Pink Floyd Deep Dive #5: I'm Going To Start My Own Theme Park With Hookers and Blackjack

It's been some time since catching back in on this project, but it's about time to get back into it. With the LPs lined up...it was a bit difficult to determine how to proceed.

In the end, there will be three more posts about this band. This post is just about the Roger Waters Solo catalog.

All in all, he's released four solo records, not counting the three-ish solo records with Pink Floyd.

After these, I'm going to do two more posts featuring only live records and they'll be in a shoot out style.

PEW PEW PEW!!!

Now it's time to crane our collective necks to the redoubtable Mr. Waters's first solo excursion: The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking.

I'm going to consider some context that I've never really heard anyone else say....which most likely means that it's likely been made many times before.

What do The Wall, The Final Cut, and The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking all have in common?

Certainly, they all use the definite article. They're all written by Waters. The final bit though...they are all autobiographical.

The oft married and divorced Waters was writing about his own mid-life crisis.That's the backbone of this record. The man is working out his feelings and doubts about his life. This one was different than the first marriage.

They'd even produced a son.

Of course, all of the intent is meaningless without quality content. With the tasteful guitar accents of guitar legend and Jimi Hendrix predecessor, Eric Clapton, these songs are beautiful.

As with most of Waters's attempts, the songs are abjectly brilliant and beyond reproach.
The biggest issue that I can find here...is Waters himself. There's so much to the narrative that gets muddled from his delivery.

Couple that with the fact the actors cannot be heard without blasting the volume to well beyond standard listening levels, and what should've been a masterwork and a lesson in how to begin a solo career becomes a promising start.

Waters has an astounding voice for conveying anguish, but these songs call for joy at times. The bottom line is that this would've been better as a Pink Floyd record.

Radio K.A.O.S.

OK, now we're about to get a little bit weird. It's probably reasonable to assume that the previous three records had hit a little too close to home for Waters.

Now...we're heading off into a Science Fiction fantasy based on real events that he had nothing to do with.

That makes sense to this guy.

This album is one of the few compact discs I've purchased in the last five years. Because I don't do spotify or whatnot, I purchased this, and the preceding album because I couldn't hear them any other way.

Radio KAOS...really didn't speak to me much when I listened to it on CD...and I gave it multiple chances. Then one day...it's there in a spot I go to for LPs.

It was $15 and I walked away from it. Later, I came back and it was gone...but I continued to dig and eventually I found it and now I have it.

This is one of those albums that really sounds better to me on my vinyl set up rather than on CD.

KAOS is actually one of those records I use to describe what happens when 70's Rock Icons get sucked into the 80's and begin chasing trends.

Don't worry, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Gary Moore, and the inimitable George Clinton all fell into the same traps.

Like Pros and Cons, KAOS features spoken dialog to help the story along. Unlike Pros and Cons, you can almost totally hear everything being said by the two protagonists. Billy's voice is a bit hard to understand at times though...perhaps not using the stereotypical 1980's robot voice would've been a good plan.

In a change of pace, Clare Torry returned to work with Waters on two tracks on the record. There's also a myriad of studio hands all over the tracks.

What catches my ear on this album is that Waters taps into the fear we all had in the 80's of the button being pressed. That's the part of this story that sticks with me. My generation was basically told that if nuclear war happens, we're going to die.

It was no longer the duck and cover lies.

Much like the album itself...my deep dive back into it is kind of all over the place. This is as close to a failure that Waters has had, in a creative sense on an album.

Amused To Death

Have you ever heard of the so called lost album? For Kiss, it was Music From The Elder. For Aerosmith it was Done With Mirrors.

(Sorry, I'm listening to Classics Live II as I'm writing this.)

In most cases of the lost record, it's probably better that history has chosen to ignore it, but in this case, good lord, we all screwed up.

During his press tour for In The Flesh - Live, Waters himself said that he was a part of three great albums, Dark Side, The Wall, and Amused.

If you didn't hear the last one, you didn't get the set. We all know that bands will say whatever they think of to get you to buy their new record. Lars talked about how St. Anger was Metallica's greatest record...

In this case though, it's honestly true. I first heard this record when I was going back into the world of Pink Floyd because the St. Louis Public Library had a copy of it.

Upon the strength of this record, I was willing to spend far too much money, by my standards, on acquiring a Hong Kong 200 gram re-release of the record.

I'll tell you that I've never felt one ounce of regret for what I spent to get it. It was wholly worth the opportunity cost.

What's depressing is that I remember the press tour and hype machine working in quintuple overdrive for The Division Bell, but I don't remember even seeing the video for Three Wishes.

If one compares the two Pink Floyd albums, the other three Waters albums, and the other two Gilmour albums that have come out, there's no reasonable person who'll say that Amused wasn't the best of the bunch...

By a country mile.

It's just something special that was wholly forgotten by the world.

is this this life we really want?

I cannot precisely say what the issue was, but for some reason, I didn't have any interest in this record when it was forthcoming. At that time, I had yet to really immerse myself in the world of Pink Floyd's solo records.

So, with all of the hubbub and talking, there's always the idea that a reunion is in the offing and then we can have what we lost right?

Of course not. Rick is dead. Roger and David hate each other. As Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs said...the war is over and they won.

So, let's look at the world and the tale of the tape since the great divorce. Roger has released two Pink Floyd records and four solo records since the band broke up and David has done likewise.

Admittedly, I've yet to hear About Face, but I've spent large amounts of time with The Division Bell, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Rattle That Lock, and On As Island.

Of the four records I've listed, none of them are on the same plane of existence as the aforementioned Waters record. Now's the time when we remember that Roger is the Pink in Pink Floyd.

Without his guidance, they're a band that sings about nothing. If you'd like to fight me, point out any song that's really about something that's been released under the Pink Floyd name since Roger left.

But Roger is still Roger. His fire still burns. In the age of Trump and the GOP Led Fascist State of America, he's had  even more to say. All of a sudden, Pigs is contemporary.

Compare any tune from this record to any tune from Lock... It's clear who Pink is.

Here's the only sense of disappointment I can convey to you. On his first solo record, Roger employed a Yardbird.

On his third solo record, he employed another Yardbird. I'm just saying that the greatest Yardbird of them all is still alive and kicking. The idea of Jimmy Page on a Roger Waters record...well it fills me with the urge to evacuate something, but unlike the judge, it's not my bowels.

Lyrically, Waters went into different territory this time. He left his comfort zone, the hole left in the world created by the conservative elite and the loss of his father.

There's definitely that anti-war sentiment and the very familiar left wing sensibility, but there's something else in this record.

It'd been 25 years since his previous release...and it's safe to say that Roger likely doesn't have another 25 years kicking his sandals  around. This could be his last goodbye.

It sounds like he's listing off the things that didn't change under his watch and he's struggling with the fact that he may never see them changed, but instead of the future mourning of a legend, let's talk about the style rather than the substance...

Roger chose to have a guitarist emulate Gilmour on this record to give it the real Pink Floyd sound and that in part, is why this is the best Floyd record in decades. We learned this day that it's easier for Roger to have someone impersonate Dave than it was for The Floyd to impersonate Roger.

If it was only the music that mattered, this would be a smashing, crashing, hit.

But names matter more than results. Hence why Momentary Lapse of Reason sold more than Pros and Cons.

Ditto for Amused To Death versus The Division Bell. There's no Pink Floyd fan on the planet who could tell me any different.

The problem is that most fans care more about the name on the banner than the man behind the songs and I'd wager only 20 to 30 percent of Pink Floyd fans have heard any of the Waters solo work much less own any of it.