I’m not a big Pink Floyd fan. It’s like olives. I mean, they’re okay, but if the world stopped producing olives, I wouldn’t be heartbroken. Same thing with Pink Floyd. I can appreciate The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon for the genius that they are but they just doesn’t grab me like they have so many others. My best friend, Tood, who bows at the altar of Roger Waters, has been trying to convert me for years. The fact that I’ve actually put a song by a band I’m so ho-hum about will, no doubt, confuse you, but it will please him immensely. He loves Floyd so much, that he even loves them after Waters left, kind a like me and the Dave and Sammy Van Halens. I didn’t really care as long as they put out great music. Uh oh, a digression and a discussion for another day.

Back to Run Like Hell. It comes from the album, The Wall, of course, which is one of those albums that is as much a work of genius as it is a complete indulgence of massive scale by the band, especially Roger Waters. The pomposity and self-importance of this album hits you over the head with every single lyric. They wanted to make the next Tommy and may have even surpassed it with the album and then the movie that Alan Parker directed. The student is the master indeed. Oh crap, another digression.

Back to the lyrics:

Feel the bile rising,
From your guilty past.
With your nerves in tatters,
As the cockleshell shatters,
And the hammers batter
Down your door,
You better run.

I guess I'm coming across a bit jaded and maybe even hostile to Waters & Co., but the whole "feel the bile rising from your guilty past" thing comes across as a bit over the top, but then again, maybe that's the point of the whole concept and I'm just missing the boat. If you gave me ten minutes, I'm sure I could find even more over the top examples from my faves, U2.

But seriously, though, this is a great rock song.

This is the first of my Top 100 where I actually am talking about a specific version of the song. The one I want you to listen to is the live version that they recorded (sans Roger Waters) at Knebworth in 1990. Now, I’m sure Todd will throw a hissy fit that I’m discounting the album version, but there are a couple of reasons that it’s okay. Firstly, this is a David Gilmour song, really. He plays the killer guitar and sings most of the lyrics on the album version, so Waters isn’t as a big a player as he is for virtually the rest of The Wall. Secondly, the guitar intro to the song that Gilmour does is so awesome, I’d almost just put that on this list. The echo/reverb stuff he does is stellar. And if you ever see the video of it, you can see the fun he has when he plays it, and isn't that the whole point?

So I guess I like olives more than I thought I did.

(I can't believe I actually found this specific performance online! Here you go...)