Dark Side of the Moon (this time in context)

Greatest things of all time lists are dumb. But, Dark Side of the Moon certainly belongs on all of them. This is the first Waters album. By that i mean, he came up with the idea that all the songs should be written about a single idea: things that make us mad.

This was an album written to be performed as their next tour, assembled on the road by playing it bits at a time. They bought some new gear (9 tons worth to be exact), moved rehearsals from a Rolling Stones warehouse to the Rainbow Theater, and premiered the whole thing for the press a year before it was released. Believe it or not, recording all those clocks was an Alan Parsons project. I don't care who you are, that's funny right there (Larry the Cable Guy, who'd have guessed that was rattling around in my lunatic of a brain?).

It's about conflict. It's extravagant, but it's concise. There's no beating around the bush, there's no speculation about what kind of furry animal is bustling in the hedgerow (it's a rabbit). These are all the things about modern life that drive us insane. They think of it as generally good, but a tad childishly naive. I take it personal, so let's pick it apart.

We start with the overture. A real overture: snippets of things from the songs you're about to hear, a direct statement about the overall concept that needs no explanation, and away we go.

Roger Waters had a farm, e-i-e-i-o. And on that farm he dug a hole, e-i-e-i-o. With a run run here and a soundtrack there, here a thing there a thing everywhere a pointless thing. Roger Waters had a farm and sat there waiting to die.

He didn't really have a farm, but his first attempt at a midlife crisis was pretty much that simple. We aren't preparing for anything, there's no goal, we're just running around and around killing time and each other while complaining that we aren't accomplishing anything. Eventually we all give up and try to be children again anyway. Humans are insane, and it's contagious.

Black and blue; who knows which is which, and who is who?

The moral of the story is that all the bright and beautiful and good is right here waiting for us, but some deep flaw in our collective psyche prevents us from realizing it. Perhaps, what really connects us is the fact that we all have those negative emotions and the only thing we have to do is recognize them. But, like rabbits, we just dig a hole and sleep and run around and dig another hole until we finally snap. It's hard to disagree with him, and you certainly can't argue with the album it produced.

I've got my plane ticket to crazytown, meet you at the clock tower.

Wish