"I'll See You On the Dark Side Of the Moon"

40 years ago today, one of the greatest and most popular Pink Floyd albums, Dark Side of the Moon was released. So I decided to shove aside a bit of school work and talk about this AWESOME album.

Following Meddle (1971), Dark Side was the 8th studio album for the group, written entirely by Roger Waters. Waters wanted to write an album that deal with things that "made people mad," focusing on the arduous lifestyle the band faced in day-to-day life, including dealing with Syd Barrett's mental problems that had caused him to leave the band. It's original working title was The Dark Side of the Moon: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics. The band agreed on Waters' unifying concept and went straight to work.

If you don't recognize the artwork, you should probably stop reading this blog.

In 1972, the band went a world wide tour to perform Dark Side as it would be recorded and the tour was praised by the public. The long tour allowed Pink Floyd to make some changes until they found the songs to be just what they wanted them to be.

Each side of the album is a continuous song and represents a specific part of life: it begins and ends with a heartbeat, and explores human nature throughout. "Speak to Me/Breathe" is about the mundane parts of life, "On the Run" shifts to an airport and explores Richard Wright's fear of flying, and "The Great Big Gig in the Sky" is a soulful metaphor for death. "Money" mocks greed and consumerism, "Us and Them" addresses the isolation of the depressed, and "Any Colour You Like It" concerns the lack of choice one has in society. "Brain Damage" is clearly a song for Syd and looks at mental illness from resulting fame. The whole album ends with "Eclipse" which forces the listener to recognize the common traits shared by humanity through the concepts of alterity and unity.

Some have said that Dark Side is actually about the movie The Wizard of Oz. Apparently, if you start playing the album when you start the movie, there are some coincidental match ups between lyrics and Dorothy's movements. Alan Parsons, who helped record the album, says that the band never brought up the movie even once during writing or recording.

A live performance of Dark Side in Earl's Court, shortly after the release.

"Money," ironically, has become one of the most popular songs off the album. It was one of the first songs that got me into Pink Floyd and I remember my father blasting it whenever it came on the stereo. It didn't matter what we were doing - bbqing, working outside, washing dishes, driving the car - "Money" was blasted very loudly and was accompanied with a certain foot thumping from my father. This song's got some great memories tied up in it for me.

One of my other favourites is "Speak to Me/Breathe." It's just a nice mellow song that you can really get into. I really enjoyed listening to it during my summer commute to work. But all in all, this a fantastic album and probably one of their most popular (next to The Wall, of course). If you haven't heard it, go listen to it - you're missing out a piece of musical artwork.

A Memory of Richard Wright

Today in 2008, we lost Richard Wright, the keyboardist for Pink Floyd, at the age of 65. To be fair, Wright was more than a keyboardist, he also played synth, organ, bass, harpsicord, harmonium, and performed backing vocals. He was also a songwriter, though not as prolific as David Gilmour or Roger Waters, and produced a significant amount of lyrics for Division Bell, Wish You Were Here, Dark Side of the Moon, and Meddle.

At 12, Wright taught himself how to play guitar. In 1962, he enrolled in the Regent Street Polytechnic where he met future bandmates Waters and Gilmour. The three formed The Pink Floyd Sound in 1965. In 1967-68, Wright wrote and sang many of his own songs. He is not credited with lead vocals on several Syd Barrett penned tunes from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Wright performing in Munich in 2006.

Typically, Wright contributed to the long, epic songs such as "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," "Atom Heart Mother," and "Echoes." He also extensively contributed to "Time" and "Breathe," and sang alternating lead vocals with Gilmour on "Breathe." But as the sound and goals of Pink Floyd changed, Wright focused more on his keyboard style for the extended instrumental breaks in songs like "Dogs," "One of These Days," and "Interstellar Overdrive."

Wright was forced to resign from Pink Floyd by Waters during the The Wall sessions. Waters threatened to axe the tapes if Wright didn't leave. However, he was kept on as a salaried session musician. He was the only member to not attend the film premiere of Pink Floyd-The Wall (1982) and Pink Floyd's Final Cut (1983) is the only album Wright does not appear on. He continued to appear alongside Pink Floyd as a salaried musician following Waters's departure.

