Jesse Jones Mrs. Spicer English IV (H) March 1, 2004
Climbing “The Wall”: The Lyrical Genius of Roger Waters
In 1980, rock band Pink Floyd released a conceptual album with a corresponding movie, both written entirely (excepting some music) by bassist Roger Waters, that has become the ultimate rock opera, and is probably the greatest concept album of all time. It is considered one of the best Floyd works, perhaps second only to the masterpiece Dark Side of The Moon. The overall meaning of the piece, however, is very much open to interpretation, chronicling half a lifetime, or perhaps only a few hours in the life of a fictional rock star, aptly named “Pink Floyd”. In The Wall, Roger Waters uses a skilled choice of diction to convey strong sense of cynicism toward many aspects of character Pink Floyd’s life: his childhood, his personal life, his career, and so on. The first two songs on the album act as introduction, functioning much the same as the “Chorus” in epics such as Homer’s The Odyssey. “In The Flesh?”, the first track, introduces “the show” as a metaphor for life, an analogy that appears throughout (tr 1). “If you should go skating/ on the thin ice of modern life/.../Don’t be surprised when a crack in the ice/ appears...”, warns Waters of how life’s problems tend to appear, leaving us helpless to do much more than “claw the thin ice” (tr 2). “The Thin Ice” also introduces the “Oooh Babe” lyric, which appears in several songs throughout the work, and is perhaps meant to be satirical of the overuse of the lyric in rock and pop songs (tr 2). The mood becomes darker as “Another Brick in the Wall Part 1" begins. The song demonstrates guitarist David Gilmour’s innovative use of delay effects, and tells vaguely of the loss of Pink’s father, a theme which is much more prevalent in the film. Pink’s father was a casualty of World War II, leaving him “just a memory”, “a snapshot in the family album”, and “a brick in the wall” (tr 3). “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” begins, and Waters proceeds to tell of and mock Pink’s childhood teachers who “would hurt the children anyway they could” (tr 4). Track 4 cleverly segues into “Another Brick in The Wall Part 2", probably the most famous tune from the piece, wherein Waters uses the clever double negative “We don’t need no education” to effectively state “We need [better] education”, and explains that the pain of Pink’s years in school was “just another brick in the wall” (tr 5). The mood of the music is much brighter in the next track “Mother”, providing a wonderful contrast against the cynicism of Waters’ description of Pink’s overprotective mother. Speaking as the mother, Waters comforts Pink: “Mama’s gonna [sic] make all of your nightmares come true/ ... put all of her fears into you/... keep you right here under her wing/ She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing” (tr 6). The best of Water’s lyrics have this dark, sarcastic feel to them, in this case, stating the result of even the best intentions of some parents. “Mother” is followed by the beginning of a darker turn in the mood of both the music and lyrics. A melodic farewell to innocence, “Goodbye Blue Sky”, poses the question “Did... you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter/ when the promise of a brave new world/ unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?” (tr 7). This could be interpreted as a comment on the way that reality hits most of us and forces us to “run for shelter” as soon as we are able to leave home and be on our own, to face a “brave new world” (tr 7). At this point, the storyline changes tone, from telling a sort of quick recap of Pink’s life to almost detailing the events of the night on which the rest of the story is set in. Since much of the story is meant to deal with Pink’s inner thoughts and feelings, it could be argued that the songs leading up to this point represent memories Pink experienced on the evening in question. However, it is almost certain that some of the events later on in the story are either memories, hallucinations, or simply Pink’s random thoughts. The eighth track, “Young Lust”, represents the elevated sexual status of those in Pink’s position. Here, sarcastic, yet frank bluntness enhances the cynicism: “Will some... woman in this desert land/ Make me feel like a real man/ Take this rock and roll refugee/ Oooh Babe, set me free/ Ooooh I need a dirty woman/... a dirty girl” (tr 9). At the end of the tune, the listener experiences one of the most genius devices employed by the band to make a point: an actual phone call faded in over the music. Pink’s voice is not heard, only the operator helping him place a collect call to his wife. A man answers. The operator says, “Collect call for Mrs. Floyd, from Mr. Floyd.” The man hangs up. The operator says to Pink, “ He keeps hanging up; I don’t understand... is there supposed to be someone there besides your wife, sir?” (tr 9). The song ends, a synthesizer fades in, and the listener hears the goings-on in Pink’s hotel room before the show. He enters, accompanied by a young lady, obviously a groupie. She gawks at the luxury of the room and attempts to have a bit of fun with Pink, but he is silent, apparently already caught up in the old war movie on the television heard in the background. The lyrics begin and after a series of laments for Pink’s relationship with his wife, the band comes in hard to signify the hostility Pink is directing toward the groupie in the fit he is apparently having. Sound effects of various thumps and thuds, and breaking glass are heard amidst screamed apologies, “Don’t look so frightened/ This is just.../ One of my bad days”, and questions of what exactly it is the groupie wants from him: “Would you like to watch TV?