The Wall

Indeed.

I'm 16 and I own my iPod, with which I listen to whatever I have, in order, with no skipping of tracks. These albums were also ripped from real CDs. I get much more anal than that, though.

Excellent, the earplugs are total shite though but it's like that with all standard included earplugs. At first the sounds quality is good but it all starts going to shit very soon. All these buzzing noises and what not that totally drive you crazy. But it's like that with the iPod also. And every portable cd player I ever owned too, and cheap earplugs I bought also. I think 100 dollars(I believe it was) is a ridiculous amount of money for earplugs and it's hard for to imagine that it can actually be worth the money, but it's probably good quaility. I'm very tempted to get them myself. 100 dollar earplugs, I do think it's intriguing. I've heard people say it's actually worth that much but to me it's impossible to imagine. You can picture yourself drinking your 200 euro champagne, snorting your 50 euro a gram powder, with your 150 euro per hour girlfriend and to make it complete you'll also be listening music through your 100 dollar headphones. All you'll need is one of them fancy suits.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with anything and I apologise. Anyway yes, I find the zen micro an excellent device. I like the design(more than those shitty iPods) and I find it good to use also. I have it for a few months now, still use it regularly and it still seems to work fine. Standard headphones have been shite as long as Earth exists so it's nothing new. Very long story indeed, enjoy your zen micro I am quite satisfied with it myself. Unlike my phone for instance, WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T GET A SAMSUNG D500. And once again that has nothing to do with anything, I'll shut up now.

Bravo little Lily - I loved your long thread. I have nothing to add except that I am older than dirt and I agree with you. Oh, that and the extremely long post which I am about to embark on both to agree with and disagree with RussD - Hi Russ!!! Welcome

You all have got to cut RussD a little slack. He brought up several unrelated items (as partitioned off by Lily) in one sentence. Like me, we are old and a little confused. I am with kids all the time. I am headed out to see Staind, Nickleback and POD in concert, not so much that I like their stuff, as it feels good to hit a concert with your kids. But I know what Russ is saying - other than at concerts I don't see kids gather like we used to, collecting albums for the TOTAL art experience, listening over and over to just one album until it took a whole roll of quarters on the tone-arm just to play the poor worn our chunk of vinyl, learning all the words, interpreting their meaning and nuance. Making out in the basement....OOPs - I imagine they still do that Music now seems to be collecting as much as you can so much that you really don't have time to get into the song or the artist or the art or the poetry -the whole social fabric of the thing. This probably does not apply to PF fans or they would probably not be here. That is truly one of the unique things about PF - it IS a culture and a cultural phenomena. So Russ and I wonder how kids relate to lyrics like "if they catch you in the back seat trying to pick her locks, they're gonna send you back to mother in a cardboard box" or whatever... or how you relate to the whole psychological crap of building a "wall" when you really don't have the experience and hopefully never will. At least I think that is what he is alluding to.

I don't agree with RussD that "kids" don't have the background to appreciate the music. I appreciate rap, jazz, classical and some opera (until they start all that screeching shit), I even like a little country western (just long enough to be glad that I can change the channel ) and I don't really have the background to understand some of it. To paraphrase Don's Seafood House motto (" if it smells like fish, eat it") I say "If it sounds good, listen to it."

Anyway- what're all you kids doing on here anyway - don't you have homework or something

(Listening to NPR "Riverwalk Jazz" program and drinking Ouzo ) -

Well do you have to have the experience to understand it? I mean I don't think you have to have gone through everything to comprehend it. I doubt everyone listeing to the wall's dad died in WW2 or became a facist dictator....

Hah, I think you're referring to a conversation we had...I was telling him about these E3c Shure earphones I got (they're normally around $150+, but I got them for about $90). They're worth every penny. I'm from the school of thought that believes that the headphones are more important than the device with which you're using to listening to the music. One review I read of them said "these headphones aren't expensive...all the other ones you've been using are cheap".

hell yeah. I got my headphones for about 120 dollars, I thought I was crazy and that I'd regret it but once I tried them I realized that I had lost half my life to cheap headphones.

