The 500 - #87 - The Wall - Pink Floyd

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #: 87

Album Title: The Wall

Artist: Pink Floyd

Genre:  Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Rock

Recorded: Six Studios - London, Nice, New York, Los Angeles, Correns, Hollywood

Released: November, 1979

My age at release: 14

How familiar was I with it before this week: Very Well

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #129 - dropping 42 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Comfortably Numb

It was a cold Thursday evening in late November, 1979. I was a student at Kingsville District High School in Southern Ontario and a big part of my teen-age life revolved around music. I played saxophone in the school band, and our conductor was Mr. Buchanan, the school's music teacher. Conveniently, he also happened to live just four houses down from my family on a country lane lined with orchard and pepper fields along the northern shore of Lake Erie.

My first high school - recently demolished.

Mr. Buchanan had agreed to give me rides to band practice on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Looking back, that arrangement feels almost impossible to imagine today. A teacher travelling with a student alone in his car would likely trigger a lengthy chain of policies, permissions, and concerns. In 1979, however, nobody thought twice about it. We lived less than 200 metres apart and were heading to the same place. It was a practical arrangement, it was convenient, and it was simply how things worked. The 1970s feel like the Wild West compared to the carefully supervised world we live in now.

My family home and Mr. Buchanan's. Gone are the orchards.

Most Thursdays, I was grateful for the ride. On this particular evening, though, I found myself hoping Mr. Buchanan would be late…maybe, if I was lucky, he would be sick and cancel band practice altogether.

For several days, the radio station WRIF 101 out of Detroit had been building anticipation for the release of a massive new album. In those pre-internet days, radio stations were masters of suspense. There were no music websites, no social media leaks, no YouTube preview videos, and certainly no AI assistants ready to tell you everything you wanted to know. If a major album was about to drop, radio stations became the gatekeepers of information, and they knew exactly how to keep listeners hooked.

Every few hours, WRIF would drop another clue…A huge band…their first album in years…a double album…containing more than 80 minutes of new music…an epic work unlike anything you have heard!

WRIF DJ Arthur Penhallow (1970s and 80s)

The station promised that on Thursday night they would play the entire first side of the album. For a music-obsessed teenager, this was a Super Bowl-level event. I was glued to the radio, relishing every detail the DJ delivered leading up to the big reveal.

Truth be told, the identity of the mystery band wasn't really a secret. Around Kingsville District High School’s cigarette senate, older, cooler rockers who convened in the smoking pit and on the school bus had already confidently predicted what was coming: A new record from Pink Floyd. The band’s new single, Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), was already in heavy rotation on the rock stations. The rebellious chorus of "We don't need no education" was blasting from car stereos, portable radios and the voices of students all over Essex County. The song had worked its way so deeply into teen-age culture that I had scribbled those words across the front of my “Trapper Keeper” binder while a math teacher was trying, unsuccessfully, to provide exactly the education the song was protesting. (After more than 30 years of trying to engage students in lessons, I owe Mr. Lee an apology…it really was my fault I struggled in his math class).

Trapper Keeper Binder - a high school staple in the late 70s/early 80s

As 6.30 approached, I stood by the front window, stealing glances out to the road while the radio continued humming in the background. The DJ's voice rose with excitement as airtime for Side One drew closer. The anticipation was riveting and every commercial felt like a red light on an abandoned road.

I knew this would be the talk of the school on Friday morning and that every teenager from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Leamington, Ontario, was tuned in…Then I saw headlights. Reliable Mr. Buchanan was stupidly on time.

I grabbed my saxophone case, pulled on my coat, and headed out into the cold November night. The DJ’s voice disappeared as I slammed the front door and aimed for the passenger seat. On most nights, I was delighted to go and make music. That night, however, it felt like I was driving away from history. It was the first night the public would hear Pink Floyd's eleventh studio record, The Wall.

Pink Floyd (Wall Era) (l-r) Richard Wright, David Gilmore, Nick 
Mason and Roger Waters.

