Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

Dan:

There's hardly any room for additional commentary on Pink Floyd's classic The Dark Side of the Moon. So I'll just relate the story of my first encounter with it. As we moved from Pittsburgh to Miami in August 1977, we learned that Elvis Presley had died. Rock and roll had certainly moved on from the Elvis years, as the entries of our blog document. I had only begun to appreciate the significance of progressive rock and did not think of it as a genre. But that was soon to change.

One day, probably in early 1978, I was home listening to the noontime album on FM but got distracted. From another room I could hear the sustained low chords introducing "Time," which I had never heard before. I'm not sure if I rushed into the listening area or not, but I did hear the announcement at the end of the hour that the album just played was, in fact, The Dark Side of the Moon. 

I decided to get more rock albums into my jazz-heavy collection. So I went to South Miami and found copies of Dark Side in a pile next to piles of Billy Joel's The Stranger and Steely Dan's Aja. I figured the ones piled up were newly released and therefore the hippest choices. But the reason Dark Side was stacked up was not because it was a new release (like the other ones were). It had been selling in huge numbers since its release almost five years earlier! Duh.

This story illustrates just how clueless I was - probably the only 34-year-old person who had not yet heard such a famous album. Little did I know I would be blogging about it 35 years later. 

By now I've listened to and/or owned virtually every Pink Floyd album (thanks to my boy Steve). Only The Final Cut (1983) was a disappointment, but I probably gave up on it too soon. Even the novelty numbers from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Saucerful of Secrets have an enduring charm about them. I will always remember singing "Bike" with the whole family in our flat in Copenhagen in 1982. Steve was 12 years old at the time. No wonder he turned into a prog connoisseur!

The Dark Side of the Moon deserves all of the accolades it has received since its release. It's magnificent.

Steve:

I was in elementary school when Dan started playing the hell out of this album in our house. We had lots of fun going to Sound Advice (a hi-fi store in Coral Gables, Florida) to sample new stereo gear and speakers, and it was common for customers to bring along their own albums. The Dark Side of the Moon was a perfect subject for such tests, as was Aja by Steely Dan. The album seemed so cutting-edge in those late 70s that I recall being genuinely surprised to learn that it was released in 1973 - a lifetime ago in my personal timeline as a pre-teen.

This album's impact on Pink Floyd's career should be obvious by now - I almost consider pre- and post-DSotM Floyd as two separate bands - but it also had a seismic effect on popular music itself. Similar to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, this was a rare time in popular music where the cutting edge of music coincided with mass popularity; Dark Side of the Moon remains one of the best-selling albums of all time. Albums like this still do occur, but it's a wonder when they do. Both the music itself and its societal impact should be taught in schools.