Oh wait a minute, my bad. I programmed my reminder alarm for a week early… (Shit, now I have only 13 hours to write a truthful ass-kickin’ essay).

Maybe I could win anyway? Well, the only dumb question is the one that is never asked, and sometimes it’s the most obvious question that the 99% are afraid to ask.

It takes someone with nerves of steel to stand up in front of 100, or 100,000 people and give a speech, make a presentation, sing at the top of their lungs, or dance like a fool.

(I want to do the last 2 items at your show…) (I also have a set of “pipes” that I can duplicate most of the vocal works of Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin…)

I was once accused of having “brass balls the size of a house” for being AIRBORNE in the U.S. Army, but in doing so I had a chance to serve with 1st Parachute Regiment from Her Majesties Royal Army. I nearly defected from the United States Army to join them. ( I especially loved their esprit’de’corps and hated my inept cohorts) when they were going home from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina to Great Britain in 1986… but that’s another story….

Dear Roger,
I fell in love with the wall around 1979 and took it to heart, but I didn’t fully comprehend and understand it for another 5 years, till I had my ” ’60′s ” in the ” ’80′s ” and had had some experience with psychedelics. By the early ’80′s I had researched Pink Floyd’s whole history and had FULLY listened to ALL of the albums produced in varying states of mind, altered and straight. I own every album PF ever commercially produced, save rare imports…

I love the fact that ‘the wall’ is so relevant to this day. Just look at Halle Berry in the last week trying to keep the damn photographers from overexposing her children in the media. Does she need to build a “wall”? I think that those damn shutterbugs should be charged with a felony like “Assault with a Deadly Weapon”. I believe unwanted hounding by the media infringes on one’s right to privacy and pursuit of happiness and it just encourages stalkers…

It’s weird now that the wall was built to prevent the overexposure of one’s heroin habit to the world, but now everyone has to build “a wall” just to protect their privacy and sanity from the same sad world? So what does one do when their “wall” is torn down? Suffer through the scorn and gossip and the whispering that goes on, but never to your face…

Now I have a solution for that. It’s very simple really, and it’s so obvious too. Live your life like there is no wall and every decision one makes will be judged. That way, al long as one has 0 “skeletons in the closet” who gives a shit about someone spreading lies about you?

I have learned to not give a shit about what others say about me. The ONLY thing that matters is whether I can live with myself and sleep at night.

I am proud to say I have NEVER bought a tabloid newspaper, especially one of Rupert Murdoch’s piles of used toilet paper… (I wouldn’t even use one of his “rags” to wipe my backside with. Never have, never will…)

I believe “The Wall” was composed for this very reason. The dichotomy of knowing the worst things and innermost fears (whatever the fears may be, sex, drugs, etc) that may become the most public thing associated with ones face can be really f****n’ scary… It doesn’t help when rags like Rupert Murdoch’s consistently spread half-truths about everything and everybody.

I believe that the wall had a lot of underlying themes relating to the experience of the PF band with Syd Barret and LSD and publicity, not just the experiences of other band members and heroin (pinhole burns down the front of my favourite satin shirt…) I was also really attached to the album “the final cut” (and obscured by clouds, and meddle, and umma gumma, wish you were here, etc. etc, etc. (Don’t forget your solo live album in Berlin at the Berlin wall itself.)

Back to the subject at hand. I want to dance and sing at the top of my lungs front and center in the first row and let the music burst forth from my soul in harmony with the entire band, sort of being the audience equivalent of Leonard Bernstein conducting… The 5 best times of my life have all been at live concerts. My nickname in one circle of my friends is “front-row francis” because they all know where to find me at a concert.

I can REALLY build a show and increase it’s energy and output, and turn a show from mediocre to amazing. I have done it with a crowd as small as few hundred, and as large as 85,000, but my favourite size venue is about 6-10,000.

My concert log includes over a hundred concerts, most of which I go to and find the best sound in the arena, typically in the first five rows and in the middle third of the stage (not too far right or left)

I have been an active Floyd fan since 1979 when I first heard the wall (I was 14) and deadhead (grateful dead fan) and tripster since 1984, and I have been really sad since I missed Pink Floyd, Boston, AND Jethro Tull all in the same month in the Seattle-Tacoma area in December 1988. WHY? You may ask? I got married. My mistake.

One more thing. I have refused in the past to buy tickets to shows that are NOT general admission down front. Too many bouncers trying to keep sections separate just screw up the energy of the show by trying to control people who are trying to gravitate to where they belong…

I think there should only be two classes of tickets. Reserved for the upper floors for those who want to sit, or General admission for the lower floor.

The floor should be reserved for those who want to dance or move during the concert, meaning those people who want to sit (when they are down front) are being a buzz kill to the show, and dampen the energy and flow of the show and it’s music.

Anyway, I am a disabled veteran of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne, who would be lucky to scrounge up $20 for a ticket to your show, so $200 is just too astronomically expensive for my budget.

I am partially disabled, but my girlfriend is 100% disabled, having gotten juvenile diabetes at age 11 and had a heart attack w//double bypass at age 30. Her diabetes and health are so bad; I just filled the 115th (yes, that is one hundred fifteen) doctor’s prescriptions in less than 11 months. There has also been no less than 25 ER visits, coupled with another 20 occasions that emergency glucose injections have saved her from having to go to the ER. I can document and PROVE this paragraph is 100% truth.

She would love to see your show too, but again, alas, the ticket prices are just way out of reach. She doesn’t have too many years left to catch your show at another time or place.

I am hoping that she could get a backstage pass (her PTSD and claustrophobia prevent her from being in a crowd) and I could get down and boogie and sing in the front row…

Thank you for taking the time to read my essay, Roger.

Sincerely and forevermore a loyal fan,

“front-row francis”