I want to talk about this album, because it's been one of my favorites for about 12 or 13 years, and because I have always known that whatever it is about this album that appeals to me, it will not translate to others at all. I would never recommend this album to anyone, and I would never make a copy of it or put any of the songs on a mix. Yet I have been obsessed with it for over a third of my life.

The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking was the first solo album from Roger Waters after he split up wth Pink Floyd, and in fact, Roger Waters presented the idea to his bandmates at the same time he presented them with The Wall, but they rejected it. Like many of the Pink Floyd releases, this album is a "concept album." Each of the songs titles is a time followed by a parenthetical subtitle, beginning with the first track, "4:30 A.M. (Apparently They Were Travelling Abroad)" and ending with "5:11 A.M. (The Moment of Clarity)" The songs unfold in real time, and tell the story of a man having a dream.

It's a dumb idea, yes. Yet somehow, Roger Waters convinced Eric Clapton to rip it up on guitar, which he does incredibly.

The dream starts with the man and his wife travelling on a road trip through Germany. They pick up a couple of hitch hikers, and somehow, when the wife and the guy hitch hiker fall asleep, the guy screws the hot girl hitch hiker. We hear the great/stupid line:

"Fixed on the front of her Fassbinder face was the kind of a smile that only a rather dull child could have drawn while attempting a graveyard in the moonlight."

Suddenly, then, we're thrust into a chase scene with "Arabs with Knives at the Foot of the Bed," which somehow eventually morphs into a great single, "4:41 A.M. (Sexual Revolution)," that contains the ultra-sexy line:

"Hey, girl, as I've always said I prefer your lips red, not what the good Lord made, but what he intended."

And yet ends with the line:

"I awoke in a fever
the bedclothes were all soaked in sweat.
She said 'You've been having a nightmare,
and it's not over yet.'
She picked up the doggie in the window,
the one with the waggily tail,
and she put him to bed
between two bits of ... bread."

WTF? After the word, "bread," we hear the sound of the woman eating a sandwich. I repeat, WTF?

"4:50 A.M (Go Fishing)" is by far my favorite song on the album, and even prompted me to take a road trip to Devil's Tower back in 1996. In this portion of the dream, the man packs up his wife and kids, and "a trunk full of books about everything: about solar devices and how nice natural childbirth is," and moves to the wilderness of Wyoming. They build a cabin, and rough it:

"We cut down some trees, and trailed our ideals through the forest glade. We dammed up the stream and the kids cooled their heels in the fishing pool we made. We held hands and we exchanged bands and we practically lived off the land."

Things soon go south for the young couple, however. The kids catch bronchitis, which probably marks the first and only time the word "bronchitis" is ever used in a rock song. The wife has an affair with a "friend from the east, rot his soul." The couple splits up, they abandon the cabin, and the man sets out on the road, hitch hiking of course.

After the song with the best title, "4:58 A.M. (Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin)," we get another single, "5:01 A.M. (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking)" wherein we meet a Hell's Angel (portrayed on the album by Jack Palance, who at the time this album was recorded was also aptly hosting "Ripley's Believe it or Not" on TV) and a housewife from Encino with "sweet vodka and tobacco on her breath ... another number in your little black book." The man thinks about suicide, encouraged by Yoko Ono, despite that fact that he is "too scared and too good-looking." After some samples from the movie Shane, we're ready for the denoument.

Aside from the generaly weirdness of it and the rippin' Clapton guitar work, there's also the ongoing, barely audible dialogs provided by Palance and a crew of actors, not to mention the female background singers, sound effects, and even more general weirdness.

Since releasing Pros and Cons, Waters has put out two other albums: the severely dated Radio K.A.O.S which doesn't do it for me despite the fact that it contains the greatest verse ever*, and Amused to Death, which by all appearances seems to be about watching TV. He has a new album due out at the end of this month. You can bet I'll buy it as soon as it's available. And you can bet it will be unintelligible, difficult to listen to, and weirder than hell. Who are these albums made for? Me, I guess.

I'm not proud of that.

* "You wake up in the morning, get something for the pot.
Wonder why the sun makes the rocks feel hot.
Draw on the walls, eat, get laid.
Back in the good old days.

Then some damn fool invents the wheel.
Listen to the whitewalls squeal.
You spend all day looking for a parking spot.
Nothing for the heart. Nothing for the pot."