Complex Numbers

But the Sun Is Eclipsed By the Moon

I was hoping something would come up from the depths of my blog fodder folder today that was somehow related to Earth Day, so that I could once again remind everyone that we're doomed and there's nothing we can do about it, so we might as well just enjoy the slide into oblivion.

All You Touch and All You See: ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ at 50  

Close enough.

Storm Thorgerson and George Hardie’s image of a light shining through a prism and emerging as a spectrum of color—pitched dead center, slightly raised, cast against a black backdrop—is probably the most famous in rock history.

One might even say... iconic? Younger Me spent many an hour listening to the album while contemplating the relationship of the cover art to the music. And I never did come to a satisfactory conclusion. Like most album art at the time, I figured it was either an in-joke or something way beyond my teenage depth, like a New Yorker article.

Only thing I could come up with was the traditional rainbow has seven colors and a musical scale has seven notes. But it couldn't have been as simple as that, not from Pink Floyd... could it?

I hadn't tried drugs yet.

There's a lot more at the link, and even if you're not a big fan of Pink Floyd, it's an interesting (if somewhat circuitous) read.

...the band spent four years indulgently experimenting, with mixed results, before it pared back, tightened up, and achieved global fame with the breakthrough of The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.

Some of their output before Dark Side is... how shall I put this charitably... unlistenable. But it did give the world such glorious song titles as "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict," so it wasn't a total bust.

The week of Dark Side’s release, the no. 1 album in both the U.S. and U.K. was Elton John’s Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player, whose singles, “Crocodile Rock” and “Daniel,” demonstrate the two dominant trends of that moment. The first song is a kitschy, glammy celebration of rock ’n’ roll; the second is a rippling, downbeat soft-rock song about a wounded Vietnam War vet returning home.

As different as they are, I want to emphasize that Don't Shoot Me is also on my list of greatest albums of all time.

So Dark Side is likely something that someone would be exposed to for the first time as a teenager, which also means it’s exactly what someone would play when they’re getting into weed.

As I mentioned above, I became a Pink Floyd fan before I smoked a single joint. I appreciated the music for what it was, absent mental amplification.

That said, yeah, okay, weed helps. But if I had to choose between Pink Floyd or weed, I'd pick the former every time.

The album begins at birth and then presents the three major preoccupations of modern life—the scarcity of time, the dominance of capital, and the conflicts between people and nations—before ending by basically asking listeners, “You will go mad and die, so how will you resolve these challenges?”

I noticed that thematic progression on, I don't know, my thirty-third or thirty-fourth listening. Figured maybe it was just me projecting my own biases onto the music, like it was a musical Rorschach test or Pollock painting.

For the album’s 40th anniversary in 2013, the acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard wrote Darkside, a comedic radio play about various moral philosophers (Nietzsche, Kant, Hobbes) that’s scored by the entirety of The Dark Side of the Moon.

You know that now that I know about that, I have to find it.

Few, if any, teenage totems have come close to Dark Side’s longevity and reach. Its claimed sales are 45 million copies, making it the fourth-best-selling album of all time.

I was curious, so I looked it up: the three that beat it are Jackson's Thriller (fair), AC/DC's Back in Black (also fair), and the soundtrack to The Bodyguard (wtf?)

I would be remiss if I didn't point out #5 and #6 which are, respectively, The Eagles Greatest Hits, and Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell, both of which are on my own list of greatests. (Source  )

Anyway, the article delves into the (sometimes unfortunate) history of the band and its members, and I won't quote much more from it. I just want to point out this bit:

Perhaps no example of the mythos around Dark Side is as well known, or as ridiculed, as The Dark Side of the Rainbow, the act of syncing up Dark Side to The Wizard of Oz. In 1995, an article in The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette described how specific songs complement scenes from the first 45 minutes of the 1939 movie.

Obviously, I knew about this, but never could be arsed to take the time to sync the album to the movie, myself. Fortunately, someone did that and posted it on YouTube; the video is embedded in the article I'm referencing here. But a few years ago, NBC released a show called Emerald City, which was—how to describe this—a dark and gritty postmodernist reimagining of Wizard of Oz. It was roundly panned and canceled after one season, but I liked it—at least at first; it later devolved into a Game of Thrones parody. In it, Dorothy (with Toto, who's either a German shepherd or Belgian Malinois, I forget, in this one) meets the Wizard, who is also from Earth, maybe halfway through the season. And during this peak, important, emotional scene, when she encounters the Wizard (played by Vincent D'Onofrio, who is excellent in everything), he's got Dark Side of the Moon playing.

They knew. Damn right they knew.

There's a lot more in the article, but I'll just leave you with this tribute video below. I've posted it before, but it's very appropriate here: an AI-generated music video for the entire album, in honor of 50 years of Dark Side.

"There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."