39 years ago. Wow. Pink Floyd's “The Wall” came out 39 years ago. Anyone born on that day in 1979 now fears the impending doom of real middle age this year! Just one more till 40! Hit that and everyone rushes to finalize any dream they were trying to build or even attempt. Because once you push through your 40's, the story of your life is largely written. Afterwards, it's mainly epilogue.

I haven't listened to The Wall in it's entirety in years to tell the truth. I have soo many hours of music on tiny SD cards that I'm overwhelmed with choice. But tonight I listened to it again since today was the anniversary of it's issue. Not only that, I can thank bit torrent protocol and a little thievery for getting the re-mastered version of it tonight. The remaster ain't that bad.

I had forgotten or perhaps more truly, I found out finally how well crafted the album is. And again, after packing on the decades I hear it differently now. It's two hours of Roger Waters obsessing over every rotten thing that ever went wrong with his life, and I do mean obsess. If you forget the lyrics and listen to the music, it's a long, grating steely guitar horror show with a relentless background beat of the blades of Vietnam Era Huey attack helicopter. Listen to the instruments, it's there! That “thump, thump, thump” shows up in various synthesized sounds throughout. I'd put the album right up there with the movie The Deer Hunter for it's ceaseless stewing in PTSD. Both do a great job at immersing you in it.

Jesus, it's work to listen to this and to defend yourself from it's vibe at the same time. The album is a damned assault on a coherent mind. The music is doing exactly what Roger intended, which is to nearly inoculate you with his agony.

Apparently after hitting 60+ years, Roger finally made some peace with the worse angels of himself, or at least learned not to haunt himself forever with his personal demons.

I have too, mostly. We all do as we age.

The other thing that struck me about listening to it all the way through was that I did the same as a young teen. I had this album when I was 15 and can remember how many times I played it from beginning to end. At 15, I was a sophomore in high school and attending Driver's Ed classes at Jenks across from McCoy stadium. I can remember it being a cold bitch of a winter too. A ton of memories came to me and here's what struck me.

I was a child then. Still a child at 15. Every kid who's 15 is! How could I possibly have fathomed this album at 15? I couldn't. I hadn't lived enough years to even grasp it yet. I thought, even at 14, I was a worldly teen, doing whatever the hell I wanted and getting away with it. I felt BIG! Yeah. Sure. I was an “adult” then. Cue the laugh track! In one year, I'd be driving a two ton car. In three years I could legally purchase a firearm. Lord Above! How can we possibly think anyone 18 and under is mature enough for anything like that? I sure as shit wasn't!

I'm pushing 55 soon and I notice that my thinking is doing something the developmental psychologists I knew an eon ago told me would happen. My thought process is concertizing. Like a knee joint, your thinking gets “stiffer.” You slowly lose that flexibility to notice subtle, fluid nuances in conversation the young can twist and jump around in. You then tend to rely on what's worked all the time, a smaller set of tools that's always been there for you and not the nifty artworky stuff the young love and can use with impunity. (I think I have just described 'conservatism' in my convoluted way!). In short, I suffer from knee-jerk dismissive-ness when I hear the kids talk. I tell myself “I know better” and can outright reject what they say or believe. But, that's the price of gaining that wisdom of experience. And you can't achieve that till you pack on DECADES! Or am I covering up my 'getting on in years' inflexibility with lofty sounding words like, wisdom? Probably both! I am a zillion times smarter now and I also rebuff kids too easily.

Anyways...

The 55yo self vs the 15yo self. God, what a difference that is I came to find out tonight from just listening to music.

I'll steal station 101.5's tag line, “The Sound Track to Your Life” because it sounds cool. For me it's kinda true. I find that I can pigeon hole my entire life according to the Top 200 List to each year I lived. The Wall did that to me tonight.