Mendelsohn: I think, out of all the albums we`ve talked about so far, Pink Floyd`s Dark Side of the Moon may loom the largest.
It`s beloved, it`s reviled, it`s taken on a spirit of its own beyond that of its creators to be some form of cultural movement that involved panel vans with paintings of half-naked women riding Pegasus on the face of them. Commercially, it`s virtually unmatched but critically, it isn`t loved across the board. Thoughts?
Klinger: I`ve never liked this album.
I didn`t wish it when my eighth-grade chums were trying to assure me how thick and profound it is. I didn`t wish it in college when it became inextricably paired with a damp towel across the bottom of a dorm room door. And while I`ve certainly mellowed in my contempt for it as I`ve come to realise that there are more important things in this man to be incensed by, I don`t especially like it now.
I`ve now listened to it various times in planning for this piece, and around the better I can say about it is that sonically it`s rather impressive, making it far and by Alan Parsons` finest achievement (sorry, I Robot).
Mendelsohn: Finally, an album you don`t like. Personally, I think Dark Side may be the complete rock record. All killer-no filler! But before we get into that, I want some clarification. Is your disdain directed at just Dark Side or is it Pink Floyd in general?
Klinger: I`m the kind of someone who thinks that Pink Floyd never fully recovered from losing Syd Barrett. But I do remember thinking "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II" was fun when it was a hit-you know, because I was 11 and I thought school was boring. What does that say?
Since then, I`ve revisited most of their catalog, and I`m fain to think that most of their 1970s output is purely for the bean bag chair. I make this is something kindred to rock heresy, but I don`t care. To my ears, Dark Side of the Moon lacks much in the way of punch. Oomph. Zazz.Mendelsohn: For real? What are you smoke? Or perhaps the job is that you aren`t smoking. I believe you should pass some more time with Dave from accounting; he might be capable to up your taste for bean bag chairs with a pair of his famous brownies.
Dark Side is not a thinking man`s record by any load of the imagination. But I disagree that it lacks Oomph and/or Zazz. If you are looking for both please consider, for a moment, possibly the two finest rock instrumentals of all time, "The Great Gig in the Sky" and "Any Color You Like" .
On the "Great Gig in the Sky," you get a meandering, introspective piano juxtaposed with the soaring vocal wail, courtesy of Clare Torry, and if that doesn`t get an emotional response, you`re probably dead. In which type you might need to get on board "Any Colour You Like", which is the totality of Pink Floyd`s psychedelic noodling condensed down into three minutes of interstellar funk and the perfect way to provide this astral plane.
Klinger: Perhaps I`m not defining my terms clearly. The words "oomph" and "meandering" should never be exploited to relate to the like thing. Also, the instrumental shares are a big part of my problem with this album as I hear to it today. Waters and Co. consistently take forever to get to the freaking point-even the actual songs go on for considerably over two minutes before anything actually happens. And when you drop in these noodly bits where they all make spaceman noises for 5 minutes . . . well, let`s just say you truly want to be in a certain form of mind to enjoy this, and I am almost never in that form of mind.
Mendelsohn: So you don`t wish me to clear this doobie? I don`t mind waiting a couple minutes for songs to get where they are going, especially when the reward is as well as what the Floyd serves up. But what do you expect? Have you listened to the dirt these guys put out before this record? It`s nothing but spacemen noodling backed by trance-inducing drum tracks. And then, out of nowhere, they put out this album that intersperses all that oblique wankery with honest-to-goodness rock infused with large doses of pop, funk, and soul. It`s not mind-blowing (unless your mind is blown) but it was a vast step forward for this group, almost transcendent in the way it came together and so broke upon the public consciousness, and it was something they were never able to re-capture despite the later success of the most pretentious rock album ever, The Wall.
Don`t let your misgivings about the civilization that surrounds this album inhibit your willingness to let it into your heart. Let it in, Klinger. Just turn off your attic and let these 42 minutes of rock wash over you. You can`t think about it too hard-that`s the key (which is also why it`s so popular with a certain section of the music-consuming populace).
Klinger: I`ve tried, Mendelsohn. Lord knows I`ve tried. But it just ain`t happening. It must simply be the way my mind works. Most of the sentence I take a small sonic propulsion. I need the music to keep popping and moving forward, even when the music itself is quiet (it`s why I can listen to, say, Bill Evans all day long). It`s not much that I can just zone out to Logan`s Run noises, not to observe a lead that features a whole minute of naught but clock sound effects (you know, because the song`s called "Time"! Get it?).
And yet when I can get my head to fall into its metaphorical bean bag chair for some chillaxin`, Dark Side has that look of dour alienation that I simply can`t get behind-the same tone that made OK Computer such a hard sell for me.
Mendelsohn: Klinger, that solid minute of clock noise is an important component of this album. It serves not merely as a build-up, a prelude if you will, but likewise as a metaphor for the affliction of the human shape and our inability to see the drive power of existence-the transition of time. Despite our best efforts to harness it in, to make it, to throw it a look that we might perceive to see it, time stops for no man. The Floyd understood this, man-that`s what all those clock noises represent. By making you look through all that tick-tocking, they were making you reconsider the signification of meter and the way it controls us by allowing us to mean we see it.
I`m just kidding. They were more than likely all stoned out of their gourds and having a joke with the tape recorder. But I remember your objection raises an important tip that we really haven`t addressed in this exercise yet. Music is a subjective experience. As often as we would wish to be capable to measure it, to put it in a lean and put each album its place, everyone will discover each piece differently.
As a species we reach for some form of shared experience and while things like music, time or money can offer a mistaken sensation of that, in the end, it comes down to your singular existence. There are very few albums that can even scratching the rise of such an idea, the feeling that we truly are all only in our own heads. Some people don`t like looking into the mirror of Dark Side of the Moon. For others it provides a welcome escape, a wise nod and a wink. But I reckon that the bulk of folk who know this album love it because it goes down so well while sitting in a bean bag chair.
Klinger: I get it, man-it`s like how some people can read War and Peace and get away thinking it`s a mere adventure story, while others can learn the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe. Heavy.
But I guess it`s the solipsism you describe that`s a big region of what makes Dark Side a turn-off for me. Even so, as I`ve dug into this album in training for this piece, I must confess to enjoying some of the beep-boopery here, especially while I`m driving. But so I get concerned-should I really be listening to this while I`m driving?
Mendelsohn: Friends don`t let friends Dark Face and drive. Seriously, it`s not a just idea-time was you`d get 20 to life if you were caught doing that in Nevada.
Klinger: But the twinkling, Mendelsohn, it`s so beautiful . . .
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