The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking

Artist: Roger Waters
Label: Sony Japan
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1
EAN: 5099750798126
ASIN: B00006SKRX

Release Date: 2005-07-26

The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking

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Tracks:

4.30 AM (Apparently They Were Travelling Abroad)
4.33 AM (Running Shoes)
4.37 AM (Arabs With Knives and West German Skies)
4.39 AM (For the First Time Today, Pt. 2)
4.41 AM (Sexual Revolution)
4.47 AM (The Remains of Our Love)
4.50 AM (Go Fishing)
4.56 AM (For the First Time Today, Pt. 1)
4.58 AM (Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin)
5.01 AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Pt. 10)
5.06 AM (Every Stranger's Eyes)
5.11 AM (The Moment of Clarity)

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Album Description

Import only remastered pressing. Sony. 2003.

Album Details

Roger Waters Solo Debut, the First Recording of his Post-pink Floyd Years. He is Joined by Fellow Guitar Legend Eric Clapton Whose Guitar Accents Help Bring the Brilliant Text of Water's Words to Inspire Vivid Imaginations.

Customer Reviews:

A few words about the actual music:.......2007-03-23

Other reviewers have aptly summarized the conceptual gist of the album, but I'd like to talk about the music itself.

The most striking thing about the music of this album is that, when stripped of dynamics, timbres, sound effects, and vocals . . . when reduced to mere chords and melodies . . . it is essentially the same song throughout! Eighty percent of the time, at least.

Only two songs ("Sexual Revolution" and "Go Fishing") are in a key other than A minor -- and those are both in E minor (which is arguably where Waters does his best work.) Only "Every Stranger's Eyes" and the title track have their own individual chord sequences and melodies, not repeated elsewhere. They're also the only tunes with accessible 4/4 rock beats. Every other song is in 3/4 (think "waltz"), and at the exact same tempo (near as I can tell, anyway.)

The rest of the material (which I don't mean to dismiss) rests on two or three repeating themes. Interestingly, the most common theme is a rhythm-guitar riff you might recognize from John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" (not the first time Waters borrowed from Lennon; compare "The Gunner's Dream" to "Isolation"). Oh, and just to add to the confusion, this was the year soon-to-be-ex-bandmate David Gilmour tried his hand on Lennon's riff with "Near The End" on his About Face album!

Another recurring theme is heard at the very beginning of the album, a little harmonium lullaby . . . but guess what: Change the key, the instruments, and the volume, and you've got the monster guitar riff from "In The Flesh" from The Wall! In "Go Fishing", you'll hear it again with saxophones, along with melodies from "Your Possible Pasts" and "The Fletcher Memorial Home".

Is this wrong? Is this bad? Not at all, in my estimation, because the arrangements display a magnificent range in adapting these themes to various moods. As others have indicated, the general "feel" of the album varies greatly, as does the instrumentation -- not to mention the progression of the lyrics. I just want to warn you that you MAY find yourself thinking, "But this is the same song again!"

Well, it's a *good* song . . . .

Eric Clapton, David Sanborn, and the female vocalists have already been praised -- and I agree -- but I must mention the one great player who's been overlooked: Drummer ANDY NEWMARK. One of the best in the business . . . who's worked with more stars than I can list. He really shines on this album. You can't make an album that's mostly in the same tempo interesting without a damn good drummer! Newmark syncopates and adds odd, assymetrical accents while keeping rigid time. The recording of these drums are perfect, too. Some delightfully menacing tom-toms on tracks like "Arabs With Knives" and "Sexual Revolution". (Aside from Newmark, Waters has worked with several great drummers since leaving Floyd, and it could be argued that loveable ol' Nick Mason is actually the worst drummer he's ever worked with.)

Finally, I suggest it is here, on this album, where Roger Waters does the best and most-challenging singing of his career. Sure, he may have sounded more *pleasant* on "Shine On" or "Pigs", but this is where he challenged himself the most. Of course, you have to like Waters's "nasal scream" style of singing in the first place. He pushes it further than ever, into the range where most males would have to resort to falsetto. At the peak of "Every Stranger's Eyes", he doubles with the female singers to reach and sustain a high C; a very effective and magical technique. Then again, he masters those high notes without female assistance on "Go Fishing". Although he's written better material, he has never sung quite the same since.

