I figure, all told, The Wall is probably the most complete piece of rock-n-roll artifact ever. Pink Floyd, the band, created it together, rooted in the purest form of personal desolation and lifelong fury in mourning from the soul of Roger Waters. From rich double-thick concept album to fastidious concert concept & production to feature film adaptation, not even the Beatles quite reached the height---a matter of opinion, sure, but it is tough to argue the level of landmark creative genius that went into The Wall from pub napkins to Potsdamer Platz & beyond. & from one earthly epoch to the next..on into present tense, ..the theme NEVER has lost even a sliver of credibility, as society’s handlers apparently continue.. to follow the worms.

One man’s novel idea. One convincing fantasy about the heavy truth of our existence, a theatrical event about the theatre of war and the mindless use of lives and livelihood as a metaphor for earnest onstage alienation between a musician and an audience. ..I watched The Wall for like the hundredth time the other night ..and again learned something new ..and again it floored me and left me shaken, my wanton escapism satisfied but not at all sedated. The best rock albums NEVER anesthetize the pain, the awareness and sorrow.

There has been only ONE other album that has the heavy-handed-solemn-poetry wedded to groundbreaking music concepts to compare to The Wall. So..goes. But, if The Wall is a woefully loaded Cadillac Escalade, this other album is a rust bucket Chevy Cheyenne pickup with a painstakingly cherried 350 and a good stereo. Better yet, if The Wall is a pot of gold bars in a theoretical hopper, then this other album is a silvery night of philosophical barhopping and some pot. But if both albums fell overboard into oil-black Gulf Stream waters and I could plausibly rush to save ONLY one. My laser beam concentration would lock onto TRIAGE as both hands rip into frothy waters to snatch it out with the white fingered death grip assurance of a man who has been permanently moved, ..moved, ..and moved again, by a perfect piece of rock-n-roll artifact that, had it been as completely explored as The Wall, …probably..STILL would have been lucky to maintain cult status. ..While idiots spew inane shortsighted reviews and the powers that be make great strides to snuff out its vital media play to a public that damn-certainly needed to heed it (THEN ..and now).

& so even though it’s just a muse of one obscure fan amongst plenty, every now & then I’m compelled to kid about `TRIAGE, the Feature Film` (that never was ..and is probably not even a sperm in the arty balls of its creator). I’m not trying to agitate. Not pining for new music, as something this good never stales. Not yet, anyway. Nope, I do it out of respect. Out of a kind of love, I suppose. & some sadness. I do it as a tribute to the sole effort of one American everyman with the horse sense to do the hard work necessary to see such an ambitious little homespun project through from deep sentiment to releasable content: The most undervalued recorded artifact on planet earth. I say this with ease. This is not an exaggeration, not obsequiousness of any sordid or unsordid kind. It is nothing more than one among plenty who can recognize the depth-o-whole-value of another’s making; an album so valid, convincing and appropriate and groundbreaking and courageous and insightful and historian and beyond avant-garde radical and.. finally acquiescent and sent tumbling into the void, bloodied of flesh, broken of bone, ..bold notions of love intact. Imagine that.

But if it EVER WERE to become a feature film, a fuckin’ stunning rock band getting set on an unseen state-of-the-art mechanized riser and scaffolding beneath a trapdoor ..blocked downstage at the lip of the proscenium between the orchestra row of seating and the base of the big screen, awaiting their cue to arise and shine, ..well ..then, ..you won’t have to twist my arm, I will figure out a way to be in THAT audience. & even if it NEVER happens, even if the whole notion is absurd, naive, long gone lost in another more intrepid era, well then I’m happy just to kid about it every now & then.

Respectfully, messybear (m2b)