/... get between the sheets?/... something to eat?” (tr 10). The tune ends with a lonely scream: “Why are you running away?” (tr 10). The slow, withdrawn, sullen mood of “Don’t Leave Me Now” finds Pink drawing further into himself and away from reality, and is sprinkled heavily with cynicism, this time toward Pink’s relationship with his wife: “Remember the flowers I sent/ I need you, Babe/ To put through the shredder/ In front of my friends/.../ To beat to a pulp on a Saturday night/.../ How can you treat me this way?/.../ Why are you running away?” (tr 11). The rest of the band joins the organ and delayed guitars for a short melodic interlude. The tune ends and the listener hears several television sets being turned on to different stations. Pink screams like a madman as he smashes them one by one. As he destroys the last set, the hard hitting “Another Brick In The Wall Part 3" begins. Waters screams, “ I don’t need no arms around me/I don’t need no drugs to calm me” (tr 12). Pink is declaring his independence from the rest of the world: “Don’t think I need anything at all” (tr 12). The turmoil subsides in the peaceful simplicity of “Goodbye Cruel World”, which seems to signify Pink’s suicide. This is not the case, however, since Pink if still the main character, alive, (if perhaps not so well), in the second half of the piece. Instead, “Goodbye Cruel World” is representative of Pink’s polite “goodbye” to the world he so violently rebelled against in the previous track. Literally, Pink has decided to lock himself in his hotel room and never come out. As the genius behind and often the voice of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters used his wit and sense of sarcasm to create the framework for much of the band’s greatest work, and was essential in making Pink Floyd’s music some of the most creative, innovative, and influential in rock and roll history.
I can't wait til I have to stand up and read this in front of Justin Bryan, Roland Partin, Jared Clay, Ashley Hart, Sarah Milner, and Jennifer Griser. Plus, Natasha Nunley, Sandy King, and Holly McGuire, even though they're just cheerleaders, they think they're athletes.
I'm quite proud of it, if you find errors, please let me know.
Jesse Jones Mrs. Spicer English IV (H) February 2, 2004
“Put Me In Coach”: A Look At Sports In The Public School System
Why is Tyler “Gator” McCullough a member of the Top Ten Percent at Grundy County High School? Anyone who’s had a significant amount of interaction with him will quote very quickly the only possible reason Gator is part of the Top Ten Percent: he’s a jock. Like plenty of athletes before him, he’s taken the easy classes, and got a free ride from the teachers of many of those classes. Favoritism is just one of the things that bother people about the presence of sports programs in public schools. In this essay, I will show how obvious it is that sports have no place in public schools.
First, the issue of money must be considered. I am aware that these teams hold fund-raisers, but I’m afraid I just don’t see 45 football players selling enough candy bars to finance a season of football. They’re getting tax money. The good citizen is concerned about how his tax money is used, so here’s something for the good citizen to chew on besides a Kit-Kat that cost him a whole buck: Kenneth Colquette is also getting tax money to play games. He gets paid to play principal and football coach, when we all know he was only hired because the school system wanted to win football games. All this goes practically unnoticed while the county is in outrage because a certain Economics/Sociology teacher made a couple dollars extra off of a fake Ph.D., a forged certificate which managed to slip under the watchful eyes of the system when all it would have taken to verify it was a 10 minute long distance phone call. Now with all this tax money going to pay for all these ball teams, plus paying a football coach a principal’s salary, it would be safe to assume we’ve got it together as far as our academics go, right? After all, this is federally funded public education, your tax dollars at work, right? Think again. We don’t have enough computers, we don’t have good computers, and we don’t have enough computer classes. If computers are the wave of the future, Grundy County can expect to be left high and dry. Besides that, we have a disgusting shortage of books, and not enough teachers in general who know what they’re talking about. Make no mistake: There are some excellent teachers at GCHS, but anyone will agree that one clueless teacher is one too many.
