THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

What can be said about this album that hasn't been said? Like perhaps many other fans, this was the album that opened my window not just to progressive rock, but to the world of music at large, and thus was profoundly life-changing. I actually received this as a birthday present from a friend who thought (based on the cover!) that it was the next Prism album (they had a radio hit with "Armageddon" back in the late 70s). But although few of my friends even liked at at the time (this was pre-teens, perhaps 11-12 years old), when I listened to it, I was riveted. This was both highly intellectual AND emotional, and it not only developed musically over the entire album, but presented a thoughtful argument (or set of arguments); a concept album inquiring about the nature of madness and the purpose of life. It (almost literally it seems) woke me up, and was what got me interested in discovering similar albums, and I would even say it was partly instrumental in getting me interested in thinking about the big questions in life. Waters has remarked what matters most about any work of art is whether it moves you. This one clearly does, still. And it does so through an almost-perfect mating of the lyrical and intellectual with the musical. Gilmour's guitar solos on Time and Money, I think, to do this day are almost unmatched for their emotional weight (perhaps only matched by his later ones on the Wall). (You want a guitar solo that really makes you FEEL the song to your core? Follow Gilmour on this album). While some question whether Floyd is truly "progressive" (because the music is ultimately quite simple and easy to play), I would say that 'progressive' is a state of mind (intellectual, emotional, political, and musical), and this album (and similar other concept albums) are archetypical of this. It was when I heard, as an early teen, that Floyd had played with Soft Machine that I decided to pick up some of the latter bands albums, starting a musical journey that saw me spend much of my savings on Soft Machine boots, both before and after CDs came along. Is there any flaw with this album? A very minor point, but the production is very slick, and I like things a bit more spontaneous and raw. I get my fill of the latter by playing bootlegs of the 1972 version of Dark Side, before they had written the album versions of On the Run and Great Gig (which they did in the studio). This album totally stands the test of time, as one of the still very best ever made, of any musical genre. I give this 9.7 out of 10 on my 10-point scale.