I would hear The Wall in its entirety within a few days. A couple of my friends (or their older brothers) bought copies as soon as the record hit the stores, and I spent more than one weekend afternoon sitting cross-legged on someone’s bedroom floor as the album slowly turned on a stereo system that also occupied a place near the top of my teen-age wish list.

Gatefold interior of The Wall album.

We would study Gerald Scarfe's unsettling artwork on the inner gatefold, pore over the lyric sheets tucked inside the sleeves, and try to make sense of a story that felt far more complicated and mysterious than the disco hits and straightforward rock and roll bangers that dominated the charts that autumn. The Wall wasn't the sort of album you simply played. It was a conceptual journey ripe for exploring.

The record eventually found its way into my own collection, although not until a year later when the family moved to London, Ontario, and I finally had my first turntable…an inexpensive Candle 590X which I purchased from the now-defunct Consumers Distributing Catalogue store in the autumn of 1980.

Candle 590X Turntable - inexpensive and sounded it.

Forty dollars of babysitting money vanished in a single transaction, but for the first time I had a turntable of my own. To a teenager who measured wealth in albums rather than dollars, it felt like a sound financial decision. In fact, I was chuffed at how far I had advanced in my musical acquisitions.

Consumers Distributing Catalogue Store - A Canadian fixture 
frm 1957 - 1996

Pink Floyd’s The Wall appeared under the Christmas tree that year (1980) courtesy of my mom. At the time, she was working part-time at an Eaton’s department store demonstrating the latest miracle of modern technology: microwave ovens.

Hotpoint Microwaves - along with Toshiba, 
these were the models my mother was promoting.

In the weeks leading up to Santa’s arrival, she asked "the young men" in the record department to help with my gift selection. Rather than trying to guess what a teen-age music fanatic might want, she trusted the experts behind the counter. (Pro move mom)

To their credit, they assembled a remarkably strong starter kit for a 15-year-old with expanding musical tastes:

• Eagles Live

• Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police

• Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy by The Who

• The Wall by Pink Floyd

Looking back, I have to admire their work. They spanned American country rock, new wave, British rock royalty, and one of the most ambitious concept albums ever recorded. Forty-five years later, I'd still call that a pretty good haul for one Christmas morning. Every artist “mom selected” became featured multiple times on 2012’s The 500 list. (Thank you, unknown Eaton’s Department Store Dudes!!)

One of the Eaton;s stores in London featured in a 1960s postcard. 

By 1983, I had begun treating "We don't need no education" less as a song lyric and more as a rough draft for my academic future. A year earlier, the movie version of The Wall was released in theatres and it had an even greater impact on my education than the album itself. I was in Grade 13, (later called O.A.C. for Ontario Academic Credits) -- a uniquely Ontario fifth year of high school that existed until 2003. For many students, Grade 13 provided an extra year to prepare for university. For me, it briefly became an opportunity to perfect the art of napping, movie watching and Pop Tart & Tea consumption.

Vintage 1980s Pop Tart package.

A high school friend once described his Grade 11 as "the best two years of my life." At the time I laughed at the joke. Then I proceeded to spend roughly two and a half years in Grade 13, accumulating enough credits to graduate and, much to my parents’ relief, qualify for university.
My extended learning curve was my own fault. However, I did have friends who were willing accomplices…in particular, my chum Steve Mackison.

Steve was my roommate, a decade later, in 1993, pictured here
with my future wife, Angela.

Steve was the first person I knew who owned a VCR. That may not sound especially impressive today, but in the early 1980s owning a video cassette player instantly transformed your home into a destination. Through an uncle whose sources remained somewhat mysterious, Steve also had access to an impressive and ever-changing collection of movies. Titles like Body Heat, Death Wish II, and Scarface circulated through his living room long before many of us were old enough to watch them legitimately.

Movie poster for Body Heat.

More importantly for this story, he also acquired a copy of Pink Floyd: The Wall movie Released on video that year and starring Bob Geldof as the troubled rock star Pink, the film transformed Roger Waters' sprawling concept album into a surreal visual experience filled with Gerald Scarfe's nightmarish animation, powerful symbolism, and imagery that could be interpreted, debated, and over-analyzed for hours…and we sure did, as Steve's house soon became the campus for an unofficial educational institution we dubbed Mackison 101.

