After several months of delays, Pink Floyd [ tickets ]'s double-CD set "Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live" has been released by Columbia Records. Culled from 1980 and 1981 shows at Earl's Court in London, the clean-sounding recording captures the audio component of Floyd bassist Roger Waters [ tickets ]' rock music-theater piece, which the band simultaneously worked on as an album, theatrical concert and movie.

In an attempt to remain faithful to the band's concert performance, the album offers the same sequence of songs and retains the introductions and interludes that fans of ''The Wall'' will remember: the schoolmaster yelling "If you don't eat your meat..," Pink's groupie checking out his suite, the sound of the wall being smashed. Two booklets include color photos of the stage set and texts by each band member, who discuss the evolution of the idea of playing live behind a wall and the pressures of writing and recording such a massive work so quickly.

In the notes, Waters described how he conceived of the idea of the wall after he spit in the face of a crazed fan at a stadium show on the "Animals" tour. He had reached a breaking point by playing in stadiums: "What had once been a worthwhile and manageable exchange between us (the band) and them (the audience) had been utterly perverted by scale, corporate avarice and ego." Waters believed that the wall, representing both painful experience and a mechanism of emotional security, was an apt metaphor for most people's existence. There were personal motives for the project too--he wanted to exorcise the apathy and alienation that rock stardom had brought.

Like Waters, guitarist David Gilmour [ tickets ] also recognized that in a stadium, the band had less musical control over its art. Based on his experience as musical director for the show, he believed that the timing of stage cues and the gear needed to create the theatrical spectacle still cut down on the spontaneity of live playing. Nevertheless, he thought the show had its musical high points, unabashedly stating in his notes that the pinnacles were "Run Like Hell" and "Comfortably Numb," songs he co-wrote with Waters. ''But then I would think that, wouldn't I?" he added.

Waters' original idea was that the band would play the entire show behind the wall, whose façade would be all that the audience would see. But after much discussion (according to Gilmour and others), the concept was changed so that the audience got a show--artist Gerald Scarfe's giant puppets, a gargantuan floating black pig, projections of Scarfe's animated, anthropomorphic flowers and lips, and a 3-D living room that opened up from the wall.

In Richard Wright's segment of the notes, Floyd's keyboardist openly explained that his relationship with Waters irreparably crumbled while the band recorded "The Wall." "Completely blank[ing] out my anger and hurt," he played the live shows as a final goodbye; his suppressed emotions aren't evident in his playing, a cornerstone of "The Wall's" music (along with Waters' ability to portray his songs' characters and Gilmour's solo on "Comfortably Numb").

Other short commentaries on the stage show and its technical problems come from Scarfe, Jonathan Park (who devised the portable cardboard bricks and the knocker which toppled them) and producer James Guthrie (who discusses Waters' ruthlessness in cutting unnecessary music and the challenge of timing the show's events).

Although films of various performances of "The Wall" exist, Waters has said that their quality is too poor for them to be released--a point-of-view that some fans dispute. Waters continues to give film documentation some thought, studying camera techniques and direction before he films his upcoming summer tour.

A one-hour Pink Floyd television program, which includes footage from "The Wall" show, was aired in Europe. Columbia Records said that it is looking into scheduling the program in the U.S.