The 2nd strike against sports in public schools is their blatant uselessness. Sports won’t count for anything 10 years from now, except for those who went to college on sports scholarships. When you think about, being intelligent and academically successful, regardless of athletic ability, is what should get a person scholarships. “At least”, it might be argued, “kids get a good sense of sportsmanship out of these programs.” Wrong again. I can’t speak for the nation, of course, but in my experience, sports and pep rallies (which are detestable little establishments in their own right), are all about bragging. Athletics in schools don’t promote good sportsmanship, no matter what David Lowry tells you over the loudspeaker. They establish arrogance in participants, and drive bitterness in the rest of us, and whenever someone is pushing for uniforms in schools, they always tell you, “It’ll make all the students feel more equal,” and, “It’ll put an end to the disadvantaged kids being looked down on by the upper class kids.” No one ever thinks, however, of getting rid of sports programs so the jocks don’t find it so easy to act like they’re better than everybody else, and so they don’t have cliques pre-fabricated for them so they can defend that position until graduation.
One might think to oneself, “Could the whole country be so terribly wrong?” You bet your jockstrap it could. “Couldn’t some good come of these programs?” Perhaps some good could come from them, but certainly not nearly enough to justify the cost, or the theft of education from the rest of the student population, and, indeed, the athletes themselves. It’s plain common sense that kids who go to college on athletic scholarships are not necessarily prepared to do so, because the only place they’ve really proven themselves is on the field or court. They may have the 3.0, or 3.5 to get them in, but they’ve only kept that much up so they could keep tossing that pigskin, and it’s just an ugly fact of life that athletes get special treatment. We’ve all seen that cliche scene in those cliche sports movies where the coach tries, sometimes a bit unprofessionally, sometimes even a bit underhandedly, to convince the science or other teacher to pass the star quarterback so the team can win the championship. We all know there is pressure on teachers to make sure athletes do well. It must be much worse on GCHS teachers in the fall, since the football coach just happens to also be their boss. That said, we’ve established that athletes’ grades can’t be accepted as accurate measures of academic success. “Well you can’t deny,” my opponents will retort, “that it keeps kids off drugs.” Deny that, I cannot. I can and do, however, find myself unable to care less. As long as the schools have and enforce rules against drug use and trafficking on school premises, the educational system has done it’s part. It’s the responsibility of the community, not the school system, to provide the youth with sufficient extracurricular activities to keep them out of trouble. The same opponents would contend that athletic programs teach discipline and hard work. However, I will assert that they teach their participants to rely on cockiness, popularity, and useless skills instead of healthy self confidence, intelligence, and marketable skills. Again, the results are grossly insufficient to justify the cost. By following a “Karate Kid”, “Mr. Miyagi” mentality, we assume that by teaching our kids to “wax on”,“wax off”, and work hard at sports, they’ll learn not only to work hard at everything else, but also acquire the invaluable knowledge of 14 different ways to kill a man with their pinkies. Nobody wants to admit that it would be better to teach discipline for and dedication to something worthwhile in the first place.
There’s no excuse or explanation for spending tax money on any athletic team, or even a marching band, for that matter. For most kids, joining a school sponsored -ball team is nothing more than a cheap attempt to fit in, or get laid, or get into college, or all of the above. Sports in schools breeds arrogance and contempt. Sports in schools may keep kids off drugs, but they’re still ruining their livers on the weekends and using tobacco, oftentimes in front of and under the supervision of their coaches, furthermore, they can pop and puff all they want during the off season. Sports in schools wastes valuable time and tax money. Take a moment to think how much better off our youth would be if all those resources were put towards real education. While you’re at it, think of all the bad behavior from parents instigated by sports. Sports in schools are quite possibly the most ridiculous and unjustifiable occurrence in today’s society. One could fill yet another page with con after con to sports in schools, with the odds of seeing a pro being slim to none.
