Roger Waters can prattle on about the significance of 'The Wall' in rock theater as much as he wishes -- this VOIO demonstrates that he's more than earned his bragging rights. For all its numerous shortcomings as a double album, 'The Wall' remains nevertheless one of the most theatrically impressive concert performances ever staged by anyone.

Edited together from what appears to be two different cameras positioned at the rear of the venue and at shallow stage left, this is a dark, and at times frustratingly indistinct recording in which nothing seems to happen for a few "dead stretches" of the show (i.e., "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 1)," "Hey You," "The Show Must Go On," and "Is There Anybody Out There"). However, when things *do* happen, and people *are* visible, this is a fascinating, incredibly complex show that makes the occasional visual difficulties in this recording more than worthwhile to sit through.

The films and slides shown on Mr. Screen are flickery but visible, though depending on how high of a generation copy you watch, the colors of the lights tend to bleed quite a bit at times. The show itself is largely intact, with the puppets clearly visible, some great shots of the performers on stage, and the stunning second-half bits (like "Waiting For The Worms" shown in all of it's triptych glory) retaining nearly all of their power. Even better, you get all of emcee Gary Yudman's speaking bits that were deleted from the official live album (these are actually hell of a lot more fun to watch than you might expect).

Drawbacks? The transition from surrogate band to Pink Floyd is lost thanks to the darkness of the venue, the animation of "Goodbye Blue Sky" is totally ignored in favor of a motionless David Gilmour (oh well, I guess this is why I own the movie, anyway), and that shot of Pink sitting atop the wall and being moved around by some unnamed roadie (to make it look like the dummy is singing "Stop") comes off as embarrassingly silly. After all of the lights, films, props and fantastic musical bits, the climax of the concert is nothing more than a 30 second puppet show.

This is an essential view to really get a feel for what a 'Wall' concert was like. Whether or not this is better or worse than the Earls Court 1981 footage that is also circulating is unknown to me as I've never seen any of it (aside from the tantalizing bits shown on the BBC 'Behind The Wall' documentary). And this is where Sad Ken comes in ...

'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)'	'Goodbye Cruel World'
'Run Like Hell'	'Waiting for the Worms'