Is There Anybody Out There? (Apparently So)

by Ed Yashinsky

Not too long ago, I bashed Guns n’ Roses for releasing a very boring live CD nearly five years after they still really mattered to illustrate that they just didn’t matter. Leave it to a bunch of psychedelic stoners, who essentially broke up in 1983 and now pull their act out of the mothballs every five years or so to cash in with lame studio records and faceless stadium tours, to push the envelope a bit further.

I am referring, of course, to the recently-released 20th Anniversary release of Pink Floyd’s Is There Anybody Out There: The Wall Live, which already sits at #19 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart and the #1 in the Billboard Top Selling Internet Album Chart.

Maybe I’m the only annoyed person, but Pink Floyd has crossed over from the ridiculous to the purely absurd. Yes, Pink Floyd wrote great songs, and yes, they did release some of the coolest rock albums of the 1970s (including four — Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals — that are much better than The Wall), but that was the 1970s!

Yes, The Wall — the pure pantheon of teen angst and parental abuse — appeared at a time when all kids between 14 and 26 years old needed an anarchy fix. (Thank God some folks chose The Sex Pistols and The Clash.) The Wall blared out of college dorm windows as much as it drove parents nuts all over suburbia. The amazing (and pathetic) thing is it’s still heard on college campuses (probably now from mp3 files) and remains at a near-mythical status that brought out the lemmings last week to suck up Is There Anybody Out There; even with it’s outrageous price — $49.97 for a limited edition version and a $34.98 for the regular version.

Perhaps The Wall holds a special place in consumers’ hearts because so few people actually had the opportunity to see the tour. The entire Wall tour played three cities — New York, Los Angeles and London — with a whopping 16 total shows. Because of the cost associated with the show (such as building and exploding a massive wall each night), the concert could not make money; in fact, it lost money. However can you really feel that bad for Pink Floyd? They could easily live off the royalties of Dark Side of the Moon (18+ years in the Billboard Top 200), they became rock legends, and they should have been content being fat and happy on their English country estates.

Or perhaps, consumers (feel free to insert Americans in place of consumers) have nothing better to do than pay homage to bands that can help us appear youthful. Just for kicks I took a spin around the Internet trying to grasp rampant Pink Floyd idol worship, and the results were brain numbing. Using dogpile.com, I received 166,662 hits from Alta Vista, 35,293 on Google, 153 registered Yahoo sites, and literally thousands of other hits off smaller sites; along the way I found seven Pink Floyd cover bands from as far away as Australia, and numerous Pink Floyd radio shows. The led me to tackle rock’s pantheon and find out who else is building websites to worship their favorite bands. The Beatles came out on top with 209,162 hits on Alta Vista and 91,800 hits on Google. Led Zeppelin was right up there with 118,432 (Alta Vista) and 80,600 (Google), while The Grateful Dead hit on 86,880 (Alta Vista) and a paltry 60,100 (Google). The only new bands that can compete with these kinds of numbers are Pearl Jam and Phish, and they are already tickling the toes of their ’60s brethren (Phish hit 109,585 and Pearl Jam hit 92,718 on Alta Vista).

Pink Floyd released one final CD after The Wall — The Final Cut (1983) — and then citing those dreaded artistic differences, visionary lead singer Roger Waters toppled the game board and walked away; with the name Pink Floyd vanishing into the English court system to figure out who owned the rights. When a verdict gave the three remaining members — guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright — rights to the name, they released A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987 (followed by the boring live tour document — Delicate Sound of Thunder) and 1994’s The Division Bell (followed by the boring live tour document —Pulse). Stay tuned for more Pink Floyd drivel in the future.

With their core lineup (including the Syd Barrett years), Pink Floyd released thirteen studio albums, yet a search of the band’s biography on allmusic.com reveals a ridiculous 53 available titles. For a visual image please refer to the meat grinder scene from Alan Parker’s film adaptation of The Wall, but replace the hamburger with greenbacks. (By the way, Pink Floyd made a boatload of money off the movie too!)