23. Pink Floyd - The Wall

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The original album cover art design of The Wall is a white brick wall with no text. Roger Waters had fallen out with Hipgnosis designer Storm Thorgerson.
Later CD covers would bear the band's name and album title in either black or red text.

For this work, I have added two images from the movie The Wall and a fan-made calligraphy. The additional text is mine.


The Wall is a story of alienation, oppression, isolation, despair and bombing out. A wall is a symbol of separation, restriction and exclusion. It sends a message that means containment, 
debasement, lack of freedom and the forced imposition of someone else's will on another. Yet the human spirit is surprisingly insurmountable and history is replete with the fall
of famous walls. The walled city of Babylon was considered impregnable during its time until Cyrus the Great diverted the Euphrates River to lower its water level and thus 
enabled his army to enter the city through the river bed. The Storming of the Bastille was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. The Wall concert was one of the
events that marked celebrations over the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 

Dynasties have built walls to contain themselves, exclude others or otherwise prove that what are within those walls are theirs. The erection of walls have
always been accompanied by blatant displays of power and have often been served in conflict and ushered in dominance and servitude. But for every
whack of the whip of authority is an echo of disillusionment, dismemberment and disintegration. The only man-made structure that is visible
from the dark side of the moon may yet be the next to fall.

"We don't need no thought control."

No. 16, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time; No. 30, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000;
No. 47, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 87, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


Design by Gerald Scarfe. Album produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie and Roger Waters. Harvest/EMI 1979.


Pink Floyd's the Wall is one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music. Since the studio album's release in 1979, the tour of 1980-81, and the subsequent
movie of 1982, the Wall has become synonymous with, if not the very definition of, the term "concept album." Aurally explosive on record, astoundingly complex on stage, and visually
explosive on the screen, the Wall traces the life of the fictional protagonist, Pink Floyd, from his boyhood days in post-World-War-II England to his self-imposed isolation as a 
world-renowned rock star, leading to a climax that is as cathartic as it is destructive. Full article


(A) In the Flesh? - The Thin Ice - Another Brick in the Wall (Part I) - The Happiest Days of Our Lives - Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) - Mother

(B) Goodbye Blue Sky - Empty Spaces - Young Lust - One of My Turns - Don't Leave Me Now - Another Brick in the Wall (Part III) - Goodbye Cruel World

(C) Hey You - Is There Anybody Out There? - Nobody Home - Vera - Bring the Boys Back Home - Comfortably Numb

(D) The Show Must Go On - In the Flesh - Run Like Hell - Waiting for the Worms - Stop - The Trial - Outside the Wall

"Another Brick in the Wall" from mongchilde on YouTube.
         

              

    

www.pinkfloyd.com

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1. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon

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"The lunatic is on the grass. The lunatic is on the grass. Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs. Got to keep the loonies on the path."

"The lunatic is in the hall. The lunatics are in my hall. The paper holds their folded faces to the floor. And everyday the paper boy brings more." Brain Damage

"All you create, all you destroy, all that you do, all that you say. All that you eat, and everyone you meet, all that you slight, and everyone you fight.
All that is now, all that is gone, all that's to come, and everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon." Eclipse


Here's The Dark Side of the Moon original album cover art design.

No. 2, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time; No. 7, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time;  No. 9, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; 
No. 37, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever; No. 43 Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

No. 1, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time; No. 35 Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.


Original album cover art by Hipgnosis (Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell), illustration by George Hardie. Album produced by Pink Floyd. Harvest 1973.

The Dark Side of the Moon cover art created intrigue when the album landed in record stores in March 1973. At the time, Pink Floyd was on the cusp of becoming a mainstream success
with a growing fan base. The cover, depicting white light passing through a prism to form the bright colours of the spectrum against a stunning black field, invited listeners
to explore the music inside — and still does today. The mystery began after you heard the mind-blowing music on the album coupled with bassist Roger Waters’s
deeply personal lyrics exploring themes of alienation, loss, and materialism.

The Dark Side of the Moon is invariably hailed as one of the greatest and most influential albums ever — certainly a defining moment
of the progressive rock genre. And the mystery of the cover art remains today. Like all good art, the cover
(not to mention the music) remains open to interpretation — a dark, impenetrable symbol
 of the enduring power of music. Full article


(A) Speak to Me - Breathe - On the Run - Time - The Great Gig in the Sky

(B) Money - Us and Them - Any Colour You Like - Brain Damage/Eclipse



"Brain Damage/Eclipse" live from EzzO ShoW on YouTube.

www.pinkfloyd.com

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