Wikipedia:Peer review/The Wall/archive1

The Wall

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review to seek the input of an uninvolved editor.

Thanks, — GabeMc (talk) 23:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Doing... Daniel Case (talk) 21:36, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I'm going to make a light copy edit first, then go into my critique. Stay tuned. Daniel Case (talk) 06:52, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I am done. I will leave it to the requestor to look at the diffs and see what changes I made in copy editing. Basically, a lot of redundant phrasing was condensed (it's not necessary to say things like "Financial advisers X, Pink Floyd's financial planners") and some run-on sentences broken up. I also brought it to conformity with the MOS (use the percent symbol, and "million" as a stand-alone word rather than suffixed "-M") and consistency (per WP:MOSNUM, figures are used for most larger numbers ... the article had not always done so). I did my best to be mindful of style and usages unique to British English where I'm aware of them, but I still had to change some things for clarity's sake—I presume by Ezrin's "poor timekeeping skills", we mean what I wrote, that he often showed up late, and not that he couldn't help the musicians keep time? I also added the {{inflation}} template in two places (my first use of it in a British context), so we can better appreciate the scale of their financial loss.

When done, the copy edit has shaved about 800 bytes off the length of the article. About good enough, and not indicative of serious problems (a long time ago, I wound up taking 5K off Spyware during its FAR ... my record). Back in a bit ... Daniel Case (talk) 04:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: One thing does remain as a copy problem that I was unsure how to tag. Who is the person being quoted in this sentence, at the end of the third graf of the "Background" section: "Because the project's 26 tracks presented a challenge greater than the band's previous albums, 'Waters decided to bring in an outside producer and collaborator'"? Is it really necessary that this be in quotes? It sounds stylistically consistent with the rest of the sentence, and if it's from a source I don't really see why a direct quote is needed for something purely informative. Daniel Case (talk) 18:08, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comment: Just butting in with a nit-picky side comment. My understanding of WP:MOS#Percentages is that "percent" is preferred to the symbol in most simple cases. I rely heavily on the first sentence of the guidelines: "Generally, use either percent (American English) or per cent (British English) to indicate percentages in the body of an article." I think most exceptions to this are found in scientific articles, complex tables, and the demographics sections of articles about cities, but in this article, I'd go with "percent" rather than "%". Finetooth (talk) 18:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough ... it was just that when I started editing six years ago, we seemed to prefer the symbol. I much rather prefer the words because it's consistent with AP and Chicago styles, which I'm used to. I will edit appropriately. Daniel Case (talk) 18:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, now the larger issues ...

Images

First, the album cover may be a free image. It certainly qualifies as such under US law since, as a collection of common geometric shapes, it is ineligible for copyright. However, it was produced under British law, which has a lower threshold of originality, and as such I defer and note that there is apparently an active OTRS request at Commons. So I will let that process play out rather than changing the licensing myself.

Second, that's the only image in the article. We could use more to help its readability. Well-chosen and placed images break up the monontony of text and make it more likely readers will read the entire article. I see there are quote boxes and sound files already, but we could also at least have pictures of the band members, which we have on Commons (Not contemporary to this period, but it's better than nothing). And there are some pictures from later concert performances, as well (this one from Berlin would support the discussion of that performance in the article). Daniel Case (talk) 18:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comprehensiveness

This article is very informative about the circumstances of The Wall's creation—I hadn't known about the financial difficulties the band was in, and given how much I know about this album, the first one I ever got when I was 12, the album that has become a cultural totem for my generation (those of us who are white, at least), that is saying a lot. The section on the recording, and in particular the disputed circumstances of Wright's departure, are also comprehensive.

However, that does leave me wanting to know more about some other things. And there are other sources that I'm aware of that could add much to the article.

In a Musician interview sometime in the early 1990s, David Gilmour revealed what is now widely known and reported in the article, but was something of a shock when he shared it: that there had been a lot more outside musicians involved in the album than the backup singers credited. We learned only then that Nick Mason hadn't been able to come up with a drum part that worked for "Mother", so Jeff Porcaro was brought in; that Gilmour himself, having written the classical guitar interlude in "Is There Anybody Out There?", couldn't find the right way to play it so he got di Blasi to do it; and that he had played the fretless bass part in the break of "Hey You" because, as he put it, "Roger on a fretless? Oh please ..." If we can find this it would be great (But not easy as Musician folded more than a decade ago).

