ON JANUARY 3, the China National Space Administration announced the landing of the Chang’e-4 lunar explorer on the dark side of the moon. That announcement went viral considering it was the first time any kind of lunar explorer was able to have a successful landing on the far side or dark side of the moon.
And when they announced that images taken by the Chinese lunar explorer’s camera will be published online I was sort of expecting images of Pink Floyd’s founder, the late Syd Barrett, playing riffs on his guitar on the “dark side of the moon.”
If you were expecting that this is all about space exploration and moon landings, no it’s not. Far from it. This is all about the most successful album of Pink Floyd both commercially and musically…Dark side of the Moon.
Syd Barrett is, of course, one of the original founders of Pink Floyd and the creative mind behind the band’s psychedelic and progressive rock stance.
Creative indeed, perhaps too much more than Syd Barrett can handle that he became schizophrenic with a “little help” from LSD and other mind altering drugs. He eventually crossed over to the “dark side of the moon” and died an insane man totally out of this world.
From that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English rock band Pink Floyd, released on March 1, 1973 by Harvest Records. It built on ideas explored in Pink Floyd’s earlier recordings and performances, but without the extended instrumentals that characterised their earlier work. A concept album, its themes explore conflict, greed, time, and mental illness, the latter partly inspired by the deteriorating health of founding member Syd Barrett, who left in 1968.
Developed during live performances, Pink Floyd premiered an early version of The Dark Side of the Moon several months before recording began. New material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Studios in London. The group used advanced recording techniques at the time, including multitrack recording and tape loops; analogue synthesizers are prominent, and snippets from interviews with Pink Floyd’s road crew and others provide philosophical quotations. Engineer Alan Parsons was responsible for many sonic aspects and the recruitment of singer Clare Torry, who appears on “The Great Gig in the Sky.” The iconic sleeve was designed by Storm Thorgerson; following keyboardist Richard Wright‘s request for a “simple and bold” design, it depicts a prism spectrum, representing the band’s lighting and the record’s themes.
And that album’s sleeve or cover art work became one of rock music’s most iconic album cover designs.
My first chance to listen to the album “Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety was courtesy of a lady friend who just came back from the states sometime mid 1973.
So one afternoon in her house somewhere in Jaro when her parents were away with a couple of joints the “Baguio Gold” kind and bottle of chilled Chablis we let Pink Floyd blew our minds away and what happened after that is for you to wonder and for me to smile about.
In a band meeting at drummer Nick Mason’s home in Camden, bassist Roger Waters proposed that a new album could form part of the tour. Waters’ idea was for an album that dealt with things that “make people mad”, focusing on the pressures faced by the band during their arduous lifestyle, and dealing with the apparent mental problems suffered by former band member Syd Barrett.
The Dark Side of the Moon’s lyrical themes include conflict, greed, the passage of time, death, and insanity, the latter inspired in part by Barrett’s deteriorating mental state. The album contains musique concrète on several tracks.
Part of the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon is in its influence on modern music, the musicians who have performed cover versions of its songs, and even in modern urban myths. Its release is often seen as a pivotal point in the history of rock music, and comparisons are sometimes drawn between Pink Floyd and Radiohead – specifically their 1997 album OK Computer – which has been called The Dark Side of the Moon of the 1990s, owing to the fact that both albums share themes relating to the loss of a creative individual’s ability to function in the modern world.
Incidentally when an Englishman says someone has gone to the Dark Side of the Moon take note that it has nothing to do with a place or going to the moon it simply means that bloke he was talking about has gone insane, so there. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
