Albums

Is There Anybody Out There?: The Wall Live 1980-81 (2000)

Pink Floyd

"Get your hands together! Enjoy yourselves! ..."

Pink Floyd followed up 1995's "Pulse" album with another live album in the new millennium: "Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81," a document of the band's performances at Earl's Court, London, two decades earlier. The album was released in Europe on March 27, 2000; in the United States on April 18.

James Guthrie, co-producer and engineer of the original 1979 album, produced and mixed the live album. The task required him to review a truckload of audio tape to find the best take of each track from the seven performances that were recorded. "The most important thing," he told Ice magazine in January 2000, "is the performance. If I've got three versions of something and the best performance is the one that sounds the worst? That's the one I'm using, and then it's up to me to make it sound as good as I can."

The recordings and performances as they appeared on the final product were exceptionally clean — some sounding as if they could have been recorded in a studio. "No one's coming in to play anything again," Guthrie claimed while he was still putting the album together. "Everything you hear will be absolutely live." The band did monitor Guthrie's work and approved the final mix.

Furthermore, each band member — Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason — contributed a substantial amount of editorial material to the liner notes of the album. The interviews that appear in the booklets were conducted and edited by Nick Sedgwick. Thoughts and reflections from people who worked on the design and production of the concerts, such as Gerald Scarfe, also helped flesh out the two 28-page booklets filled with photos of the concerts.

Columbia released two versions of the CD: a standard, two-CD jewelcase version; and a deluxe, limited edition version, which included a hardcover booklet. (As late as January 2000, the album was to be released by Capitol/EMI. Columbia took over the project before its release.) The recordings on each version are the same. Design of the packages was headed by longtime Floyd designer Storm Thorgerson — a little ironic, since Thorgerson had no involvement with the design of 1979's "The Wall" album.

While fans were more than familiar with the majority of the material on "Is There Anybody Out There?," a couple of previously unreleased tracks made their debut on the album: "What Shall We Do Now," previously only heard in the film "Pink Floyd The Wall"; and "The Last Few Bricks."

"New" tracks

The latter was an instrumental medley of songs created from songs from the early portion of "The Wall." The medley served as a holding pattern for the band, giving stagehands who were building a wall across the stage more time. Until "Is There Anybody Out There?," the passage didn't have a name; Waters dubbed it "The Last Few Bricks." The live album also includes two portions of dialogue from the master of ceremonies for the show, Gary Yudman.

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