ROGER WATERS : THE WALL - LIVE IN BERLIN

 

Disc One (52:05)

  1. In the Flesh (The Scorpions)
  2. The Thin Ice (Ute Lemper & Roger Waters & the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
  3. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)
  4. The Happiest Days of Our Lives
  5. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) (Cyndi Lauper)
  6. Mother (Sinéad O'Connor & The Band)
  7. Goodbye Blue Sky (Joni Mitchell & the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
  8. Empty Spaces / What Shall We Do Now? (Bryan Adams, Roger Waters & the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
  9. Young Lust (Bryan Adams)
  10. One of My Turns
  11. Don't Leave Me Now
  12. another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)
  13. Goodbye Cruel World

Disc Two (52:33)

  1. hey You (Paul Carrack)
  2. Is There Anybody Out There?
  3. Nobody Home
  4. Vera
  5. Bring the Boys Back Home (The Rundfunk, Band of the Combined Soviet Forces in Germany & Red Army Chorus)
  6. Comfortably Numb (Van Morrison, Roger Waters & The Band & the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
  7. In the Flesh
  8. Run Like Hell
  9. Waiting for the Worms
  10. Stop
  11. The Trial (The Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir featuring Tim Curry as the Prosecutor, Thomas Dolby as the School Master, Ute Lemper as the Wife, Marianne Faithfull as the Mother, Albert Finney as the Judge)
  12. The Tide is Turning (After Live Aid) / Outside The Wall (Roger Waters, Joni Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams, Van Morrison and Paul Carrack & the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)

Label : Mercury

Release Year : 2003

Recording Date : July 21, 1990
Venue : Potzdammer Platz / Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, Germany

Review (AllMusic) : Nobody really expected the Berlin Wall to come down in 1989, and so suddenly. Roger Waters especially, because he had once made a promise never to perform The Wall again after the 1980 tour until the bricks fell in Berlin. But they did, and Waters had no intention to renege on his promise. The Wall became a star-studded megaconcert to benefit the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief, with larger bricks, bigger inflatable puppets, and a larger audience than any of the original Pink Floyd shows. There was always a contradiction in performing such a personal work in a stadium setting, but here it becomes especially acute when opening up the vocal tasks to a variety of artists. Bryan Adams is actually an astute choice for the cock rock swagger of "Young Lust," but Cyndi Lauper ruins the spare funk of "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" with over-enthusiastic yelping. And you'll definitely want to skip Jerry Hall's reading of the background dialog before "One of My Turns" ("Oh my gawd, what a fabulous room! Are all these your guitars?" - a piece known word for word by every Floyd fan out there), as she seems unaware that a microphone can be used for amplification. By running through the album track by track, a lot of the effect of the live versions wears thin, as it invites constant comparison to the studio album. But the trial scene is handled well, with Albert Finney, Tim Curry, Marianne Faithfull, Thomas Dolby, and Ute Lemper taking on the characters in Waters' psychological drama. It's fun, a nice document, but only makes you want to return to the original album.