Tommy vs. The Wall (worst rock opera movie)

[Brue]

Styx's Kilroy Was Here

Yeah, that's bad. I saw it live. It's bad. But I still say Tommy is worse as a story / opera though the Tommy Music is better.

[jwyblejr]

Now you know why most people watch this stuff when they're stoned.

[megoscott]

Hmm I never though of them as a trilogy - I see your point though. I thought I was the only person on earth who bought Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. I like it. To hear it and the Wall I think they are quite different but it and Final cut have similarities and Final Cut and Wall have similarities.

You know that scene in the Wall right before the trial when he's in the john with his hand in the toilet mumbling from his little book? He's reading lyrics from Pros & Cons. And Tigers Broke Free was added to recent releases of the Final Cut. It was all written at the same time and helped break up Pink Floyd because no one was as interested in Roger Water's inner life as Roger was. Final Cut reinforces his point in the Wall that war is bad. PCoH reinforces his point that women are insane, castrating shrews.

I think I know them all by heart. Pros is way underrated IMO.

Anyway--bravo for the movie! Ya don't have to be high to love it!

[megoat]

Final Cut reinforces his point in the Wall that war is bad.

Wow. Before the Wall, I thought war was GOOD. Thank you Roger Waters!

[Mikey]

call me crazy, but I love The Final Cut 100 times better then the Wall

I never cared for Pro's and Con's though .......

Radio KAOS was always my fav Waters album followed by Amused To Death

[Wee67]

Thank you, Scott. Both movies also deal with the theme of cult-ishly following a personality.

That said, I think Tommy was very poorly executed (which hurts as I am a HUGE Who fan). The Wall on thew other hand was, while trippy and potentially confusing, was very well done.

I'd also like to say I thought the movie Quadrophenia was awesome. It did not rely on the abstract as muc as the others, but it was a pretty good translation from the album.

[Bo8a_Fett]

I think Jesus Christ...Superstar is far worse

[david_b]

"The Wall" was cool ~ The coolest was "Head" by the Monkees.. One critic described it as "'A Hard Days Night' on acid"... Yeah, it fits..

david_b

[The Phantom]

They both sucked.

[Vortigern99]

I love 'em both unabashedly! Sure, Tommy is laughable and largely inscrutable, and The Wall is a downer of a bummer of two depressants of a quaalude, BUT the visuals in both are very compelling, the ideas are weird and titillating in a 70s science-fiction-y kind of way, and the music is imminently hummable! Come on, sing along!:

I'M FREE
I - I'M FREE-EE!
AND I'M WAITING ... FOR YOU TO FOLLOW ME!

[Bizarro Amy]

I'm not a huge fan of Pink Floyd, but there are some very interesting visuals in the Wall. I like the music in Tommy better by far.

[Brue]

I think Jesus Christ...Superstar is far worse

I loved this! I love the movie version and have seen it live 3 times (once with the hair band guy whose name I can't remember -he wasn't very good)
I wind up humming tunes from it often. There was a cool new version done on the BBC that happened to be on when I was home sick from teaching a few years ago - I wish I had taped it.

\/ Oh yeah Vort, I forgot about that. I have the Album as wel and I agree the music on it is better than the movie version.

[Vortigern99]

^ ^ ^ JCS is awesome. The original record with Ian Gillan of Deep Purple is par none one of the great rock albums of all time. The movie version does not rock quite as hard, and is incredibly low-budget (which tends to undermine the historical intentions of the musical's authors), but it's still imminently watchable and hummable. The BBC version from 2000 also does not rock, but the music is pretty and the vocal performances are astonishing. I saw a live performance here in Austin last year -- just a four-piece rock band with a line of vocalists singing the lyrics -- which rocked my Jesus-loving socks off. Anyone who think they don't like JCS simply has not heard the original 1968 record, recorded as a pure rock album BEFORE it became stage production or a movie.