The Wall
I didn't realise! I honestly didn't realise just how much this was going to mean to me. If I hadn't managed to secure a seriously great seat, however many months ago it was, I mightn't even have bothered to go at all. I didn't realise, it just never occurred to me that, basically, I have been waiting for this, my entire life!
1972: I get birthed.
1979: I first hear 'Another Brick in the Wall, part two'; and it is one of the very first pop songs that I can actually remember hearing at the time. Three or four others also stuck in my mind, that same year, but that's as far as I can go back: I don't have any memories at all of 1978's contribution to music. (Memories from the time, I mean -- of course, I know a lot of it now). But I was six, and still undecided about the value of education: seeing the video on Top of the Pops made a big impression on me.
And then growing up in Cambridge. Well, we really don't have much to offer, musically. The Soft Boys, sure, and Tom Robinson; and I guess Olivia Newton John spent the first few years of her childhood there, before the family relocated. But it's not much, is it? And yet the one truly unimpeachable thing that we do have to boast is Pink Floyd. Why (as I'm sure I've observed before), David Gilmour went to the same school as me! And Syd and Roger were only just a few hundred yards up the road. So they were always a presence in my local mind.
1985 (or thereabouts): I pick up a second-hand cassette of The Wall at a school fete, for 50p (or thereabouts). It duly blows my mind. A year or two later, I also get to see the movie.
1991 (was it?): I watch Roger Waters doing The Wall in Berlin... on the telly.
1995: now I'm relocating to New Jersey, and I want to lighten my load; and my cassette of The Wall goes the way of all flesh. Likewise, I think, the 7" of 'Another Brick in the Wall' that I'd picked up somewhere along the way. And it was only today that I realised that I actually hadn't heard this stuff for... however many years that is. Sixteen? Or quite possibly more than that -- I don't imagine that I'd been studiously listening to it up to the last moment, before I gave up the cassette. And yet I still knew near enough every single line of every single song, for...
2011: I just went and saw Roger Waters doing The Wall at the O2!
Now, although I might have occasionally been moved to tears by music before, in the privacy of my own home; and although I might have come quite close, even in a public, live context, a bit misty-eyed at least -- well, I think this must have been the first time that I've actually had tears streaming uncontrollably down my face at a concert. It was that special to me. And the greatest show on earth! If not the completion of my entire life (hopefully not!), then definitely the completion of a certain important -- and quite elongated -- aspect of my life.
They built a fucking fifty-foot wall on stage! And then they tore it down! Ah, it was truly sublime. I just feel sad, now, that I'm never going to get that experience again. Even if I was to go back, it just wouldn't be the same, the second time around. Fuck time!
1972: I get birthed.
1979: I first hear 'Another Brick in the Wall, part two'; and it is one of the very first pop songs that I can actually remember hearing at the time. Three or four others also stuck in my mind, that same year, but that's as far as I can go back: I don't have any memories at all of 1978's contribution to music. (Memories from the time, I mean -- of course, I know a lot of it now). But I was six, and still undecided about the value of education: seeing the video on Top of the Pops made a big impression on me.
And then growing up in Cambridge. Well, we really don't have much to offer, musically. The Soft Boys, sure, and Tom Robinson; and I guess Olivia Newton John spent the first few years of her childhood there, before the family relocated. But it's not much, is it? And yet the one truly unimpeachable thing that we do have to boast is Pink Floyd. Why (as I'm sure I've observed before), David Gilmour went to the same school as me! And Syd and Roger were only just a few hundred yards up the road. So they were always a presence in my local mind.
1985 (or thereabouts): I pick up a second-hand cassette of The Wall at a school fete, for 50p (or thereabouts). It duly blows my mind. A year or two later, I also get to see the movie.
1991 (was it?): I watch Roger Waters doing The Wall in Berlin... on the telly.
1995: now I'm relocating to New Jersey, and I want to lighten my load; and my cassette of The Wall goes the way of all flesh. Likewise, I think, the 7" of 'Another Brick in the Wall' that I'd picked up somewhere along the way. And it was only today that I realised that I actually hadn't heard this stuff for... however many years that is. Sixteen? Or quite possibly more than that -- I don't imagine that I'd been studiously listening to it up to the last moment, before I gave up the cassette. And yet I still knew near enough every single line of every single song, for...
2011: I just went and saw Roger Waters doing The Wall at the O2!
Now, although I might have occasionally been moved to tears by music before, in the privacy of my own home; and although I might have come quite close, even in a public, live context, a bit misty-eyed at least -- well, I think this must have been the first time that I've actually had tears streaming uncontrollably down my face at a concert. It was that special to me. And the greatest show on earth! If not the completion of my entire life (hopefully not!), then definitely the completion of a certain important -- and quite elongated -- aspect of my life.
They built a fucking fifty-foot wall on stage! And then they tore it down! Ah, it was truly sublime. I just feel sad, now, that I'm never going to get that experience again. Even if I was to go back, it just wouldn't be the same, the second time around. Fuck time!