To Kill The Child / Leaving Beirut [Single, Limited Edition, Maxi, Import]

Roger Waters has to be my favourite music artist of all time.Its been too long since he last released any new material and now he is back with two great new songs.The music here is very similar to his previous work on Amused To Death an album which to my opinion has been very under rated.The lyrics on both songs generally critisises Bush and Blair for the war on Iraq.The only disapointing thing is that he has only relesaed two songs but i am hoping that a new album will be on the way soon.

Originally an on-line release only available on sonymusic.co.jp, this is an extremely rare peice of new music from the creative genius behind 'Dark Side Of The Moon'.

'Leaving Beirut' is a big part of the Roger Waters live shows over the past two years. It tells the story of a Lebanese family who took Roger in when his car had broken down whilst driving from Iraq and showed him extreme generosity with their hospitality and kindness. He is merely asking the question, do we the public of the Western World have the right perception of a vast majority of Arab families?

It's a well known fact that the elected few use the media to manipulate what we should be thinking. The current American Administration get's a hammering from the sharp witted Waters in venemous mode with lyrics such as "are these the people we should bomb? Are we sure they mean us harm?" and "oh George, that Texas education must have ****** you up when you were very small"

Roger narrates the story from each sung verse giving us the full detailed account of his strange encounter, backing vocals are from his resident singers Carol Kenyon, Katie Kissoon and PP Arnold and the whole piece is 12.28 long.

'To Kill The Child' is an observation that mankind seems to attempt to destroy anything that resonates change, love or even peace with links to Jesus, Jehovah and Buddah and questions "is it anger or envy, profit or loss that we would choose to kill the child?"

I'm a fan of Roger, he tries to make sense of the madness around us and he's not afraid of voicing his opinion. Originally released in 2004 there's been little movement in terms of new material 'Ca Ira' asside. Having just seen him at Earls Court reunited with Nick Mason on stage, I definately got the feeling that he is totally enjoying his music again.

The tour programme hinted of a new album in the pipeline and that he would be 'open to offers' for working with Gilmour and Wright again just to "draw a line under what was a great collaboration". Sadly this will now not happen after the tragic death of Richard.

In the past two years I have seen Roger Waters' marvellous stage show five times; last month's show in Liverpool was raucous and memorable, while the shows at the 02 were sonically magnificent. But each time he starts up Leaving Beirut, with his patronising introduction, I can hardly believe this is the same genius who has created ALL the other music, all of which I adore, from The Wall to Radio Kaos and beyond. The lyrics are simply dreadful and don't even work as parody. Never mind 'George, oh George' , we should be singing 'Roger oh Roger, please play something else'!!! The Guardian newspaper hailed the live concert as brilliant, yet referred to the Leaving Beirut song as a 'stain on a lovely carpet', which I think is accurate and less verbose than my rant.

having said all this, I will agree with other reviewers that Roger is my favourite rock star and I don't hold one bad song against him .