The audio commentary for the movie is an excellent source that should be tapped, because Waters and Gerald Scarfe go into a lot of things related to the album as well. For starters, we learn more about the lingering Syd Barrett influence: that some of Bob Geldof's actions in the movie—the "wild staring eyes" watching TV while the cigarette burns down to his fingers, and the eyebrow and chest hair chaving—are also things Barrett did (the latter prior to his unexpected return to the studio while they were recording "Shine on You Crazy Diamond"). The lingering effect of Barrett's unfortunate departure from the band on Floyd and Waters in particular is a major aspect of the band's history, and it has occurred to me that Waters is lamenting that loss in the album as much as his father's. But someone else has to say that ...
The most blatant memento of Syd Barrett, however, should be in the article in its own right: the secret backward message right before the vocals in "Empty Spaces". Barry Miles' Pink Floyd: A Visual Documentary would be a good source for the possible Syd Barrett connection, and how the message was discovered, if another one doesn't say it.

In the film's commentary track, Waters cites "When the Tigers Broke Free", as a specific example of one of his original songs for the album removed after the early discussion mentioned in the article. The other band members (and, presumably, Ezrin as well) thought it was far too autobiographical and made the album entirely too much about Waters personally rather than the Pink character. I think he also discusses the removal of "What Shall We do Now?", since that song's in the movie as well.

And speaking of that, the film's treatment of the music should be discussed in at least a separate subsection with a hatnote referring to the main article. The two tracks mentioned above were restored to the soundtrack, but "Hey You" was dropped (the scene filmed to it is one of the deleted scenes) because they couldn't find a way to make it add anything to the movie (and, I suppose, that's why the song plays such a large part in The Whale and the Squid years later (not just because The Who wouldn't let them use "Behind Blue Eyes"). "In the Flesh (reprise)" is also performed with a diegetic orchestra, and I think "Mother" was also staged differently as well.

I also heard a radio interview with Waters once where he gives a fuller account of the phone call at the end of "Young Lust". He had arranged with a friend of his in England that at a particular time he would place a collect call as "Mr. Floyd" to "Mrs. Floyd" from LA to the friend, who would answer "Hello" and then hang up. The first call didn't work because the operator didn't seem to realize the situation apparently unfolding. The second operator did respond to the awkwardness of the situation, believing she'd inadvertently helped the caller catch his wife having an affair, and that was the one he used.
This seems a much more credible version, to me, than that he called Mason. The call is clearly placed to the UK from the US ... when you hear the tones, it's one tone, then two tones repeated twice, corresponding to 011 (the US international access code) and 44 (the international code for the UK), followed by seven or eight tones corresponding to the British phone number. So if the call was placed to England, it couldn't be to Mason since he was a tax exile at the time too. If we found this it would make a livelier sentence about that. This is mentioned in the song article but tagged as needing a cite.

We might also find where we can say how the album was a sticking point between Waters and Gilmour and Mason when he sued to get out of the partnership. Waters was very insistent on retaining the right to stage concert performances of The Wall, and gave up a lot for that.

Might we have more discussion of the album musically? In particular its use of a motif: the melody line from "Another Brick in the Wall"

We might also discuss its cultural impact. In addition to its status as a GenX icon, I think it might also be somewhere that this was the last critically and commercially successful rock opera/concept album (I don't really count Styx's Kilroy Was Here, because I don't think Styx wants to, either). It sort of brought to a close an era that Tommy had started (with some similar plot elements, interestingly enough). Hopefully a reliable source can be found to say these things ... we'll have to sweep Google Scholar.

I think we could credibly have a subsection on its political impact. First, within a couple of months of its release, South Africa banned not just "Another Brick in the Wall" but the album as a whole because Colored schoolchildren in Elsie's River adopted the song as a protest against their substandard education. Given that we mentioned it was a hit single there we cannot not mention this. There's no source at the song article other than a New York Times article we can't get to without paying, but others mention this as well ... I know William Finnegan reports it in Crossing the Line; it's been mentioned in other histories of apartheid South Africa as well.
Later, the Berlin concerts were an outgrowth of the fall of the Wall. I did see the Wall when it was up, and I remember just about every other English-speaking youth who visited West Berlin seemed to have succumbed to the desire to put some cute graffitti related to the album on the Wall. I might have a picture of some that I could scan.
More recently, the Israel-West Bank barrier has inspired some similar activity ... including from Waters himself, who spray painted "Tear down the Wall!" on it, prompting an Israeli government spokesman to say something like "We don't need no education to know that it keeps out terrorists".

Lastly, I think the bit about The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking should go into a note like the stuff about Warburg's later travails since it really impedes the narrative flow at that point.

That's all. Daniel Case (talk) 19:45, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Daniel for the comprehensive and insightful review. I will be too busy to address your comments until this coming saturday, the 15th, but I am excited to do so. — GabeMc (talk) 20:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick note, I wrote most of this article but my prose has, since then, improved markedly. I'll have a read of this peer review and will reply in a day or so. I'm sure there's enough to get it to FA. Parrot of Doom 21:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]