Pink Floyd started out as
the leaders of the London underground
movement and from there progressed musically
with the technology surrounding them.
After two psychedelic albums, they settled
into more dreamy sound scopes, so after
a further five albums, they produced “Dark
Side Of The Moon”. This, in many ways,
set the example for a lot of the bands
that followed. Great material, excellent
production and fine musicianship.
The basic theme of “Dark Side Of The Moon”
is about the stresses and strains of everyday
life. Roger Waters later came up with
the idea of expressing the fears of ordinary
people and how these drive people mad.
In other words, Roger Waters wrote this
while he was just mad, not mad at the
world for being a World War 2 baby, which
he has since become obsessive about in
his later work. The Dark Side refers to
what goes on inside people heads, the
subconscious and the unknown. Recurring
lyrical themes were used, such as mortality,
madness, war, greed, stress and loneliness.
“Dark Side Of The Moon” had been performed
in the Pink Floyd live set for more than
a year when they went into Abbey Road
studios to record, with Alan Parsons as
the Engineer.
The band had met in a rehearsal studio
in London in November 1971 and began working
on music for their next album. Over the
course of the next two months, they wrote
and rehearsed various musical ideas including
bits and pieces that the band had written
in the past. These included such songs
as “Breathe”, from the “Music From The
Body” album (1970), “The Violent Sequence”
that was written and recorded for the
“Zabriskie Point” soundtrack (1971) which
became “Us and Them”, and “Brain Damage”
from a demo Waters had recorded whilst
writing for the previous years “Meddle”
album.
In the beginning, the songs were in no
particular order. Roger Waters later came
up with the idea of linking the pieces
through a central lyrical theme, so once
it was all cobbled together it was played
in public in its live format in January,
1972 at the Brighton Dome, England. It
was then released to the rest of the world
in its studio-recorded version in March
1973. Sales by 2000 had passed the 45
million mark and it had been a number
one almost everywhere in the world, incredibly
not though in their mother county the
U.K where it was kept off the number one
spot by “20 Flash Back hits of the sixties”
of all things. The album stayed on the
Billboards top 200 for a stunning 741
weeks.
The C.D returned to the charts in 1991
after Billboard instituted it’s pop catalogue
category where it went straight to number
one and stayed on that chart for over
seven years. So, not a bad little earner
then.
The music has became the eternal soundtrack
to student bed-sit land, the sound is
lush and multi-layered whilst remaining
clear and well structured. A fine album
with a textural and conceptual richness
that not invites, but demands involvement
in the excellence of it’s superb performance.
The sound effects on songs like “On The
Run”, “Time” and “Money” (with sampled
sounds of clinking coins and cash registers
turning into a rhythmic accompaniment)
are especially impressive, especially
if we remember that 1973 was before the
advent of digital recording techniques.
This is probably Pink Floyd’s best known
work and it’s an excellent place to start
any C.D collection. However, if you are
feeling particularly flush then get Pink
Floyd’s Live double C.D “Pulse”, where
the band (without Waters) lay down a definitive
live version of “Dark Side Of The Moon”
along with another hour and a half’s worth
of Floyd’s best known work.
Pawed by Mott The Dog
Remastered by Ella Crew
E-mail: review@mott-the-dog.com
