THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

What else is there left to say after 165 reviews on this album? Probably nothing outstanding important, except maybe for a few personal facts that are important to myself. First of all, this album was released in the year I was born, and although then I didn't have the slightest clue about moons, ticking clocks or ringing cash registers, let alone way-out psychedelic rock bands, I really do think that this is the very album that has accompanied my life ever since. When I first came to listen to the LP at the age of nine, it was because my elder brother gave it to me and got himself the "Original Master Recording" issue, which was the "digitally remastered" equivalent in times before the CD age. Anyway, I started listening and wondered what strange kind of music that was, never heard anything like it before (or after), and I think at that time began my personal relationship with this album. What impressed me most? The beginning of "Breathe", maybe. Or the ringing alarm clocks of "Time". Or was it the all-round sound of "Any colour you like"? Or the ending of "Eclipse"? I don't remember. Most likely it was the whole thing, the concept album, although I didn't know what a concept album was back then. This is not important anymore. Important is that I felt that this was something special, and this feeling has never changed. As a teeneager I began to understand the music more detailed and in-depth, and finally I was able to understand the lyrics which additionally became very important to me at the age of sixteen, when I was a devoted Pink Floyd fan and got to know all their records. Quite impressed by British black humour lines like "The sun is the same in the relative way but you're older / Shorter of breath and one day closer to death", I started to write them down into my English exercise book, just to find out that my English teacher was an absolute Dark Side of the Moon fan. So this was something I had in common with my English teacher and brought me some good marks . Who ever has listened to a DSotM bootleg will be aware of the great influence engineer Alan Parsons had on the sound of this album. Some people, especially fans of the early Pink Floyd, think DSotM being too commercial. Others regard it simply as a masterpiece. As for me, I can only say that Pink Floyd have never achieved anything like it before or afterwards, and neither has any other band in the history of music. It is something without equivalent, last but not least because of its inimitable atmosphere which is more than just the sum of the ingredients "sound engineering", "concept", "lyrics" and "composition". Of course this is the album I would take onto the famous isle, and will still listen to at the age of eighty. Presumed I get that old.