Continuing my “moon” theme in honor of Apollo 11… The Dark Side of the Moon is arguably the most popular rock album of all time, judging by the fact that it was on the Billboard charts for 741 weeks… that’s over 14 years. It still occasionally cracks the top 200 whenever it’s re-released in a new format, and according to Wikipedia it still sells on average over 8,000 copies worldwide every week. It makes sense, I suppose. Every year there’s a new crop of 15-year-old stoners who need music. I wonder how that number correlates to weekly bong sales. And The Wizard of Oz DVDs.
But seriously… it’s hard not to like this album. It runs the gamut of just about every human emotion and experience, it’s beautifully written and (especially for 1973) masterfully produced. And in my own experience, it has healing properties: both when I was suffering a particularly nasty bout of food poisoning and when I was experiencing withdrawal from quitting caffeine cold turkey, I found the only thing that soothed my misery was lying on the floor in the dark, listening to The Dark Side of the Moon through headphones.
I was hoping to find some nice film of the band performing some of this material live back in the day. Unfortunately there’s a frustrating dearth of such footage on YouTube. The best I could get was the low-key jamming of Any Colour You Like. Not bad, but I really wanted one of my two favorite tracks from the album, “Us and Them” or “Breathe.” So I had to settle for this latter-day performance by Dave Gilmour, half of Nick Mason (since he only seems to be half there anymore), and their legions of hired musicians. Certainly it’s not a bad performance, but Pink Floyd’s volatile interpersonal relationships (and Rick Wright’s death) means we’ll never again see the classic ’70s lineup performing together.
Pink Floyd is a band that polarizes its fans (almost as much as it polarizes itself). People who are more into ’60s psychedelia prefer the early years — ideally featuring Syd Barrett — and those who are more into prog (or at least concept albums, or at least better production values) prefer the later albums.
The fulcrum point between these two Floyds is 1971′s Meddle. Here’s the first track from that album, a churning, brooding jam that culminates in one of the most disturbing vocal utterances in all of music.
Here’s another track iTunes turned up on a random shuffle today.
If asked to cite the most commercially successful prog rock album of all time, the first two albums that would probably come to mind are both by Pink Floyd: 1973′s Dark Side of the Moon and 1979′s The Wall. These two albums bookend Floyd’s peak period of creative and commercial success, and both are unqualified five-star classics.
The Wall, of course, also became every high school stoner’s favorite movie, a 1982 feature starring Bob Geldof as “Pink.” It’s a disturbing trip into the festering psychosis of a rock star driven over the edge by life on the road and inside the corporate music machine. This clip is one of the most troubling scenes in the film, and it perfectly encapsulates the artistic success of the movie as the ultimate music video. Pink, the character, rarely speaks. He lashes out at the world around him and the unfortunate prostitute who happens to be in his hotel room when he cracks. The voice of Roger Waters in the song becomes the voice in Pink’s head, crying for help, screaming to get out, and yet silenced by the mental wall Pink has defensively constructed around his subconscious. He can’t speak, so he acts, rashly and without explanation.
