Classic & Current Contemporary Non-Schlock-Rock Metropolitan Music

Dark Side of the Moon (1973) - Pink Floyd

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My first experience with Pink Floyd was seeing Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii at the Thruway Theatre Late Show. Shortly after that, my next door neighbor, Patty, got some Pink Floyd 8-track tapes we used to listen to in her room.

No one else around us seemed to have much interest in Pink Floyd until Dark Side of the Moon came out. Then everyone was into Floyd. The song "Money" from the album was even being played on the radio.

Dark Side of the Moon was so ubiquitous that I didn't bother to buy a copy. Everyone had a copy I could borrow, so I usually had the record around.

By the early 1980s, this album was becoming so overplayed on the radio - at the expense of newer bands - that I began to resent Pink Floyd and turned my back on them for awhile.

Somewhere along the way in the 1980s, I did end up aquiring Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl. Yet I didn't actually put it on the turntable for about two decades. That was when I decided to try the Dark Side of the Moon synchronization with The Wizard of Oz that was getting a lot of buzz.

The theory is that if you play the record while watching the movie with the sound turned down, the music matches. The key is to know how to synch the record with the movie. We found that if you synch the opening guitar chord with the director's credit - as Mervyn LeRoy's name fades into the picture - you can actually see some correlations. Sometimes the singing appears to match the characters talking. But for me, the tornado scene was particularly suited to the accompanyment of "The Great Gig in the Sky."

Give it a try sometime.

-- February 16, 2011

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon Original Album Tracks

1. Speak to Me/Breathe
2. On the Run
3. Time
4. Great Gig in the Sky
5. Money
6. Us and Them
7. Any Colour You Like
8. Brain Damage
9. Eclipse