinda liked the three tracks that classic-rock radio played.

I listened to The Wall once. The impact was that I now hated the three songs I’d once liked.

*My brother still has that pedal. The name escapes me. He says it truly is impossible to get a usable sound out of it. I somehow bought the worst distortion pedal ever made.