As mentioned by Ash in his review of the Nassau show, Roger Waters can lay claim to what is widely held as one of the most spectacular pieces of rock theatre ever. And if you felt in any way frustrated about the restricted way in which the Nassau video captured it then gnash your teeth no more. For the Earls Court tape is clearly (or not, depending on the fidelity of your tape) what you've been after.

Pro-shot, utilising so many cameras I lost count (although if pressed I'd say about thirteen or fourteen), it completely blows away any gripes one might have with its American counterpart. It's not dark, or at least not as dark as I'm led to believe the Nassau one is. It has fewer dead spots with nothing to look at. Given the number of cameras used, there's never a shortage of things to view, except possibly the same songs as Nassau save for "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 1)," when nothing was going on anyway. When things do happen, they *happen*. You see distant shots from the back to the entire stage when it warrants it, close-ups of musicians, puppets, the plane, pig, and projection screen as and when required. As a bonus during "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)," you even get the film being played on the screen taking over the entire TV screen for a bit. By and large, the video and music have been married well, so that anything that's irrelevant to whatever's being played doesn't get shown, a criticism of later *official* Floyd releases (by some, at any rate). Even when it's not focusing on the lead instruments being played at the time, it gives an insight into what everyone else was doing. For example, I bet you didn't know that Willie Wilson didn't drum during "Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2," but waved a tambourine around and used it to hit the cymbals instead. Or exactly why Gilmour and Waters had to share a mic for "Young Lust." Little things like that, presumably not seen on the Nassau one, are scattered throughout the entire video.

My favourite was Waters struggling to make his microphone stay on the stand after "What Shall We Do Now?" As the wall slowly rises and gets filled in, the cameras tend to end up peering through the holes left at whatever they can see, or looking at the dark figures of the wall builders toiling away. Although this gets a bit dull after a while, the visuals are much more fascinating for the second half of the show. We visit Waters in his elevated hotel room mock-up, and see Gerald Scarfe's marching hammers stride across the width of the wall and indeed your television screen. All footage of wall projections is reasonably crisp and clear, possibly a bit flickery, but nothing to seriously detract from the spectacle. Almost no close-ups of these are present though, the decision having been taken to show them from the back of the venue as the occasional momentary flash of light picks out the tiny performers on stage, reminding you just how big the wall itself really was. Gary Yudman's second slot of the evening is captured in full, and this is perhaps the clearest, crispest (read as: most passed by) part of the entire show. For those with the patience, you're rewarded handsomely as he imparts what awful traffic there's been due to the numbers of people attending.

Other second-half material like "Run Like Hell" and "Waiting For The Worms" again gets close up, to the point where you can see such details as sweat running down Gilmour's face. The final three songs are pretty much as before as regards editing: A zoom into the puppet atop the wall for "Stop," views from far away to see the projections that featured in "The Trial" (getting close again to watch the wall finally tumble) and mostly close shots for "Outside The Wall," which reveal Wilson's bald head and deft tambourine work once more. It's also notable as the only song Waters feels confident enough to perform without his headphones. And so they trample off, concluding the performance. The crowd roars (for only the second or third time throughout), the lights come up, the four core members come back on and take a bow, Waters says thanks, and off they go again. And that's your lot. Except on my copy, where as a bonus I get a suitably surreal split-second image of Sophia Loren.

I'm buggered if I can be too hard with this particular VOIO in terms of faults. True, the quality of the video is rather scrappy in "popular" places, such as "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)," "Mother" and "Comfortably Numb," and the soundtrack is prone to annoying hiss in quieter passages, but the content and its significance far outweigh the problems one has to go through to watch it. It originally comes from a 20 year old tape, will have gone through x-number of generations and format conversions before it gets to you, and you'll probably end up playing endlessly with the brightness, contrast and colour controls on your TV before you reach a happy medium. I know I do. It is by far and away the worst quality VOIO I possess. But it's worth it. Ideally you can get both the Nassau and Earls Court tapes, as I'm sure you'll find they've both got their pluses and minuses. But I'm happy with my Earls Court one on its own. Especially as, like this review, it closes with Sophia Loren.

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

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