Roger Waters

Bassist Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1983, taking his concepts and lead vocals along with him. Assembling a weighty studio crew for his debut solo venture, Waters ponders The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. Eric Clapton drips rivulets of blues guitar in between the floating story segments, somewhat incongruously, but Waters' wandering tale doesn't amount to much without a tune or three to hang it on. And even the full-blown chorus on the climactic title track can't quite pull that out of thin air. Radio KAOS is a more successful attempt at constructing an art-rock-enhanced narrative. Resolutely unswinging rhythms and mellow voiceovers from archetypal FM DJ Jim Ladd enhance Waters' depiction of a wheelchair-bound computer genius: a saintly hacker and phone freak who zaps the nuclear "Powers That Be." Despite the stiffened beat and occasional horn lines, Radio KAOS sounds exactly like a transmission from another time. That's a large part of its appeal, too.

Waters commemorated the fall of communism by re-creating Pink Floyd's 1979 concept rock opus at the Berlins Wall with an all-star cast: Bryan Adams, Joni Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper, Sinéad O'Connor, and the Scorpions all joined in the fun. The souvenir live album's more a pleasant reminder of an exciting moment in history than a statement of lasting artistic worth. Waters' most piercing indictment of modern society to date, Amused to Death reaches a positively corrosive level of irony on "What God Wants" and "Perfect Sense." The choice of Jeff Beck as stunt guitarist is inspired, but the melody quotient remains low, and Waters' voice sounds ravaged.

More than a decade later, fans are still waiting for Amused to Death's successor. In the Flesh Live documents two late-'90s tours, cogently blending old Floyd and solo material, while the import-only Flickering Flame compiles random album cuts and a few movie soundtrack numbers. Speaking of which, Waters' 1970 collaboration with avant-gardiste Ron Geesin, Music from The Body, was originally meant to provide the aural backdrop for a subunderground film. Boasting titles like "More than Seven Dwarfs in Penis-Land," this collection of bizarre sound effects and jaunty acoustic ditties is little more than an amusing footnote to Waters' discography. (MARK COLEMAN/MAC RANDALL)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide