THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

If mankind had to select a single piece of popular music to represent us as a kind of planetary cultural attache then, surely, this would be it. The unifying attraction of this album is that it lays open what is like simply to feel human. There is not just great music here. There is poetry and philosophy blended in such an organic way that is feels like DSOTM was grown rather than written, re- written, spliced, produced. This is not my favourite album (it's not even my favourite FLOYD album), but what I love about DSOTM is that, for once, something that became immeasurably popular and well-known did so simply because it was definitively great. There have been some comments on these pages that this is not a progressive album. I think it's a mistake to regard 'progressiveness' as relating only to musical structure. Clearly the concept and execution here was progressive way ahead of its time. Alongside Crimson's ITCOTCK this is THE definitive prog album.