I knock one star off this review because the concept is weaker than most of his work. Nevertheless, a unique and fascinating piece, held together with superb musicianship, arrangement, and production.

Distinctive and evocative, this album initially challenges but ultimately entralls .......2005-10-12

Sometimes a piece of work is so esoteric and eccentric that it defies categorization and comprehension. When Pros was first released in 1984, reviewers and listeners who like their rock music straight balked at having to deal with an album that was nothing like they had ever heard before. Well, almost never heard before. A year before Pros was released, Roger Waters, then still the primary force behind Pink Floyd, had created The Final Cut.

Together both albums occupy a singular place in music, and represent a totally new kind of approach to rock - one that struggled against the linear limitations of the form and strove to express a range and complexity of ideas and emotions within the confines of a 40 minute LP.

The Final Cut, essentially a lament to continuing war 50 years after the end of WWII, remains the more accessible of the two. Pros is far more personal, a seemingly disparate and unsettling journey into the depths of human consciousness and sub-consciousness. The album follows a sequence of dreams and nightmares a man, clearly Roger Waters himself, has in the course of one night. In a deft touch that helps make this point, every song has a time prefix to show the time the man has the dream.

This concept serves as an excellent vehicle for Waters to create what he himself has said is his only album about only sex. But it is sex in its deepest and fullest sense, and Pros explores the fears, fantasies, and challenges of middle age: from dreaming about seducing bright-eyed young hitchhikers, to divorce, loneliness, depression and, somewhat strangely for Waters, the redeeming power of love.

Apparently Waters wrote this album about the same time as The Wall and presented both ideas to the rest of Pink Floyd. That the band chose The Wall is easy to understand, for, as band members later confessed, they felt awkward about working with material that was so intimate. Waters was going through a hard time between 1977, when Animals was released, and 1984, when he broke with the band. In-between, he also got divorced and struggled with some personal issues that he still has not spoken about publicly. But the cliché that pain produces passion is true, and this period was amongst the most creative of Waters' career.

If Waters was exorcising his personal demons through his music, then Pros is where a lot of them collected. The album begins with a guitar lurch that has to be among the most dramatic openings of any rock record. As the song-cycle progresses erratically, shuttling between vitriolic screams, nervous brooding and placid passages that show a gentle side of Waters that remained obscured on earlier albums, they create a nervous tension and sense of foreboding that invade the entire album.

In many ways this is vintage Waters: dark, intense, and evocative. But the one difference is that unlike earlier Waters albums that dealt with broad issues, this time the lyrics are precise, blunt. They don't rhyme as the did on Dark Side of the Moon, and comparing Pros to this 1972 classic is like comparing a Dali dreamscape to a Manet landscape. Waters' verses in Pros are sharp, asymmetrical and at first it seems as if the wordsmith in him didn't quite do the job. But as one settles into the album, especially after a number of listens, one appreciates the dark edgy lines, the ingenious symbolism and the powerful imagery it creates.

Given the album's fixation on sex there's plenty of deep breathing, moaning and grunting. But beyond that there is a sense of urgency and sensuality to the music lurking just beneath its somewhat perplexing exterior.

Waters voice also sounds different from the way it did on previous Pink Floyd albums, and here it has a drier, more somber quality. Waters half-speaks, half-recites his lyrics rather than sings them, and in keeping with the albums startling shifts in dynamics, there are also sections in which he does some of his best singing.

Musically, the roots of Pros are pure blues. But, like Wish You Were Here that is also rooted in a slow blues rhythm, the blues blood in this album sometimes becomes unrecognizable because of the variations Waters takes it through.

The sound on many songs is sparse, much like The Final Cut, and at first listen a lot of the material sounds like just filler. But Waters makes the best of the few notes and harmonies that frame many of the songs with his traditional attention to musical detail. The timing on the album is excellent, and the arrangements, sound effects and instrumentation Waters uses combine to give all the songs poignancy and weight. The 3 or so more traditionally structured songs on the album, such as Sexual Revolution and the title song, simply explode through your speakers. These tracks are the closest Pros gets to previous Floydian albums, excepting The Final Cut, though here the sound is tighter and less atmospheric, so space rockers will be disappointed.

