Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" turns 40

[Tusk]

In March of 1973, Pink Floyd's Iconic album, Dark Side of the Moon was released.

The album marked Roger Waters stepping up after their band mate and driving force, Syd Barrett, began his slide into insanity due to drug and substance abuse.

A band without it's rudder, the individual band members, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright, found another level of inspiration out of desperation mixed with their own natural musicality and propensity for experimentation.

With this album, Pink Floyd elevated themselves from just another psychadelic band of the 60's, to legendary status, joining the likes of the Beatles, Led Zepplin, the Rolling Stones and the Who as the best of the best export of the UK

The Album cover art of the beam of light being split by a prism endures still today

It begins with a heartbeat. Released in 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon was Pink Floyd's eighth studio album. It would become one of the best-selling albums of all time, and its iconic cover image still hangs in college dormitories everywhere.

Full Album

The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, in two sessions, between May 1972 and January 1973. The band were assigned staff engineer Alan Parsons, who had worked as assistant tape operator on Atom Heart Mother, and who had also gained experience as a recording engineer on The Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be. The recording sessions made use of some of the most advanced studio techniques of the time; the studio was capable of 16-track mixes, which offered a greater degree of flexibility than the eight- or four-track mixes they had previously used, although the band often used so many tracks that to make more space available second-generation copies were made

Pink Floyd Live At Wembley November 1974 - The Dark Side Of The Moon

The Dark Side of the Moon became one of the best-selling albums of all time, (not counting compilations and various artists soundtracks), and is in the top 25 of a list of best-selling albums in the United States. Although it held the number one spot in the US for only a week, it remained in the Billboard album chart for 741 weeks. The album re-appeared on the Billboard charts with the introduction of the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in May 1991, and has been a perennial feature since then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon

A curious legend of Dark Side of the Moon is it's synchronicity with the Movie, The Wizard of OZ. It was said that

Dark Side of the Rainbow – also known as Dark Side of Oz or The Wizard of Floyd – refers to the pairing of the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon with the visual portion of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. This produces moments where the film and the album appear to correspond with each other. The title of the music video-like experience comes from a combination of the album title and the film's song "Over the Rainbow". Band members and others involved in the making of the album state that any relationship between the two works of art is merely a coincidence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Rainbow

This synergy effect has been described as an example of synchronicity, defined by the psychologist Carl Jung as a phenomenon in which coincidental events "seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality."

Detractors argue that the phenomenon is the result of the mind's tendency to think it recognizes patterns amid disorder by discarding data that does not fit. Psychologists refer to this tendency as apophenia. In this theory, a Dark Side of the Rainbow enthusiast will focus on matching moments while ignoring the greater number of instances where the film and the album do not correspond. Another theory suggests the correspondence may have been assisted by the synaesthetic effects of psychoactive drugs taken by those who then chose to enjoy the album and the film together

Haley performing "Time" from Dark Side of the Moon

The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon Documentary


BTW the engineer who worked on DSOTM (and in this documentary) was Alan Parsons, who had his own impact in music with the Alan Parson's Project. (James Durbin actually has a history with him too....small world huh?)

Notable Alan Parsons Project songs