14. Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW-lXjOyUWo&list=OLAK5uy_l1x-JAx0w53suECoCI0YJtW6VB8DBQWRQ
If anyone is looking for a prime example of what a holistic "Album" is--verses just a collection of songs on a record (which is what most albums put out over the last 50 years really are)--you need look no further than Dark Side of the Moon. It is a rock-and-roll masterpiece.
But it's one I didn't really get into until my adulthood when I was in grad school at Utah Sate. I bought it to listen to on a super long day trip to eastern and southern Utah to set up computers in classrooms for special education teachers that were so far out in the boonies that they didn't have anyone in the school system that we could count on to do the installation for them. While I wouldn't say it was the best trip I've ever had in my life, it was utterly fantastic listening to this album as I drove through Zion's National Park.
Fun Fact: Without Dark Side of the Moon, we may not have ever had the pleasure of watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The band used money made from this album to help fund that movie.
As you've learned from my past entries about Pink Floyd songs, the connection between Pink Floyd and my cousin Randy is a strong one, as listening to Pink Floyd in the dark while laying on our beds was a regular event during my junior year. But for some reason, Randy never bought this album, as he favored The Wall instead. Still, when I listen to this album, like I am now as I write this entry in my Top 60 list, my thoughts always bend toward Randy and my life as a 16-year-old in Arimo. Of course, then I reflect on where my life is now, and I become supremely disappointed in myself. Why? Because the lunatic is in my head.
But then I remember how last week, for just a moment, I got this flashback while looking at the bright red bare limbs of a sapling tree in the winter morning sunshine, and I remembered with absolute clarity how I felt and thought about myself and my life when I was sixteen--in the days before The Great Depression--and I felt this enormous rush of happiness, like the kind of happiness I felt when the Arimo Mafia got together to play basketball at the church gym or play ping-pong in Scapell's basement or play pool at HondoJoe's grandma's house or ride snowmobiles at the Big Onion or hang out in a cherry Hilton tent in the middle of a forest and play Hearts and rate girls.
So, while I can definitely connect with the themes about life and death and the psychological ugliness of human experience in the lyrics and music of Dark Side of the Moon, I also have abiding memories of precious lifelong friendships that remind me that there's a bright side of the moon too.
Nardo
#14: Pink Floyd—Dark Side of the Moon. Obviously, this is one of the greatest albums of all time. It is well written. It is well produced. It is well performed. It is phenomenal. And yet, I don’t really enjoy listening to it. Why?
ReplyDeleteI think it comes down to the fact that it’s a bit too insightful. It hits a bit too close to home. The line, “and then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run; you missed the starting gun,” hits me so hard because it really does sum up so much of my life. It took me eight years to get my four-year college degree. I got my degree in field that was going by the wayside. I decided to start writing a blog…about ten years after everyone else did. I finally got my own newspaper column in 2015…about TWENTY years too late. Heck, in another four or five years I might decide it’s a good time to start my own podcast.
So, what I’m saying is, despite how incredibly great this album is, I don’t really enjoy listening to it because it reminds me of how much of my life has been spent frittering and wasting the hours in an offhand way.
But, despite being one day closer to death, my time is NOT gone, my song is NOT over, and I DO have something more to say! I just might end up saying it on some future podcast that no one will listen to. I’m not dead yet. In fact, I feel happy! I feel happy! I think I’ll go for a walk. And in the meantime, I’ll listen to some music that’s a little more upbeat and cheerful. Some They Might Be Giants sounds fun. [(singing along, happily): “No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful. Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful.”]