Bob Geldof as Pink in the film version of The Wall.

The schedule was flexible, but I do remember the autumn of 1984 when I attended first-period English because the teacher, Ms. Howse, was an extraordinary educator who redirected my rebellious and often unfocused teen-age self with patience, enthusiasm and a genuine passion for literature. However, after English, I would wander over to Steve's place during a second period spare. His parents, the kind and loving Babs and Wally, left for work early and returned late. The house was quiet, unsupervised, and home to one of the most comfortable pieces of furniture in my universe: a gigantic white sectional couch that could induce unconsciousness within minutes.

White, sectional sofa, similar in style to the Mackison's.

Many mornings I would arrive intending to stay for an hour. Instead, I would wake up sometime near lunch, enjoy tea, eat a couple of Pop-Tarts, and settle in for whatever movie Steve was screening that day. Class schedules gradually lost their grip under such conditions.

The Wall became a particular favourite and to say I watched the film, at least in part, a hundred times is probably an understatement. I knew it the way I knew Monty Python sketches as a pre-teen and the Ontario Grade 7 math curriculum now.

The Wall, movie poster.

Looking back, repeated viewings probably taught me quite a bit. I absorbed lessons about symbolism, metaphor, visual storytelling, alienation, grief, and the dangers of building psychological walls between ourselves and other people. I even learned about the perils of fascism and the defense of the Anzio Beachhead, which was part of the Allied Forces Italian Campaign in World War II. It was during this battle that principal songwriter for The Wall, Roger Waters, had lost his father…an event he wrote for the only song in the movie that is not on the original album, When The Tigers Broke Free.

Single for When The Tigers Broke Free - Pink Floyd.

However, what I did not absorb, unfortunately, were the lessons being taught in the classes I was missing. University entrance applications, regrettably, weren’t asking prospective students to interpret the symbolism of "marching hammers" or the satirical sentiment intended in showing robotic British school children falling like lemmings into meat grinders in the film. That’s too bad…I would have earned a scholarship.

Screen capture from an animated sequence in The Wall film.

Eventually, I made one of the smarter decisions of my teen years and transferred to another London high school, H.B Beal. The move wasn't motivated by academics alone, but it put some distance between me and the daily temptations of friends, including sessions of Mackison 101. By the time I began making friends at Beal, I had already developed better habits and found myself focused on something that had seemed optional for a while: passing courses.

H.B. Beal Secondary School in London, Ontario.

The result was a string of strong marks and successful completion of the remaining credits I needed for university admission. In the end, I escaped Grade 13 with both an education and a diploma. Whether The Wall helped or hindered that process probably depends on how I frame it. I still believe I am a better thinker and writer because of that record.

In retrospect, this Ontario teen “did need an education”. Thankfully, I found teachers willing to provide one (Tip of the hat to Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Lee, Ms. Howse and many others). I also owe a debt of thanks to Roger Waters, Pink Floyd and Mackison 101. Those experiences made me who I am today and I love the memories I created at a time in my life when I needed the friends I had and the music we listened to, including The Wall.

Things worked out fine for Steve too. He also graduated from Mackison 101, got into University and is currently The Venerable Steven Mackison, incumbent of the Church of the Redeemer in Toronto.

The 500 - #152 - Self-Titled (Debut) - The B52's

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #152
Album Title: Self-Titled (Debut)

Artist: The B52s

Genre: New Wave, Post Punk, College Rock, Dance Rock, Pop Punk

Recorded: Compass Point Studios, Nassau, Bahamas

Released: July, 1979

My age at release: 13
How familiar was I with it before this week: Very

Is it on the 2020 list? No
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Planet Claire

My love of the absurd has been well chronicled in this blog series. The late ‘70s was a golden age for surreal, avant-garde and boundary-pushing art, music and comedy, and it coincided with my transition from childhood into my teenage years. I suppose my fascination with offbeat, subversive farce began with syndicated episodes of the British sketch comedy program Monty Python's Flying Circus, which aired on the Detroit PBS affiliate WTVS on Channel 56. In a time before cable television was the norm, watching U.S. stations on the UHF dial was not easy and often required patient (sometimes surgically meticulous) manipulation of our television's antennae. It was always worth it for the Python lads.

