Out Of Your Depth (Siréne-137)
Westfallenhalle, Dortmund, Germany – February 19th, 1981
Disc 1: MC Intro, In The Flesh?, The Thin Ice, Another Brick In The Wall – Part 1, The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, Another Brick In The Wall – Part 2, Mother, Goodbye Blue Sky, Empty Spaces, What Shall We Do Now?, Young Lust, One Of My Turns, Don’t Leave Me Now, Another Brick In The Wall – Part 3, The Last Few Bricks, Goodbye Cruel World
Disc 2: Hey You, Is There Anybody Out There?, Nobody Home, Vera, Bring The Boys Back Home, Comfortably Numb, The Show Must Go On, MC Intro, In The Flesh, Roger’s MC, Run Like Hell, Waiting For The Worms, Stop, The Trial, Outside The Wall
Given the expense and complexity of The Wall show, the eight concerts in Dortmund in 1981 were the only shows performed on the continent and some of the few opportunities for fans to see the whole production. There are two different tape sources for the penultimate show on February 19th. For Out Of Your Depth Siréne used “recorder 2” which was produced by an American who actually flew to Germany with some friends specifically to catch this show. His tape is a complete, three-dimensional stereo recording that is very enjoyable and rivals the tapes from Earl’s Court and the Nassau Coliseum. It is plagued by the conversation he has with his friends at the most inappropriate times. There is conversation during the soft beginning of “Hey You” where he is more impressed with German ice cream than with Pink Floyd.
As enjoyable as the show is (and the taper’s friends do have a good time), this is a good show that nowhere near approaches the classic shows on February 14th and the closer on February 20th. There are several missed cues and painful to hear bum notes and is an overall lackadaisical performance. Waters changes some of the lyrics in “Mother” from “break my balls” to “drown my words” and Gilmour experiments with a different guitar solo in that track. And before “Run Like Hell” Waters says: “Thank you. Please don’t try and touch the pig. He’s dangerous to some. Do you like our pig? Right, that’s enough of piggy. This next song is to fathom out all the hecklers, not that there seems to be many here this evening. It’s called ‘Run Like Hell’. You can all clap along, as soon as Dave is ready. We can all have a damn good clap. Wow, get down, disco, wow, clap, clap.”
The show does pick up steam after that and during the “fascism” part and ends with a great “The Trial” but it gives the overall impression that the band were really tired of playing it at this point and sound like they wanted to be elsewhere playing something else. Siréne packaged this nicely with many pictures from the Nassau Coliseum performances the previous year with a wall motif on the artwork. This isn’t a bad release and the label didn’t play around with the tape to much giving this the usual excellent Siréne treatment. It is great that Siréne is releasing tapes from this tour since it has been pretty much neglected for so long by the Japanese labels. It’s good also to see this show finally have a silver title release. But it will appeal to Pink Floyd completist really since there are much better shows out there waiting to be discovered.
