Roger Waters
Amused to Death
(Columbia/Legacy)
You will be happy to learn that listening to the remastered reissue of Roger Waters's 1992 concept album did not bring about my premature demise, but that is not to say that it is not often quite unintentionally funny, . There are differing interpretations of the "concept" at the heart of the former Pink Floyd bassist's epic, which he apparently regards as a masterwork to sit alongside Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death is said to have inspired it, but the writer has been less than unequivocally enthusiastic, and the idea that the album is an ahead-of-its-time critique of our addiction to electronic does not bear close scrutiny. Where it almost stands up is in Waters obsession with warfare and the Middle East. If his analysis of the opposing forces there was simplistic then, it is just as applicable now in its facile way. On the other hand, his criticism of contemporary warfare in The Bravery of Being Out of Range sounds just a little too full of wonder at the technology of it all. A cast of fine voices help build this teetering edifice, including P. P. Arnold, Don Henley and Rita Coolidge, and particularly Jeff Beck on guitar. But really I listened to it so that you don't have to.
Keith Bruce
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