Shortly after discovering the Monty Python series, The Dr. Demento Show became a Sunday night listening ritual on WABX 95.3 FM, also out of Detroit. Dr. Demento was the alter ego of musicologist and radio personality Barret Hansen who broadcast from Pasadena, California. His radio show began as a free-form rock program, but evolved into a showcase for novelty songs, comedy and absurd audio oddities. After Hansen played the song Transfusion by Nervous Norvus he was told he must be “demented” to have played it. Transfusion is a ridiculous and satirical take on reckless driving, told from the perspective of a driver who keeps getting into car accidents and requires blood transfusions.

At first, I felt alone in my love of the odd. My elementary school chums and the teammates on my hockey club were of a more conventional ilk. Sure, we talked sports, superheroes, stuntman Evel Knievel and network television programs -- especially The Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie's Angels and Happy Days.

The Tuesday Night Line-Up on ABC.

We shared plenty of laughs over mainstream sources like the kid-friendly satire of MAD and Cracked magazines. But we also found ourselves inexplicably amused by Wacky Packages -- those collectible stickers that spoofed popular consumer products with absurd names like “Crust” instead of Crest toothpaste, or “Dampers” in place of Pampers diapers. Looking back, it was a bizarre trend, and probably not as funny as we thought at the time. (See Below)

When I turned 12, my tastes continued to lean toward the mature, irreverent, and subversive -- even when I didn’t fully grasp the material. I started saving my babysitting and newspaper delivery money to buy National Lampoon, a bold, countercultural magazine spun off from the Harvard Lampoon and aimed at college-aged readers. Speaking of babysitting, that early job also introduced me to my greatest, contemporary source of absurd, experimental comedy and groundbreaking music: Saturday Night Live (SNL).

Each week, armed with a bowl of potato chips and a backed by a fridge full of pop, I’d commandeer a neighbor’s couch (once their kids were safely tucked in) and brace myself for a full-on comedic assault from the brilliant, unpredictable minds of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" -- Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Canadian standout Dan Aykroyd. Between Coneheads and Samurai Delicatessen sketches, or Weekend Update segments featuring Radner’s sweet but fiery Emily Litella hilariously mangling the latest news headline, SNL would drop in performances from the coolest, hippest bands of the moment. It was chaos, it was genius -- and it felt like it had been made for me.

SNL cast (1976-1980) (l-r) Morris, Curtain, Belushi, Newman, Ackroyd, 
Radner and Murray.

Over those first few years, 1975 - 1980, I witnessed rock history, through live broadcasts and reruns.

• The enigmatic Frank Zappa delivered a searing satire of television and mass media with his performance of  I Am the Slime, (literally and figuratively) oozing irony and biting commentary from Studio 8H in New York City. 
• Then came the ethereal brilliance of Kate Bush, introduced by that week’s host, Monty Python’s Eric Idle, as she performed her haunting ballad The Man with the Child in His Eyes and the whimsical, spiritually charged Them Heavy People. I had her lyric "rolling the ball" clogging my noggin' for weeks after.
• As I documented in my March 2020 blog for album #442, I vividly remember watching Devo unleash their frenetic, deconstructed cover of the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Complete with neon yellow hazmat suits, the jerky choreography, and robotic vocals felt like a transmission from another world.
• I distinctly remember February 16, 1980. I was at home watching Gary Numan perform his breakout synth-pop hit Cars and the shadowy, atmospheric Praying to the Aliens. My dad sat behind me on the couch, reading a book, clearly perplexed by this enigmatic, android-like figure who seemed more machine than man. I am sure the words, "bloody rubbish", went through his head, but he was kind enough to remain quiet and allow me my moment of pop-culture euphoria.

