"Dark Side of the Moon" revisited

[Whitty]

Okay, this is sort of a plug, but it's really more than that. Over the past few months, I've learned Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in preparation for a gig that took place last Friday. It was a type of challenge I've never before undertaken, and I don't imagine I'll ever find a finer rock album to learn in its entirety.

 

You can now download that DSOTM set and four original songs at my band's official site. I'd love to hear what you think.

 

Below are some thoughts and reflections on this album that is truly ingrained in my musical personality.

 

 

 

 

 

I think like most of us music fans who get into Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon was the album that wormed its way most deeply into my consciousness, a subtle kind of infiltration that manifested itself prominently during my late teenage years. It's an album with a tremendous kind of seductive power and those heady years between 16-19 seems to be the age when almost everyone identifies strongly with the sentiments DSOTM covers: alienation, mental anguish, and the thoroughly unfair cold human facts of time, money, and conflict. It's an album you "outgrow"- that's at least the common perception among a lot of other music fans. At the very least, it's an album that is absorbed during so many hazy evenings in a dorm room or parents' basement that it becomes unnecessary to keep listening to it a decade or more after first hearing it. Those notes are in your DNA.

 

 

It had been quite some time since I, at the advanced age of 28, had given DSOTM a proper front-to-back listen. Cory offhandedly tossed out the idea at a rehearsal early this fall- "why don't we cover Dark Side?" We chuckled at first, but then instinctively noodling around realized that we knew the chords to "Breathe". I knew the main riff to "Money", a line that I think every bassist picks up within a few weeks of buying a bass. Jereme knew those haunting opening chords to "The Great Gig In the Sky". Hmmmmmm. We've covered plenty of Pink Floyd in the past: "Fearless", "Astronomy Domine", even the leviathan that is "Echoes". Maybe we

[MattZ]

Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

[mountain bed]

Whitty, you aren't around here often but I'll take the liberty of speaking for others here and say we're always glad when you are. You always blow me away with your insight, especially when it comes to music.

 

I've played with bands before that have done DSOTM tunes (Breathe, Brain Damage > Eclipse mostly) but never have we attempted to do the whole record. Kudos to you all for tackling this record.

 

I think that the genius of the Floyd is not the virtuosity as much as the arrangements. The dreamy, slow 4/4 tempos, the long, flowing organ lines, the perfectly placed guitar note - all hallmarks of the Floyd sound. It's always been kind of a pipe-dream (I mean this literally ) of mine to have a Floyd cover band, but, not unlike the blues, the simplicity of what's actually going on in the song is much more difficult to pull off than one would think. One of the hardest things to do sometimes is to not overplay - the more you can shave off extraneous notes, the more the thing can 'breathe'. I know you know this already.

 

I'll take time to give this a listen (as time allows). I'd also be interested in hearing a take of "Echoes". That tune is not only one of the best album-side length songs ever done, it's a personal favorite of mine. The segues between the sections of that tune are impossibly smooth, and pointed the Floyd in the direction that eventually birthed DSOTM - still one of the great records ever made. I've always been fond of saying that "Pepper" was the record that began the psychedelic revolution and DSOTM was the final chapter of that moment in time.

 

Once again, well done man.

[Whitty]

Thanks mountain bed for the kind words. Writing and music are two of my greatest passions, and when they happen to intersect, I'm a happy boy.

 

Floyd rocks harder at slower tempos than any other band I've ever heard. It was humbling to tap into that power for an evening. I don't have a good copy of our version of "Echoes"- it's been a few years since we've done it, but I'll let you know if we break it out again.

[Analogman]

One of the few PF songs I actually like - except for the noisy part.

 

PF video blog

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

Very nice. If is really refreshing to hear a 'younger' band play this. You guys don't have the 35 years of baggage that many of us carry for this record. It holds up well in retrospect and you guys nail the spirit of the record.

 

I very clearly remember the first time I heard DSoTM. If not a life changing experience, it was certainly an epiphany about the possibilities of Popular music.

 

Pink Floyd was always an interesting band; certainly not virtuosos in the mode of Yes or Emerson or Lake and Palmer (in fact, there was a quote from Roger Waters to the effect that they had a light show because it would be boring to project themselves playing as they didn't do much onstage). However, their records were always challenging and interesting in both concept and composition.