That Waters used his hunting mate Eric Clapton to replace David Gilmour as guitarist on this album is now part of rock lore. Clapton's guitar work is masterful, and whether whispering or exploding into incendiary blues riffs, Clapton's guitar follows Waters erratic and innovative musical ideas effortlessly, giving perfect voice and tone to the range of moods the album demands. True, Gilmour's mournful, moving sound would have been more suited to the album, but Clapton's precise and fluid playing is a pleasure. People who attended the Pros concert tour said the music was even better live, though it was rumored Clapton found Waters' demands for precision tiresome. Still, the two remain good friends.

To compensate for David Gilmour's absence in the vocals department Waters makes extensive use of background singers Doreen Chanteer, Katie Kissoon and Madeline Bell, who rise exceptionally well to the challenge. Interestingly, Waters also makes extensive of the saxophone, the first time he has done this since Dark Side of the Moon. David Sanborn is the man he chose on this album, and what a good choice it is. In fact, Clapton, Sanborn and Michael Kamen, who co-produced the album and played piano on it, got along so well that they worked together to create the soundtrack for the movie Lethal Weapon.

Ultimately, it is the story Waters is trying to tell in Pros, and the message he is attaching to it, that make this album an essential part of any serious music lovers collection. When a man tears his heart out and places it on vinyl, as say Leonard Cohen does, it is hard not to sit up and listen. Pros may try our patience at first, but once inside this incredible work, it is hard to leave it, or have it leave you.

A Masterpiece!.......2004-09-10

This first outing by the founder of Pink Floyd is nothing short of a quiet masterpiece. The album works on many levels. Musically is very strong with Clapton leaving his mark. The lyrics by Roger Waters are poetic and written at the height of his writing powers. The fact that he wrote this at the same time as 'The Wall' may have something to do with it. Also, go to ROGER-WATERS.COM (Written in Sept. 2004) and hear two new songs by Roger Waters for FREE. These songs are written after a decade of silence.

Surface Skimmers Beware.......2003-11-11

I greatly appreciated the remastering of this album. My complaint from the very beginning was that the first run sounded okay, but that subsequent copies always seemed muddy. This CD goes a long way towards correcting that.

This album is not for everyone. If your first exposure to Pink Floyd was anything by Gilmour & Ezrin's "Pink Floyd, Incorporated", you'll be sorely disappointed by this album .If, however, you grew up listening to Pink Floyd with Roger Waters, you'll be okay. This is definitely not a Pink Floyd album. It was written around the same time as The Wall, so there are similarities, but purists would complain that it suffers from the absence of Gilmour, Mason and Wright (who for some purists were always the elements that rounded out Waters' pathos). Eric Clapton more than makes up for that.

I'm not going to claim that this album is easily approachable. It's not. It's a great album, but it's an immersive experience, and as such requires more of the listener's concentration that most people are comfortable with. I rarely put this album on unless I intend to listen to it in its entirety. Its scope is much more personal than most of Waters' other work, which is (Amused To Death, for example) more global. I would recommend approaching this album with an open mind. If you're looking for a quick shot of pop candy, talk to Mr. Gilmour. If you're looking for a work with a solid underpinning, then give this a chance. You won't regret it, and the remastering brings out a lot of the ambience.

Music Album:

Music Album

Music Album

Music CD

Night Waltz ~ Keiko Matsui

Thank You...For F.U.M.L. (Funking Up My Life) ~ Donald Byrd

Custom Taylored ~ Billy Taylor Trio

Original Studio Radio Transcriptions ~ Kay Starr

Positively ~ Brienn Perry

Music of Ecstasy & Healing ~ Various Artists

Flavio Venturini ~ Flavio Venturini

Sakura ~ Kobukuro

Voyage to the Sahara & Middle East ~ Various Artists

Masters of Indian Classical Music ~ Various Artists