Bog down on side 3? Really?! Side 3 might be my favorite. Not much of a fan of Vera, but it's a short track, so I don't have much of a problem with it. Hey You, Is There Anybody Out There?, and Comfortably Numb are all among my all-time favorite PF tracks.
My thoughts exactly - side 3 contains two short tracks (Vera and Bring The Boys Back Home) which, while not brilliant songs in themselves, are short and do help move the plot along as Pink tries to re-connect with his past, plus three other great songs (Hey You, Is There Anybody Out There? and also Nobody Home). There's also the small matter of this song called Comfortably Numb, which I think is pretty good (understatement)... In short, side 3 is excellent overall.
Shackles, my recommendation would be to include transitions like in the album, as the songs were meant to flow into each other and The Wall is
the opposite to most soundtracks as the film was created from the music (I think most soundtracks, including More and Obscured By Clouds, are written to accompany to visuals).
A few differences I know of (I'm guessing you're familiar with the Wikipedia page for the film listing the main differences between the album and the film versions of the songs?), with the changes for the film listed:
- Another Brick In The Wall (Part II) – The teacher's 'Wrong! Do it again!' and 'You can't have any pudding...' lines were included in the second chorus sung by the children, rather than the end where the teacher says ‘An acre is the area of a rectangle whose length is one furlong and whose width is one chain’.
- Mother – The first line is ‘Mother am I really dying’ rather than ‘Mother will they drop they bomb’.
- Goodbye Blue Sky – The bird sound at the beginning and Harry Waters (Roger's son) saying 'Look mummy, there's a plane in the sky' were removed.
- Is There Anybody Out There? – The guitar solo was played by David Gilmour with a pick, rather than fingerstyle by a session player whose name escapes me.
- In The Flesh – Redone completely with an orchestral arrangement and sung by Bob Geldof. I can understand why this was done but I think it works
much better as a rock song.
- Run Like Hell – The first verse leads directly into the second ‘run, run, run’ chanting section with the sound of Pink’s thug squads trashing a diner during the chants, and the synth solo is during the second verse rather than after it with the instrumental break after the solo leading to the final rendition of the main riff also being removed.
Just wondering whether you intend to include Hey You in your soundtrack? I think it was meant to go in the film but was dropped because the accompanying scenes consisted largely of stock footage, whereas I’m not aware of any plans to include the other missing track, The Show Must Go On, in the soundtrack.
It's one of my favourite songs on The Wall, definitely in my top 3.
