WIRED.com's Underwire is giving away a copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall Immersion Box Set. From the contest page:"Your mission? “Run Like Hell” to the comments section and let us know why The Wall is much more than Waters’ “whinage,” as Gilmour once described it."

A pretty open-ended challenge, but as a huge fan I couldn't resist. My response below.
__

This is about storytelling, and how it fits into our collective consciousness.

Kids all over the world need stories. They need stories they can relate too, stories that scare them, stories that reveal all the messy adult realities that their parents are afraid to talk about at the dinner table. And they especially need stories that describe the metamorphosis from child to young adult to person of influence -  in vivid, visceral detail.

The Wall provides all of that, through the lens of rock star theater, wrapped in what is inarguably some of the finest songwriting, musicianship, and production in the history of modern music.

In the pre-Internet days of FM radio, The Wall brought deep storytelling, rock rebellion, and social awareness to the masses with nothing more than whatever sounds Bob Ezrin could squeeze through car stereo speakers or the mono Panasonic clock radio in your kitchen. 

Out of nowhere, our radios seemed to grow and swell with the energy of this music that simply had no precedent, no template. It was wholly unique, and yet none of us could imagine the world without it. The stories and sounds were a perfect fit for the times, the culture, and most importantly, the kids. 

I was 9 years old. My dad was a teacher. I was running around in circles in my backyard in rural New York screaming "We don't need no thought control!" at the top of my lungs. 

I was 15 years old. I liked to read. I liked to write. I spent hours with my two closest friends sitting around backwoods campfires, learning how to perform the album from top to bottom on our acoustic guitars.

I was 25 years old. I spent months in band and dress rehearsal with people who had previously been strangers to me. Our musical theater adaptation of The Wall played for 8 sold out nights at the Mama Kin Playhouse across from Fenway Park in Boston. I was, for all purposes, playing David Gilmour, behind a wall of cardboard bricks. I nailed every note and nuance. It was awesome.

I was 37 years old when my childhood friend, with whom I'd spent all those hours learning and playing Floyd tunes, died. The Wall was such a huge part of our friendship, years later I still struggle when listening to it – but its embrace is warming again, reconnecting me to the friend I lost.

THIS is art. Emotional, intelligently crafted art that buoys us through life in a way that transcends the power of individual relationships, while simultaneously enabling some of the most important human connections. 

Roger wrote a story that just happened to be a movie and an album – an album that's been a soundtrack to countless lives. Gilmour, Mason, Wright, and Ezrin filled it with all the right notes and textures. It's part of the fabric now. You simply can't imagine the world without it, any more than you can imagine a world without Spock, Darth Vader, or Johnny Fever. 

The Wall is, in fact, a brick in the foundation of our culture.

Really, it's the most natural thing for someone like me to write about. After all it's a big bucket; music, tv, movies, all things Internet...I could just yap about my job (if I bothered to get one) and the zany goings on there, and even that would qualify, since a huge part of our culture revolves around what we do for a living and how we feel about it.

And the way we feel about things is a commodity right now, make no mistake. I've spent enough time in marketing-related industries to know that any insight we're willing to give away is like crack for brand managers, campaign runners, and marketing metrics nerds. They can't get enough of this stuff. They've even got crazy names for it like lifecycle forecasting and attitudinal data. Nope, not kidding. Attitudinal – man, where I'm from, a guy might just get his ass kicked for using a word like that.

But it makes perfect sense. The more adenoidal (or whatever) data they've got, the more raw material they have to predictably manipulate our senses, and ultimately the way we behave, on and offline. Now this sounds more cynical than I intend, but it's hard to talk about this stuff without pointing out the obvious; marketers want and need us to behave predictably. That's how they sell us shit, and without that, the whole capitalism thing kind of grinds to a halt, for better or worse. (Better, if you’d enjoy spending your days bartering, say, farm-fresh eggs for, gee, I dunno, drywall? Worse, if you enjoy Saturday afternoon trips to Target for things like DVD's, cheap underwear and Swiffers. Hey, I'm not here to judge. I'm for all that stuff.)

Of course, a huge playground for abdominal (or whatever) data-collection is Facebook. And the majority of us in The Cult of Eff are happy to supply said data all day and night - it's what Facebook's all about. I Like this, I Comment on that. I Share this, I Subscribe to Them. That's attitude baby, and so what? The whole idea is to let people know what you do or do not dig, agree with, listen to, care about, or otherwise buy.

But here's what I like to do. 

I like to drive through Cambridge with all my windows down, un-ironically blasting late-era KISS tunes as though they are completely relevant in this Fox News, America's Got Talent-driven culture of ours.  And they are relevant. Why? Because Paul Stanley fuckin RULES and I say so. I say it loudly, through the wide-open windows of a 2005 Honda Element, and that, my friends, is what it really means to Like something, old school, analog-style.

This is what the world used to be. You knew something was hot when you heard it spiraling out of someones car, infecting the masses, making asses shake, fists pump, and square people sweaty and uncomfortable. It's a true measure of relevance - not a collection of passive/aggressive clicks or quips hidden behind a Facebook persona - when a guy in a car, so totally taken over by a tune that's just kicking his ass, absolutely wants to, needs to, has to share it with anyone within shouting distance.

And you can bet your two-tone Vuarnet shades that I'm scanning the rock-deprived populace for telltale signs that someone out there identifies with the stone-cold, teenage-mania inducing anthem that is my gift to the Davis Square throng. Cuz that's the good stuff, right at the heart of being alive and communing at an emotional, visceral level. Identity. Belonging. Broadcasting something primal and seeing if you get a reaction, an unconscious bobbing of the head, or a full-on thumbs up from a total stranger.

It's about being part of a movement, or creating a new one.

But it's not measurable, and noone wants to hear that crap anyway, Jeff! Yeah, yeah. I know. KISS is a big joke, laugh it up, but know this: more gold-certified records than any other American band, and that was before the Internet even existed.

Measurable, attitudinal data. Hrm. Does any of the data we're trading in exchange for virtual community really measure up to the horny throb of Runnin' with the Devil pouring out of a T-top Trans-Am? Are we sharing what we feel, or are we sharing to feel? I gotta know, does the Like button really have enough juice to replace windows down, volume up?

in terms of minute-by-minute convenience, maybe so. But I think these public, searchable mediums of self-expression promote a kind of sterilizing behavioral interference that belies our most valuable - our truest - selves. And that's just got to compromise the abominable (or whatever) data, doesn't it?

I've mentioned KISS and Paul Stanley in this post a few times, but no matter what Google thinks, that doesn't mean I want to buy any KISS merchandise right now (Well, I might). And just because I followed your lead and listened to Chickenfoot on Spotify doesn't mean I'll keep on trucking over to Amazon to buy Sammy Hagar's autobiography (already have it). Now, you might deduce that - strictly attitudinally speaking - I'm inclined to favor late-seventies arena rock artists. But if you want to separate me from the twenty bucks in my wallet, you're gonna have to do something pretty provocative (and this usually translates to expensive) with that data. 

However, if you can actually catch me in my car rocking out in real time to something that sounds like Pyromania, that might just be the perfect opportunity to try and sell me an original Def Leppard tour program or a WKRP lunchbox. Because in that moment, I am all in, brothers and sisters. 

I am all in.