The Worms At The Exhibition (Sigma 62)
Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall, London, England – June 16th, 1981
Disc 1 (56:26): 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, Young Lust, One Of My Turns, Don’t Leave Me Now, Another Brick In The Wall – part 3, Goodbye Cruel World
Disc 2 (54:17): 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, Run Like Hell, Waiting For The Worms, Stop, The Trial, Outside The Wall
The second set of Pink Floyd Wall shows in Earls Court in June 1981 were scheduled for the expressed purpose of being filmed and recorded for the planned movie based on The Wall. As it turned out, director Alan Parker and Roger Waters decided to stick with the piece’s narrative instead of inserting any concert footage.
June 16th is the penultimate Wall show and the final Pink Floyd show with Roger Waters (until Live 8). This show contributed three songs, ‘Mother,” “The Show Must Go On,” and “Hey You” to the official live album Is There Anybody Out There? released in 2000.
Sigma use an excellent stereo audience recording. It is the same tape source released several years ago on Watching The World Upon The Wall (Godfather Records GR311/312). Comparing the two, the Sigma isn’t as loud as Godfather, but not by much. The volume on the Godfather makes it a bit more clear and enjoyable. There are many more Wall shows that haven’t been released on silver yet, and quite why Sigma duplicate the effort of Godfather isn’t clear, especially since this doesn’t represent an upgrade.
Nevertheless, this is a great concert, one of the most perfect performances of the Wall on tape. Waters has a lot of fun before “Run Like Hell” in heckling the whistlers, saying: “This next song’s for all the whistlers in the audience. Are there any whistlers in the audience? Let’s all have a fucking good whistle. Christ, I must learn to do that, it sounds such fun. This is called Run Like Hell. I’d like to see you all getting your hands together and having a good time. Mmmm, disco! Get down!”
The packaging is very nice as expected from this label. They always produce pretty looking titles. While it is great they have released more Wall shows, this really is redundant since Godfather issued it several years ago.
2 Comments
Roger has stated many times recently that he’s been working on the edit of a DVD from the original Wall shows during the past few years.
When will it come out, nobody knows…
Does this mean that Pink Floyd has a concert film of this performance in their vault? Why haven’t they released it on DVD? I’ve seen clips from it in the “Which One’s Pink?” and “Seven Ages Of Rock” documentaries, so someone has done a little production work on it.
While the movie “The Wall” is interesting in some aspects, an HD and Blu-Ray concert film of “The Wall” would be fantastic. I believe that every PF fan has a B+ quality (at best) video bootleg of this show. Why doesn’t the band do it’s loyal fans a good turn by putting out a 30th Anniversary DVD set of this show. It would go to the top of the DVD sales charts in it’s first week of release.
And please don’t give me that “we’d be selling out” excuse. I’ll bet Roger Waters will put a live video from his current “Wall” tour.