  

  Gary Numan performing in 1980 on SNL. 

Just three weeks earlier (January 26, 1980), host Teri Garr, riding the cinematic successes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Oh, God! and The Black Stallion, introduced a quirky band from Athens, Georgia: The B-52’s. Comprising Fred Schneider (vocals), Kate Pierson (vocals, keyboards), Cindy Wilson (vocals), sibling Ricky Wilson (guitar), and Keith Strickland (drums), the group exploded onto the contemporary music scene with a sound that was as hard to define as it was to ignore. Their unique blend of surf rock, punk, new wave, and dance music, playfully layered with call-and-response vocals, kitschy lyrics, and vintage sci-fi and pop culture references, was unlike anything else I had seen.

The B52's in 1980, (l-r) Schneider, Pierson, Strickland, 
R. Wilson and C. Wilson.

Formed in 1976, the band had built a loyal following through the underground and college radio scenes. Athens, home to the University of Georgia, was a fertile ground for alternative culture, and the B-52s thrived in its creative soil. With their beehive hairdos, thrift-store fashion, and campy, colorful aesthetic, they were often seen by mainstream audiences as too weird or gimmicky -- which, of course, made them a perfect beacon for my avant-garde comedic and musical gaze.

The B52's performing - 1980s

Their debut record, which appears at #152 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, helped define the emerging new wave scene and positioned the B-52’s as pioneers of alternative pop. The single Rock Lobster quickly created a cult following, and then mainstream, and a chart hit. The album eventually went platinum.

I owned a copy of the debut on cassette and, along with a few other oddball new wave releases, including The Monks’ Bad Habits and Devo’s 1980 offering, Freedom of Choice, I wore them out on my home cassette player. (Note: It wasn't until years later that I would learn that Bad Habits was only a hit record in Canada -- and specifically in Ontario. The record is actually a spoof of the punk rock / new wave scene and was performed by members of the progressive/folk rock band The Strawbs")

When I think back on that young teen, who seems a stranger to me now, drawn to the offbeat, the absurd, and the wonderfully weird, these bands gave me something I hadn’t found in my middle school friendships: a sense of belonging. Those original group of friends and I had been thrown together by geography and circumstance, we were, like those Wacky Packages, randomly stuck with each other -- minus the hard strip of chewing gum. But through music, I eventually found people who got me. The weirdness of the B-52s, Frank Zappa and Devo, wasn’t just entertaining, it was affirming. It told me that being different wasn’t just okay; it was something to celebrate.

The 500 - #200 - Highway To Hell - AC/DC

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #200
Album Title: Highway To Hell
Artist: AC/DC

Genre: Hard Rock, Blues Rock
Recorded: Roadhouse Studios, Chalk Farm, London, U.K.

Released: July, 1979
My age at release: 14
How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite

Is it on the 2020 list? No
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: If You Want Blood

Album cover for Highway To Hell, AC/DC (1979)

AC/DC, the hard rock band from Australia, have two records on The 500 list. Highway To Hell, their sixth studio record, was released on July 27, 1979, and became their breakthrough album in the U.K. and America. It featured singer Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott, who had been with the group since their debut release, High Voltage, in 1975. It was also the first record to be produced by Robert "Mutt" Lange who was well on his way to becoming one of the greatest recording architects of all time...and future husband of Canadian singing legend Shania Twain.

AC/DC singer Bon Scott 

The second release by AC/DC on The 500 is Back In Black (#77) which was released almost one year later (364 days to be exact) on July 25, 1980. It became their biggest selling record of all time, with more than 50 million units sold. It was also produced by Mutt Lange. However, it featured vocals from English singer Brian Johnson who joined the band in February, 1980, following the death of Scott.

Brian Johnson, 1980, shortly after taking over singing duties for AC/DC.

Scott, who had been drinking into the late evening at a club in London, England, called The Music Machine, had decided to sleep in a car owned by his friend, Alistair Kinnear. The following morning, Tuesday, February 19, Kinnear found him unresponsive. Authorities were alerted and Scott was rushed to the nearby King's College Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The coroner’s report concluded it was "a death by misadventure". It seems likely that a combination of alcohol, heroin and the cold weather led to pulmonary aspiration. Scott likely experienced an overdose, lapsed into unconsciousness and aspirated (choked) on his own vomit.

