Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
1973
Link to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW-lXjOyUWo&index=1&list=PL3PhWT10BW3Urh8ZXXpuU9h526ChwgWKy
For my final three Albums of the Day of this summer, I am going to review what (at least currently) are my favorite three albums. I'll do my best to explain why. But let's face it, so much of what any one of us loves about any piece of music has to do with where and when we are in life, who we are with, and what we are experiencing at that time. And sometimes it's just the magic of the music playing upon the chemistry of our brains, forming emotive synapses like sunsets and stars melding in a great euphoric sky.
I fell fully in love with Pink Floyd in the early 80s - especially while attending a military academy in Salina, KS. It was there that life begin to show just how dark it could get, and I was ripe for some connective understanding from some fellow humans ... and thus ripe for the themes of Dark Side, which Roger Waters claims to have been about all things in life that drive us mad: pressures of school or our jobs, relationships, consumerism, violence, the passage of time, and and death. My love of science fiction also opened me to all the sounds of the album, from the opening bass drum simulating a heartbeat (meant to orientate the listener to the full human experience) to the synthesizers of On the Run, which evoke the stress of modern travel.
The record is truly an "album," all songs meant to be heard together, in order. The 5 tracks on each side segue with no breaks between songs, and each is meant to be an ensuing phase in a human's life. It works so well, that I have never bothered to learn any of the parts of the album as songs (I always have to look at the liner notes to see), with a few exceptions: "Money" because its popularity on radio has made it a classic rock staple, and "Time" because it begins with the distinct sound of several clocks chiming ... and it's - perhaps - my favorite cut on the album with its line "...hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way ..." This song addresses everything that piqued my interest at the time - everything British, time, the rat race ("run, rabbit, run") and if we could ever get off, and even a "magic spell." It also ends with one of the best segues on the entire album, slipping into "The Great Gig in the Sky" that just sounds like part two, like a human's soul crying out in anguish against it's mind's great reveal just heard in part one. Also, listen for another of David Gilmour's mind-peeling guitar solos in "Time."
The album owes so much of it's creative sound to people outside of Pink Floyd themselves. Take "The Great In The Sky": that's Clare Torrey delivering those exuberant, breath-stealing and haunting vocals. Richard Wright composed the song with her. She sued in the 2000s and finally gets liner notes-songwriting credit today. And who recruited her? Alan Parsons. He who is responsible for just about every interesting sonic effect you hear, the most famous possibly the sound of change, ripping paper, and a cash register at the beginning of "Money." Since this was made long before "pro tools," and other modern computer conveniences, he manually had to cut the tape pieces and then splice them together by hand to create the continuous rhythmic effect.
Side two reaches another epic peak (much like "Time" on side one) with "Us and Them," the other released single (besides "Money") and features a Floyd-signature tenor sax solo played by Dick Parry.
I honestly do not understand why my friends in the late 70s always had a need to get stoned while listening to this album. The beauty of the music, the echoes, the effects, those voice, and empathic lyrics ... well, it all combines to create one of the best natural highs I have ever experienced. Best listened to ... in the Dark!
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