Saturday 2nd September

Is there life after Pink Floyd?  Well, whatever you think of Roger Waters, and I have mixed feelings myself, he is still out there touring and releasing the occasional album.  I have seen him (or more accurately, a video screen, and a tiny dot on a faraway stage) a couple of times; once when he toured ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and then recently ‘The Wall’.  Both concerts were brilliant, superbly played by capable musicians and sung well by Roger.  The visuals were incredible, especially for ‘The Wall’.  But I ask myself, is a career really valid when you are re-playing whole albums live of possibly the greatest band of the Seventies?  Not that I am complaining – the real band (or what is left of it) doesn’t play anymore and the last record of out-takes was pretty dire.  But strangely, for one who so publicly fell out with them, he does seem to trade on his former glories rather a lot.  There have been numerous live DVDs and albums too – the only one worth having I thought was the live concert in Berlin when that wall came down.

But Roger has released a small handful of records, four in fact, of new material.  While in Pink, he was increasingly angry – about the War, which killed his father, about Thatcher, about Dictators and the pressure of being a ‘pop star’ – and just about anything else you could think of.  And his solo records are much the same.  I enjoyed ‘The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking’ and ‘Radio Chaos’ – some great tunes and they were almost like new Floyd records.  But I was not much amused by ‘Amused to Death’, a bit too bleak for me.  His latest ‘Is This The Life We Really Want’ is blatantly political.  Much to agree with the lyrics, but I am not so impressed by the record.  Too samey, a bit too shouty, as if Roger is singing through a megaphone.  Preaching to the Converted, springs to mind.  But at least he is still going, while his former band-mates rest on their very well padded laurels and re-issue countless box-sets of out-takes and demos of their brilliant run of Seventies albums.  I suppose it is all valid in its way…but I wonder what Syd would have thought of it all.