One of the last times Pink Floyd played together (L to R): Gilmour, Waters, Mason, Wright

In November 2005, Pink Floyd was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. Wright was unable attend due to cataracts surgery. In 2006, Wright joined Gilmour and Nick Mason for the recording of the PULSE DVD. In 2008, Wright died of cancer while he had been working on a new solo album. His contributions to the music world have been and will continue to be missed.

Another Brick In The Wall #3

Click here if you haven't read Part 1 or Part 2.

And now, we continue on our journey with Mr. Pink Floyd. We last him while he was at school, and now he has declared that he doesn't "need [any] arms around me." Though we hears smashing at the beginning of "Another Brick In the Wall Pt. 3", he continues to build his wall.

Pink's Mum

Next, we find Pink conversing with his mother. In "Mother," Pink expresses his fears and asks many questions to his mum and instead of comforting him, she says that "Mama's gonna make all your nightmares come true." In this song, we find that his mother is very controlling and overbearing and she wants him to stay by her side even when he grows up and gets married. Mother encourages Pink to build his wall and says "Of course Mother's gonna help build the wall." In the end, Pink asks "Mother, did it need to be so high?" So is Pink questioning the necessity of the Wall or does he just feel overprotected?  [Fun Fact #1: Nick Mason had a tough time with the time signatures that he turned the drumming duties over to a studio drummer.]

We hear a skylark singing and a child takes our attention away from Pink and his mother by saying "Look, Mummy, there's an aeroplane in the sky." The lyrics describe a memory of the Blitz, the bombing of the UK during World War II. However, in Roger Waters' recent tour, he uses the song as a metaphorical cultural bombing and plays animated videos of corporate logos and religious symbols being dropped from planes.

Pink's wife, portrayed as a Praying Mantis since she seems to feed off of him, a trait of female Mantises.

But Pink is on the move (we can infer this from the airport announcement we hear at the beginning of "Empty Spaces") to America for his big Rock 'n' Roll Tour. This tune has Pink wondering how he should finish building his wall while his marriage is suffering due to his physical distance while on tour and the incomplete wall. But the Wall isn't completed until "Young Lust." Technically, the word "wall" doesn't finish until the bluesy, raunchy song "Young Lust" starts. 


Thus, Pink has found the way to work on the wall: cheating on his wife while on tour. He asks if a "dirty woman" would help "make [him] feel like a real man" since his wife is so cold. The real twist to this song is the ending when Pink calls home collect via telephone operator and a man at his residence picks up the phone and hangs up twice, implying that Pink's wife is cheating on him too. [Fun Fact #2: The collect call recording was done by co-producer James Guthrie while working on the album in LA. He phoned his neighbor in London, pretended that he had caught his wife cheating, and the studio recorded the surprised operator's reaction.]

To hear about how Pink deals with this revelation, look for Part 4, coming soon!

"One of These Days"

It never takes too long for me to go back to Pink.

My introduction to "One of These Days," off the Meddle album, was during my junior year. My mum had gone away for the weekend and it was just me and my Dad. We were driving to go see a Caps game and he had the iPod plugged into the car and said, "Ah, here's something just the two of us can listen to." Then he turned up the bass and the volume.

Meddle (1971) - Anyone know what it actually is? I've always thought a dragon...*

The bass line comes up and sticks with you - pretty hard not to since it's double-tracked. The song slowly adds instruments and builds to this echoing bass line part...and then the kick drum gets banged a few times. It's Mason's cue to say his one and only line - the only one in the whole song: "One of these days, I'm gonna to tear you up into little pieces." It's an eerie, large voice created apparently by a high pitched voice and a slowed down tape.

It's rumored the threat is a response to a music reviewer's poor review of one of their previous albums. Or it's a reference to the clips that they used to play at concerts in the 1970's of BBC's Sir Jimmy Young - apparently the boys didn't like his tendency to babble on.

However you cut it, "One of These Days" is one of my favourite Pink Floyd songs. Partly because of its ability to be a really mesmerizing instrumental song and partly because, as a drummer myself, I love that Nick Mason got to be vocalist.

*FUN FACT (11/5/12): The shot is actually a close-up of an ear underwater, not a dragon as I have previously surmised. I'm curious as to what others have thought it was...