wow this whole "you're not from the 70s" thing sounds too much like my fellow high schoolers saying "be loyal to your generation...listen to todays music" . most of it i can't stand. floyd has so much insane talent to put together the greatest album ever released. oh and heres where you're gonna laugh at me...
after live 8 i really wanted to get deeper into floyd than the small exposure i had to them (dsotm) so .....i downloaded both the wall and animals from itunes! ahh i'm a sinner i dont appreciate the music blah blah
no actually i'm just taking advantage of todays technology and sitting on my lazy rear and getting these songs off my laptop in 15 minutes instead of driving half an hour to go buy the albums from wal-mart (which probably wouldn't have had them anyways)
guess i missed out on all the cover art and stuff but hey thats the downside to having two albums you can't lose delivered right to your computer instantly.

hey im 11 and I know alot about THE WALL and Pink Floyd

Even though I am advising this bloke to get some good headphones with it I must admit that I still use the standard included shite earplugs myself. What do you mean hypocrite! No, they are really going to shit lately and I need some new ones. I have been playing with the idea of getting those extremely expensive ones. But I'm not so keen on coke anymore these days, expensive wine or champagne tastes the same to me as cheaper ones so it's a waste of money and a load of bollocks, and prostitutes were never really my thing anyway. Can these earplugs make the difference however???? I'm still thinking about it, maybe I should just go for it. I agree with the fact that the headphones are more important than the device itself, and I spent my whole life using shite headphones that ended up having the most ridiculous failures one can imagine. Maybe it's time for a change.

I have a personal story that relates to the fact that you don't have to be from the 70's to truely apreciate Pink Floyd's music. One thing about the Floyd is that their records don't sound dated at all, they've got a timeless quality. Also, the topics that Roger Waters deals with in his lyrics affect generation after generation so every new one can enjoy/understand the message we get through the music.

And now to my story:

I was 13 (1988) when they gave me "The Wall" as a birthday present. Apart from the most famous songs, I found myself pretty soon being mesmerised by the whole of disc 2 and, above all, by "The Trial" section. This is quite strange for a kid who was just 13 back then since most of disc 2 is quite slow and sad but I guess I was just a strange kid . The thing is that I'm Spanish and I didn't understand a word in English when I was 13 so, in theory, I couldn't relate to the lyrics... in theory. I didn't know anything about Roger Waters losing his father in the war nor did I know anything about Barrett's madness...

My father suffered from severe schizophrenia and had to receive psychiatric treatment quite often. I was the smaller one of my brothers and sisters and I suffered quite a lot the situation at home since the two of them were already going out with their boy/girlfriends or were already married. I chose (in a conscious-unconscious way) the path of silence. From being a very talkative child I ended up being a very reserved teenager who spent most of his time reading books (Tolstoy, Nabokov, go figure...) and listening to music. This was the beginning of me building a wall. By the time I was 25 (and due to several experiences I'm not going to narrate here) I sunk into a horrible depression (the wall was complete) and I have spent 5 years tearing down the wall and I've been quite successful in doing that (though it hasn't been easy at all).

So there you are. By the time I was growing older and I began learning English and knowing more about the Floyd I began to realise little by little how everything related to my personal story. But I didn't have to look into the lyrics or study Pink Floyd's history to understand the message in the first place. The emotional message was already there in the music and it spoke directly to the way I was feeling in that very moment, I didn't even need to understand the words. And that's the great thing about great music, it is a universal language that speaks directly about feelings even without the need of words. And it doesn't matter how old you are, you can relate to certain feelings at any age depending on your circumstances and previous experiences.

Very interesting story from a unique perspective, Watered.

Maybe it would be an interesting (& no doubt enjoyable) exercise for your students to listen to The Wall and write their interpretations of it.
Might be a fun way to burn a couple hours of classtime.

Thanks Lars, I'm glad it works well. I've got a really good pair of headphones that came with my guitar, so I should be fine there. I've never been a fan of ipod, and the nano is about the shittiest deal I've ever seen.

Aaaargh!! If I played them the movie they would surely get the idea of burning down the school and throwing me in a bonfire (most surely they're already willing to do that without even watching the movie)!! The lyrics to ATBitW 2 now could be "Hey kids, leave the teacher alone"!


No, seriously. We've got a serious problem and it is that the level is incredibly low all around the public system, specially in two subjects which are Maths and English precisely. They haven't got level enough to appreciate the album or the film. Anyway, I could play them "Mother" which is quite easy to understand and surely a lot of them can relate to the "overprotective mother" topic. Sometimes I have played them songs and it has worked out quite fine like "Walking in my Shoes" by Depeche Mode or "A Perfect Day" by Lou Reed.




BTW... HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEARLY A LAUGH!!!!!!!