Pink Floyd
Dark Side Of The Moon

THE REVIEW

"There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark"

1973, after the brief period with Crazy Diamond Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd forged experimental albums that would become, for a long time, veritable Bibles of music. Indeed, it's a period in which Pink Floyd had no equals on this front (they would be "surpassed" years later only by Kraftwerk), and the album they were about to create, simultaneously with the excellent "Live At Pompeii", would drastically change the vision of music, for both themselves and the world at large.

No one would have bet on the enormous success of this record (consider that Clare Torry, the vocalist of The Great Gig In The Sky, was only paid 30 pounds, only to receive million-dollar contracts later), yet the numbers speak for themselves: the third best-selling album in the world, in the charts for over 700 weeks, and removed only due to the Billboard rule stating that albums older than ten years had to be excluded from the charts. But what makes this album special?

One thing is certain, Pink Floyd have done better work than this, but the stage impact (the famous prism on the cover) and the musical fabric make this record a monument and a milestone for any fan of psychedelia and music in general. The underlying theme is madness, partly connected to the memory of Barrett, and what better start than the "I've been mad for fucking years" of Speak To Me and its heartbeat, concluding with screams and maniacal laughter that open the way to Breathe, a true anthem to the fear of living, but at the same time continuing towards the achievement of a "Keeping yourself balanced on the biggest wave" death, followed by On The Run which introduces one of the most beautiful songs ever, both musically and lyrically: Time, a reflection on the passing time and its waste (it reminds me a lot of Seneca, doesn't it?), "You're young and life is long, there's time to kill today, then one day you find ten years have gotten behind you" and after all this time, you start thinking about the Great Gig In The Sky, opening with a piano and Gerry Driscoll's voice answering Mason's question "Are you frightened of dying?", "And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I don't mind" then Torry's voice takes over Wright's piano in a true "musical orgasm on Earth" to celebrate a concert in the sky.

Money, one of the most well-known Pink Floyd songs to the masses, interrupts for a few minutes this madness/death pathos pervading the first part of the album, the rest will be pure madness, so it's pointless to speak about each song individually: Us And Them, Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage and finally Eclipse determine together with the previous songs the advent to Rock Gods of Pink Floyd, but also the mental state that, after the success of 'Dark Side Of The Moon', would increasingly diminish in Roger Waters, capable then of creating a forced isolation, a great Wall, on that night in Montreal in 1977, a great Wall capable of influencing greats of the 90s music (Trent Reznor from NIN with The Fragile is an example), but that's another story.

P.S.: From this album on, up to 'The Wall', the cyclical structure of the albums will begin, that is, introducing something at the beginning of the first and the end of the last song that will produce a cyclical effect on the album, like a never-ending story, in 'Dark Side Of The Moon' it's the heartbeat, in 'Wish You Were Here' it's the song Shine On You Crazy Diamond divided into two parts, the same for 'Animals (Pigs On The Wing)', for 'The Wall' instead it will be the continued ending of Outside The Wall in the song In The Flesh? Followed by a phrase split in two. I don't know what it's for, but I wanted to mention it.