From the get go, I cried. As the last track faded out and the chirps faded up, I dissolved into a soft weeping ball, sitting in my trailer and sobbing silently. If you are a Roger Waters enthusiast (I hate the word "fan"; it conjures up images of buck-toothed teenage kids with thick glasses, acne and no lives of their own) and you don't cry too, you are probably related to the baby gorilla on the cover.
Why? Why these tears? Up till this point in time, I was more deeply affected by "The Wall" than any other Roger Waters album before or since(no, it wasn't a Pink Floyd album). Hell, in 1982, when the movie version was released, I lived "The Wall", did shaved eyebrows, the drug abuse, the tortured artist bit, the whole thing, for about six months, only bringing it to a halt after I lost my job, my home, and damn near my sanity. I identified with that album; but it didn't cause me to weep.
So, why the tears? I usually only cry at real life. When I watch CNN or Oprah, I cry (though for different reasons, respectively). Because unlike this album, "The Wall" was not real. It was based heavily on Roger's life experience, but in the strict sense, it was not his actual life(Roger did not lose his mind in 1979). It wasn't his life, nor was it mine, though I desperately wanted it to be (I used to be a "fan"; see above). Neither was "Pros and Cons of hitchhiking" reality, being a fictional account of a man waking from an early morning nightmare from his past, and his description of it to his wife in bed beside him (in case you were wondering all these years what those time checks next to the song titles were). What to speak of "Radio K.A.O.S.", whose plot line I still consider to be a little thin, even though Mr. Waters, with unprecedented kindness, outlined the story in the liner notes.
So why tears for this album? Because this album is real. The events in this album happened, and are still, even as I write, happening. The events depicted in this album were broadcast around the world to an audience of (largely disinterested) billions; the massacre in Tienanmen Square (which the Chinese government now blatantly insists never happened), the air strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi, the war fir gasoline in the Persian Gulf, they all happened. They not only happened, they were televised, in prime time, with fucking commercial breaks. And the reaction of the world to these events were exactly as Roger depicts them throughout the course of "Amused To Death"; people watched the Chinese carnage for a few minutes, perhaps a half-hour, then flicked over to MTV or the Home Shopping Network. To the English farmer's wife, the bombing of Libya meant nothing more than that the jets based at the nearby American airbase were going to be in late that night. I can almost imagine her thinking quite stridently, "Awful bloody nuisance, this. I've half a mind to write to the PM about it." I witnessed the reaction to the Gulf War in the darkest reaches of Great White Brooklyn; drunken, slick-haired, pea-brained Guidos hollering and cheering, the ground offensive another of many excuses to get shit-faced; "Yeah, Alriiiight, WE FUCKED THEM UP, CHIEF! WE KICKED THEIR FUCKING TOWEL-HEADED ASSES, MOTHERFUCKER!!!" -all between rounds for the house, games of darts, and scoping out the tail for later that night.
Everything in this album is true. It is happening now. The entire western world is being sold a soggy blood-soaked bill of goods; that the free market will solve all of our problems if we'll just shut up, suspend our personal freedom and our civil rights, accept a lower standard of living than the previous generation, and stop whining and bitching about God, compassion, hope, and all those worthless hungry people in the Third World who (let's just face the fact) will probably die anyway. It's a miracle, a miracle that we have somehow, within the last few years, gotten half a billion liberated communists to swallow this mindless paradigm also.
The album, from start to finish (in my opinion; you think whatever you damn well please) is about nothing less than the end of our civilization, everything, everywhere, as we know it today, through entropy and sheer boredom. We won the Cold War; the nuclear threat (at least for now) is over. and now that the world is safe from blowing itself to pieces, after we successfully danced on the razor's edge of annihilation for the better part of half a century, we will meet our final end not in a fusillade of ICBM's but rather by having our minds sucked clean out of our skulls by the philosophy of better living through consumerism, faster cars, bigger washing machines and a clean, "healthy Close-Up mouth", all spoon fed to us like strained bananas through television (all with the divine approval of a loving and benevolent God who, bless our souls turns out to be, after millennia of speculation, Republican).
So I wept. I cried. Only once in a decade or so does an album hit me right between the friggin' eyes like this one did. I can't stand to put it on. Then, once I have it on , I'm powerless to turn it off. I bought it today, and I have already played it five times. I've also begun zeroing in on and re-playing sections of it (like the warplanes bombing a Libyan housewife into kingdom come). Unlike "The Wall", I have no need to adopt this album as a way of life; I already live it. And so do you. And you. And you, yes, that's right, you. The schmuck leaning against the jukebox, giving off your best look of Calvin Klein-ad indifference, with your designer clothes and your cool skateboard, with nothing but peer pressure between your ears.
This is not being published by Rolling Stone, so there is not going to be any sycophantic song-by-song play-by-play. This is a Roger Waters album, and the concept is all in all. Oh, all right, shut up --Jeff Beck sucked my breath from my lungs, and the production of Roger, and Patrick Leonard is sterling. Be prepared for a surprise from the "Q" system employed in the recording; your phone is not ringing, and there is no dog barking in your yard (unless, of course, you have a dog). There are no jets coming in for strafing runs on your property (-yet) and it's not really raining (unless you're in England, in which case never mind, that's a good chap; now go have a nice cup of tea and just forget I mentioned it at all).
I cannot resist taking a swipe at my favorite non-artist swine, the Gin Twins; David Gilmour and Nick ("wake-me-when-the-royalty-checks-come-dear") Mason could never in their wildest, most desperate dreams have come up with an album like this, not with a full wet bar and the best team of songwriters their soggy fat asses could guy. It just don't mean a thing if it ain't got that sting. Sorry David; only talented tuna get to be starkissed. There should be no doubts in your tiny little minds by now who really is Pink.
As for the rest of you, go out and buy this album. I mean NOW. If you don't have the cash...., sell your mom's jewelry (it's been laying in her drawer for years anyway; she'll never notice). If she has no jewelry, then do anything, whatever, I don't care. Pimp your cat!
And thank you, Roger. Thank you very very much.