Review of Roger Waters The Wall: Live In Berlin

Introduction

Once a time there were a couple of friends who decided to start a band. One of them went mad and they invited another friend to join and all was well. Then the members had a little tiff and split up. Some kept the name and wrote a few more songs and one went off in a huff. The band was Pink Floyd and people usually write longer biographies than that :)

Roger Waters was (once Syd had gone home to live with his mum) the creative force behind the lyrics to that most defining of albums, The Wall. Charting a rock star`s descent into madness and beyond, it has become a musical classic that will live with use forever and is on the shelves of any proper music collection.

In 1989 the Berlin wall fell down (it had some help) and to celebrate, or at least, mark the occasion, Roger Waters decided to stage a show of The Wall, at the wall . It`s symbolic.

He recruited some friends (not the other members of Pink Floyd....) and performed the Wall, live in front of a huge crowd or recently reunited Berliners (not the bun)

Video

The only bad thing to say here really is that being made for TV the picture is a standard 4:3 resolution when this is one performance that would work extremely well widescreen.

The picture quality is, however excellent. The image is sharp, but not overly so and there is no pixilation or jaggies to be seen. The dark, contrasty original must have been a nightmare to work with but they have succeeded here. Blacks have good definition and bit-rate is high throughout.

The DVD menu is nicely animated and easy to navigate.

Audio

It`s music so it had better sound good. Thankfully it does.

The Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is excellent, with good stereo separation - but who cares? There`s a much better 5.1 track, remixed specially for the DVD!

The 5.1 mix ix excellent, the sub channel is exceedingly well used and should be turned up nicely to get that "live" feel. Stereo separation is good with nice vocals and tight music. Guitar is handled well although the nimble fingers of Gilmore are missed in places.

The audience is always there but never intrusive and you really feel like you are present rather than in a room listening to a recording.

Saying that there are a few problems - some of the performances are less that perfect, Cindi Lauper grates and Sinead whines a little too much (shame they are one one after the other) but everyone else is excellent. This is by no means a studio perfect production - it sounds properly live, the energy and the performances adequately covering up for the odd mistake :)

Roger Waters` voice is still the best one out there as "Pink" himself, he still has that edge to his singing that the music needs.

Even the DVD menu is in 5.1 and is very nice too.

Shame they didn`t use DTS though.

Features

Not only do we get an excellent performance of The Wall we get some goodies too.

The Documentary is genuinely interesting and new and is the best feature. Picture quality here is still excellent and still in 4:3 (boo).

The unseen footage is fairly odd, the stills gallery is full of stills and the Animations are very odd.

There`s also some nice words in a booklet to read :) and it all goes in an Amray case.

Conclusion

An excellent disc of an excellent, if controversial (at the time) performance.

The highlights include the wall coming down, Roger Waters himself, Bryan Adams, the music (off course) and Tim Curry!

The bad points?

Cindi Lauper and a 4:3 resolution.

As someone who has the wall on vinyl and CD, the movie on VHS and DVD and knows all the lyrics, this is an excellent addition to my collection.

Highly recommended unless you are a "New Pink Floyd" snob.