Pink Floyd "The Wall" Harvest SHDW 411 UK 1st press 2XLP g/fold A4/B2/A3/B2 1979

	£		23
	$		30

Pink Floyd ? "The Wall"  Harvest ?SHDW 411  UK 1st pressing. 2 × Vinyl, LPs, housed in printed inner sleeves, which are, in turn inside a gate-fold sleeve. The gate-fold sleeve itself is a single sheet of wrap-around cardboard with the seam across the inner top edge of the cover. There is no bar code on the back cover. The printed inner sleeves are on thick card with rounded corners and a nine-inch thumb notch at the top, and Sides 2 and 4 have the catalogue number (SHDW 411), pressing number (OC-158 63410), and the record number (SHSP 4111) in the lower right corner. There is no plastic sticker.
Both LPs appear to have been lightly played and are in great shape, shiny and clean. They both play through beautifully on my elderly stereo - no hop, stick or click. The gate-fold sleeve is also in great condition, with minimal signs of wear - no rips or writing. The spine is intact. The printed inner sleeves show minimal signs of wear and are also in great condition, again, with no rips or writing. Matrix / Runout Side 1 : SHSP 4111 A-4U TML-X Matrix / Runout Side 2 : SHSP 4111 B-2U TML-M Matrix / Runout Side 3 : SHSP 4112 A-3U TML-X Matrix / Runout Side 4 : SHSP 4112 B-2U TML-M
"The Wall" is Pink Floyd's eleventh studio album, released as a double album on 30 November 1979, by Harvest Records in the United Kingdom and by Columbia Records in the United States. The album, a rock opera, initially received a mixed critical response, but was commercially successful, reaching number 3 on the UK Albums Chart, and topping the US Billboard 200 chart for 15 weeks. It became the band's second-best selling album, one of the best-selling albums of all time, and one of the most well-known concept albums, with a 1982 film adaptation starring Bob Geldof.
The album's cover art is one of Pink Floyd's most minimal – a white brick wall and no text. Waters had a falling out with Hipgnosis designer Storm Thorgerson a few years earlier when Thorgerson had included the cover of "Animals" in his book 'Walk Away Rene'. "The Wall" is therefore the first album cover of the band since "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" not to be created by the design group. Issues of the album would include the now-famous handwritten lettering of the artist name and album title by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, either as a sticker on sleeve wrapping or printed onto the cover itself, in either black or red. Scarfe, who had previously done animated segments for the band's "In the Flesh" tour, also did the LP's inside sleeve art and labels of both vinyl records of the album, showing the eponymous wall in various stages of construction, accompanied by characters from the story. The drawings would be translated into dolls for 'The Wall Tour', as well as into Scarfe's animated segments for the film based on the album.
"The Wall" was released in the UK and in the US on 30 November 1979. Coinciding with its release, Waters was interviewed by veteran DJ Tommy Vance, who played the album in its entirety on BBC Radio 1. Critical opinion of its content was mixed, ranging from The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau's "a dumb tribulations-of-a-rock-star epic" backed by "kitschy minimal maximalism with sound effects and speech fragments", and Rolling Stone writer Kurt Loder's "a stunning synthesis of Waters's by now familiar thematic obsessions", to Melody Maker's "I'm not sure whether it's brilliant or terrible, but I find it utterly compelling." Nevertheless, the album topped the Billboard charts for 15 weeks, selling over a million copies in its first two months of sales and in 1999 was certified 23x platinum. It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time in the US, between 1979 and 1990 selling over 19 million copies worldwide. "The Wall" is Pink Floyd's second best selling album after 1973's "The Dark Side of the Moon". Engineer James Guthrie's efforts were rewarded in 1980 with a Grammy award for Best Engineered Recording (non-classical). According to Acclaimed Music, "The Wall" is the 145th most ranked record on critics' all-time lists. Rolling Stone placed it at number 87 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003.