Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81
| Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81 | ||||
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| Live album by Pink Floyd | ||||
| Released | 23 March 2000 | |||
| Recorded |
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| Venue | Earls Court, London, England | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock | |||
| Length | 1:45:21 | |||
| Language | English | |||
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| Producer | James Guthrie | |||
| Pink Floyd chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| NME | (5/10) |
| Rolling Stone | |
Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81 is a live album released by Pink Floyd in 2000. It is a live rendition of The Wall, produced and engineered by James Guthrie, with tracks selected from the August 1980 and June 1981 performances at Earls Court in London. The album was first released in The Netherlands by EMI Records on 23 March 2000, who released a limited edition in the United Kingdom on 27 March. The general release followed on 18 April 2000 with US and Canadian distribution by Columbia Records.
The shows involved the construction of a wall on stage throughout the first half of the show. Once complete, members of the band performed in small openings in, atop, in front of, or even behind the wall. The album artwork featured the life-masks of the four band members in front of a black wall; the masks were worn by the "surrogate band" during the song "In The Flesh". "Goodbye Blue Sky" and parts of "Run Like Hell" were taken from the 17 June 1981 show, the very last performance by the four-man Pink Floyd until the 2005 Live 8 concert.
The album was re-released in February 2012 in remastered form as part of the "Immersion" boxset edition of The Wall.
Is There Anybody Out There? contains live versions of all the original songs along with two additional songs: "What Shall We Do Now?" and "The Last Few Bricks". "What Shall We Do Now?" was planned for the original album but removed just before release. (It remained on the lyric sheet for the original LP, but excised from future CD re-releases.) "The Last Few Bricks" was an instrumental bridge between "Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)" and "Goodbye Cruel World", and contained themes from "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", "Don't Leave Me Now", "Young Lust", "Empty Spaces" and "What Shall We Do Now?", all transposed to D minor. It was played to allow the bricklayers to almost completely seal off the stage before Roger Waters appeared in the last brick-wide space in the wall to sing "Goodbye Cruel World", ending the first set of the show. This music never had an official title before the release of the live album. Fans named the track "Almost Gone" on some bootleg albums of the shows, but the official name was suggested by producer James Guthrie during the mixing of the live album. The album also contained two spoken tracks titled "MC: Atmos" ("Master of Ceremonies" for the first North American release), which served as introductions to the songs "In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh", respectively. These were performed by Gary Yudman, MC for the Earls Court and Nassau Coliseum shows. The second version was a section of a recording of his speech from the first version, played at slower speed to parody the frustration ("The band is about ready to begin, I think ... No, not quite yet") of waiting for the band to start.
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