 

The punk movement was very hostile to Floyd and that has colored much of the perception ofthe band by those who don't remember them in their heyday. Of course, they eventually became a charicature of the feuding band with a megalomaniacal leader, but they are well worth a reconsideration.

[Whitty]

You're right Crow- I get to conveniently dodge a lot of presumptions that accompanied the music during its initial life. DSOTM is six years older than me and punk just a couple of years older. I'm in a generation that finds nothing terribly odd or contradictory about listening to "Pretty Vacant" right after "Comfortably Numb".

 

Pink Floyd certainly isn't "underground" by any means, but among those of us who were impressionable teens during the Nineties, a lot of great music from the 70's became sort of a club, and admission was gained after adequate consumption of albums likeDSOTM, Houses of the Holy, and Ziggy Stardust. To this day, those albums don't sound dated to my ears. Sure, I may not rush to crank up the volume when "Over the Hills and Far Away" comes on the radio for the umpteen-tillionth time, but I can recognize that this is music that is still a standard in many ways for those of us that still believe in the power of the rock album format.

 

I see the return of singles as an emerging trend, and I wonder if there will be rock albums released in the next decade that will resonate with the same kind of power for future generations the way DSOTM still remains a cultural touchstone for current twenty and thirty-somethings.

[Vacant Horizon]

dude, downloaded a few Darkside tunes. sounds great. the piano is awesome, is it a keyboard? doesn't sound like it. also, the sound is really warm. also, y'all really got the floyd feeling. it's like More era Floyd playing Darkside tunes. good stuff.

craig

[Whitty]

dude, downloaded a few Darkside tunes. sounds great. the piano is awesome, is it a keyboard? doesn't sound like it. also, the sound is really warm. also, y'all really got the floyd feeling. it's like More era Floyd playing Darkside tunes. good stuff.

craig

 

Thanks for the compliments! We get a lot of early-Floyd comparisons, and I'm always flattered by them.

 

Our keyboard player is using a Kurzweil SP-88 for piano as well and a Nord Electro 2 for most of the electric piano and organ sounds. He borrowed my microKorg synth for the synth parts on "Any Colour You Like" and "Brain Damage".

[Sly like a Foxwell]

I just listened to this last night, and Wow, you guys did a great job with this

[jff]

I watched the DSOTM Classic Albums dvd last weekend, which has renewed my appreciation for this album. That's a fantastic dvd. Definitely one of the best in the Classic Albums series. Full of fascinating insight into the making of the record.

 

I probably never would have thought of trying to play any of those songs, but I've been fiddling around with "Breathe" every time I've grabbed a guitar over the last week.

[Sly like a Foxwell]

I watched the DSOTM Classic Albums dvd last weekend, which has renewed my appreciation for this album. That's a fantastic dvd. Definitely one of the best in the Classic Albums series. Full of fascinating insight into the making of the record.

 

I watched this a few weeks ago, and met with the same results. really a fascinating album .

[CortezTheKiller]

I watched the DSOTM Classic Albums dvd last weekend, which has renewed my appreciation for this album. That's a fantastic dvd. Definitely one of the best in the Classic Albums series. Full of fascinating insight into the making of the record.

 

I probably never would have thought of trying to play any of those songs, but I've been fiddling around with "Breathe" every time I've grabbed a guitar over the last week.

It's a nice documentary. The band members come of more as college professors than they do rock musicians.

[jff]

It's a nice documentary. The band members come of more as college professors than they do rock musicians.

 

That's true.

 

It was pretty amazing to hear Roger Waters play "Money" on acoustic guitar (as a pretty straightforward blues tune) and hear some of his demos. Those songs really went through an incredible transformation.

 

I don't want to give everything away, or spoil the fun for anyone who hasn't seen this. I'll just say that some of their memories of recording that album, particularly in regard to the fermale vocal overdubs, reminded me of how magical music making can be. That was something I really needed to remember since I was sort of in an ambivalent phase with my (now) ex-band until recently.

[zebra]

Only downloaded one song so far, but you guys sound great. Will download more or all of it to be sure.

[Hype Repellent]

Pink Floyd certainly isn't "underground" by any means

 

 

Pink Floyd was the first underground band, and Syd started art rock. Research the UFO Club in London 66-67.

[a.miller]

Whitty, your write-up is phenomenal. It encapsulates just how I feel and have experienced DSOTM. Honestly, that's one of the coolest music-related things I've read, ever. Congrats to you and your band!