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Sunday, January 10, 2016

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon (IAS #002)

As you may have already guessed, the update for this week, reflecting the (largely respectable) tastes of RateYourMusic users, is:



Comments are welcome at this spot. 

8 comments:

  1. One of the gratest albums to my tastes. I still remember how I heard it for the first time. I believe I was a seven or eight grader at a time. I recorded it on a tape recorder with the speed of 4 along with Wish You Were Here and The Wall on the opposite side. As you understand the quality was shitty but I remember that I felt that I stumbled upon something BIG, something which needed many listens. At the same time I remember I felt confused because of all these sound effects.
    I have been listening to The Dark Side of the Moon on the constant basis ever since. Pink Floyd has always been my favourite band since the day I heard it for the first time. And yes, I was very dissapointed by the first line with which you opened your Pink Floyd page on the old site)). Glad to see that mature version of you does justice to a magnificent record and the band.

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  2. Me and a buddy of mine loved to sit around and listen to record albums. I bought Umma Gumma by Pink Floyd because it was two records for the price of one. We liked listening to it because it was so crazy and we didn't know what to make of it. The next album they released was Atom Heart Mother. I didn't buy it because the cover was just too weird. I still have never heard it. Meddle came out and some guys liked it but I didn't. Pink Floyd just seemed hopeless. My buddy got married and I didn't hear from him for about a year when he gave me a call. He told me to buy the new Pink Floyd record Dark side of the Moon. I thought he had lost his mind. I had given up on Pink Floyd long ago but I respected his taste in music so I bought it. I couldn't believe how good it was. I thought they must have finally quit doing drugs.

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  3. "Sooner or later, though, you will most likely just have to give up and join the choir."
    Hehheh. I think DSotM as boring as I did 40 years ago and don't see that change any time soon. Dutch fans of the band drool of course, but the general Dutch public seems to prefer The Wall and perhaps even Animals instead. They charted longer.
    Money is good though.

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  4. yeah, mostly just a pleasantly enjoyable yet mediocre album, apart from the great 'Time' and 'Us and Them'.

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  5. Minor nitpick for you, sir. The screeching solo in "Any Color You Like" is Gilmour, processed through some sort of vibrato effect.

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  6. I was skeptical of your exhortation to listen to this on occasion but happily managed to do just that this once. I was browsing through my collection and was almost startled with the discovery that I had all their studio albums except for this one! But that was fleeting and I did eventually find the prism and scatter. But I would not have been too surprised given that my own personal Pink Floyd soundtrack that runs in my head (I hardly ever put it on my player these years) is mostly Shine On Your Crazy Diamond Part VI or Obscured By Clouds or One of These Days or Run Like Hell or something like that. For all its awesome power, Time has a startling effect (how could it not with all those alarm clocks?) even if the intended purpose is for you to just fritter or waste the hours reading a review of an album released 40+ years ago and then go and comment on it in an offhand way.

    No, I am not one of those perverse contra types who will go against the grain just for the sake of it, I honestly gravitate to the other albums and it would be a hard task for me to explain why. You being one of my trusted analysts of this sort of material, I was hoping that you would have thrown light on that especially with your new clever Defense/Prosecution dual format. I’ve always found that reading your reviews send me rushing back to listening to the work even if our views were opposed diametrically (and I would usually be forced to concede your points even if it was a particularly bitter experience for me). Unfortunately for me, this is one Gothic cathedral that I’ve spent way too much time in even if that time was several decades ago. I doubt if I will be playing this anymore.

    I wish you did not have to bring up the Immersion box set, I am going nuts already picking up mega box sets (the Dylan box set has 48 CDs!) and I don’t think I need to add another one just yet. But thanks much for bringing in Mahler. The heavenly (literally, I am not rhapsodizing here) song at the end of the 4th may be the closest link between the two seemingly disparate worlds - and why not, I am talking about the Great Gig in the Sky.

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  7. A band didn't record this. It sprang into being perfectly realized of its own accord.

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  8. Superb writing, as always. And I love this new series. But I personally would flip your general ideas about "OK Computer" and "Dark Side of the Moon." Probably an age thing, but Floyd has always struck me as kind of, uhh, cold and dead (just kind of... I do like "Dark Side"), while Radiohead is totally the sort of "intelligent but accessible, clever but soulful, far-out but humane" group you say Floyd is. I can respect the achievement of "Dark Side" but none of it gets at my heart a la "Airbag," "Let Down," "No Surprises," etc. Maybe it's just, ahem, too damn slow. Drugs!

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