Statue of Bon Scott in Freemantle region of Perth, Australia. It is one of
two statues of the singer, the other in his birthplace, Northmuir, Scotland

Scott's death brought the AC/DC into my pop cultural orbit. As a 14-year-old high school freshman, I was keenly tuned to the conversations of senior students, particularly about music. Hard rock was king in my rural high-school and my classes were filled with long-haired, denim- and black leather-clad fans of KISS, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Queen and Black Sabbath. My first introduction to some of these bands came from seeing their logos scrawled on student binders and notebooks.

Band logos of several bands popular in the late 70s.

In the spring of 1980, the words "Long Live Bon Scott" or "R.I.P. Bon Scott" were frequently sketched on those same school books. I also started to see patches and pins memorializing the singer on classmates’ jackets. The tragedy also elevated the popularity of their most recent record, Highway To Hell, and AC/DC songs were featured more heavily on Detroit rock radio.

Bon Scott gravestone in Fremantle City, Australia.

During the summer of 1980, I moved to London, Ontario, and was delighted to be living in a larger metropolitan area that featured a transit system, multiple libraries, public swimming pools, arenas and community centres. However, more importantly, rock bands included London (The Forest City) on their tour schedules. Within a few weeks of my arrival, I learned that California rockers Van Halen would be playing the London Gardens. I wrote about this in a July, 2020 post, in context of their debut record (#415 on The 500).

A Van Halen "Invasion" shirt from the tour, identical to
one I owned and wore proudly for years after the London show.

Eight days following the Van Halen show, the sound of amplified guitars still ringing in my ears, AC/DC brought their high-octane rock show to the London Gardens venue. The event came on the same day their seventh album, Back In Black, was released and was the 14th show with new lead singer, Johnson. The tickets were only $8 and I considered going. However, I skipped it because, as ridiculous as it seems in retrospect, I felt my "tastes" had matured beyond the simplistic rock and roll of AC/DC.  

At 15, I was becoming enamoured with progressive rock bands, including Rush, Genesis and Yes. Foolishly, I felt that a band needed virtuoso players who tackled epic, lengthy songs with complex key and changing time signatures in order to be considered "worthy". Van Halen had "cut the mustard" at that time because the lead guitarist, Edward Van Halen, was considered a guitar prodigy. His brother, Alex, was no slouch on the drum kit either. I liked AC/DC, but had mentally relegated them to basement party stereo status.

A Back In Black concert shirt from the 1980 tour.

Years later, I became a much bigger fan of AC/DC and began to understand how well the group composed the memorable, catchy anthemic rock songs that dominate their 18 studio records (1975-2020). Sure, their songs are usually written in standard 4/4 time and built around a handful of common chords, but, there is something masterful about how they execute their playing. They’re wizards when it comes to incredible, catchy rock riffs around which their songs were structured. However, not unlike jazz, it's not just the riffs they play, it's the patience with which they are delivered and how the rhythm section (guitar, drums and bass) support the rest of the song.

AC/DC in 1979 - (l-r) Malcom Young (rhythm guitar), Bon Scott (vocals),
Cliff Williams (bass), Angus Young (lead guitar) and Phil Rudd (drums).

A friend of mine, former guest blogger Glen "Archie" Gamble, spent months touring with an AC/DC tribute act dubbed Who Made Who as their drummer.  He was tasked with replicating Phil Rudd's sound and style, and told me he was rehearsing diligently for a series of shows across Canada. I was struck when he said: "I have to go back and re-examine the songs, relearning them to get the proper feel."

Promotional poster for the AC/DC tribute band Who Made Who.

I'm glad that I have a better appreciation of the deceptive complexity of this fantastic rock band. However, I deeply regret my decision not to attend that July, 1980, concert....for $8, no less.

Long Live Bon Scott!