Length 105:21 Artist Pink Floyd Producer James Guthrie Genre Progressive rock | Language English Release date 23 March 2000 Label Columbia Records | |
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Released 23 March 2000 (2000-03-23) Recorded 7–9 August 1980
13–17 June 1981 Venue Earls Court, London, England Is There Anybody Out There?
(2000) Echoes The Best of Pink Floyd
(2001) Similar Pink Floyd albums, Progressive rock albums | ||
Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81 is a live album released by Pink Floyd in 2000. It is a live rendition of The Wall, produced and engineered by James Guthrie, with tracks selected from the August 1980 and June 1981 performances at Earls Court in London. The album was first released in The Netherlands by EMI Records on 23 March 2000, who released a limited edition in the United Kingdom on 27 March. The general release followed on 18 April 2000 with US and Canadian distribution by Columbia Records.
Contents
The shows involved the construction of a wall on stage throughout the first half of the show. Once complete, members of the band performed in small openings in, atop, in front of, or even behind the wall. The album artwork featured the life-masks of the four band members in front of a black wall; the masks were worn by the "surrogate band" during the song "In The Flesh". "Goodbye Blue Sky" and parts of "Run Like Hell" were taken from the 17 June 1981 show, the very last performance by the four-man Pink Floyd until the 2005 Live 8 concert.
The album was re-released in February 2012 in remastered form as part of the "Immersion" boxset edition of The Wall.
Background
Is There Anybody Out There? contains live versions of all the original songs along with two additional songs: "What Shall We Do Now?" and "The Last Few Bricks". "What Shall We Do Now?" was planned for the original album but removed just before release. (It remained on the lyric sheet for the original LP, but excised from future CD re-releases.) "The Last Few Bricks" was an instrumental bridge between "Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)" and "Goodbye Cruel World", and contained themes from "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", "Don't Leave Me Now", "Young Lust", "Empty Spaces" and "What Shall We Do Now?", all transposed to D minor. It was played to allow the bricklayers to almost completely seal off the stage before Roger Waters appeared in the last brick-wide space in the wall to sing "Goodbye Cruel World", ending the first set of the show. This music never had an official title before the release of the live album. Fans named the track "Almost Gone" on some bootleg albums of the shows, but the official name was suggested by producer James Guthrie during the mixing of the live album. The album also contained two spoken tracks titled "MC: Atmos" ("Master of Ceremonies" for the first North American release), which served as introductions to the songs "In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh", respectively. These were performed by Gary Yudman, MC for the Earls Court and Nassau Coliseum shows. The second version was a section of a recording of his speech from the first version, played at slower speed to parody the frustration ("The band is about ready to begin, I think ... No, not quite yet") of waiting for the band to start.
The tracks differed slightly from the studio album, primarily in terms of longer intros and extended solos. Due to the constraints of vinyl records, the band had been forced to severely edit many songs for the album, removing whole sections, many of which were restored in concert. For example, "The Show Must Go On" had an extra verse that was deleted from the original studio recording (but included in the lyric sheet, even on the latest CD releases.) "Outside the Wall" was longer and re-arranged with mandolin, accordion, clarinet, acoustic guitars, tambourines and more natural-sounding vocal harmonies from the quartet of Joe Chemay, Jim Farber, Jim Haas, and Jon Joyce. (This would be the third official version of "Outside the Wall" available to the listener, following the extended orchestral version from the 1982 film.)
The album was released to commemorate The Wall album and concerts' 20th anniversary. In a 2000 US radio interview to promote the album, Roger stated that he was against the release of the album and refused to have it released (he was outvoted on the matter 4 to 1 by his former bandmates David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright and former manager Steve O'Rourke) and also objected to the use of Storm Thorgerson for the album's artwork instead of Gerald Scarfe calling it an attempt to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Then Roger's son Harry persuaded Roger into releasing the live concerts as Harry told his dad that fans love live music and Roger relented and was pleased with how well it came out.
During the tour, Richard Wright performed as a salaried musician rather than a full member, having been fired by Waters during the sessions for the original album. But he was allowed to play the concerts as a salaried musician.
All four Pink Floyd members were duplicated by the "surrogate band". Andy Bown, the bass player, would play the bass parts with the band more than Waters, due to the fact that Waters was more as a character playing numbers in front and back of the wall.
Is There Anybody Out There? was re-issued in the US and Canada in July 2005. James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Kim Richards supplied the label with new masters, and thus the mastering credit was changed from "Doug Sax and Gavin Lurssen" to Guthrie, Plante and Richards. The booklet features some songwriting updates and mentions that the MC: Atmos on disc one used a sample of "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn.
The album reached #19 on The Billboard 200 and #1 on Billboard's Top Internet Albums charts. The disc was certified Platinum (signifying sales of half a million copies, as it is a double CD) in the US in May 2000. This was the first of two Pink Floyd albums (other being A Foot in the Door – The Best of Pink Floyd) not released on vinyl.
Track listing
All lyrics written by Roger Waters; all music composed by Roger Waters except where noted.
Personnel
Songs
1Master of Ceremonies1:16
2In the Flesh?3:02
3The Thin Ice2:52