It was 45 years ago today that Pink Floyd released their masterpiece The Dark Side of the Moon.
Although Pink Floyd had seven albums under their belt, Dark Side put them into the pantheon of rock 'n roll. It also launched the music career of its recording engineer, Alan Parsons. To give you an idea of its impact it remained on Billboard's Top 100 album charts until 1988. In the years that followed, someone with nothing better to do thought Dark Side was a suitable soundtrack for The Wizard of Oz begating The Dark Side of the Rainbow. Millennials on YouTube record themselves listening to Dark Side. While recording oneself might be an act of self-indulgence there are far worse things in which young people can indulge.
After all, I have been listening to Dark Side for as long as I can remember. It represented my first memory of the eight track cassette. It represented my first memory of hearing the word bullshit. It represented my first memory of prog rock.
In the years that have followed I have heard much of Pink Floyd's discography both pre and post-Dark Side. While I enjoy much of that material, Dark Side represents their most unified and enduring work. It is as fresh and powerful to me today as it was when I first heard it on that eight track cassette in Thunder Bay, Ontario as a toddler in the early 1970's.
I can't really say I have a favorite song on the album which only augments its unity and demonstrates it is more than the sum of its parts. Although perhaps the most haunting yet beautiful thing from that album are Clare Torrey's wordless vocals on "Great Gig In The Sky" which concludes side one of The Dark Side of the Moon. "Us and Them" also resonates because "after all we're only ordinary men."
Yet ordinary would be the last adjective I would use to describe the work put in by David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Richard Wright, Roger Waters, Alan Parson and Clare Torrey and numerous others to create The Dark Side of the Moon.
No comments:
Post a Comment