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*One in every 20 people under the age of 50 in the United States owns a copy of this album *Dark Side remained on Billboard's 200 album chart for an amazing 15 years straight and then for another two when it was remastered back in 1994 *It is currently the most successful album ever with upwards of 40 million copies sold world-wide

Now the question... WHY? Why should one album by a band back in 1973 have such outstanding achievments and admiration even today? Perhaps because of the time period. Look at other albums released the same year by bands like Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Rush, and the Doobie Brothers among several others. This was the year of rock perfection. Or maybe it was because of the rave for concept albums. Or the simple, yet unforgettable album cover.

More likely it was the band's chemistry and ability to make jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring, thought-provoking music. This is Pink Floyd at its collective finest, with everyone contributing. Unlike the band in 6 years, Waters did NOT do everything. Gilmoure took a huge chunk of the music-writing, laying down the chord progressions on "Breathe," "Time," and "Any Colour You Like;" the singing on the album's best songs, Water's conceeding to David's far superior voice; and pumping out what would later be hailed as some of rock's most influential lead-guitar riffs on "Money" and "Brain Damage." Wright got in on much of the writing as well with his keyboard contributions on "Breathe," the symphonic "Great Gig in the Sky," "Us and Them," and the amazing keybpard licks and effects on "Colour." Mason, who rarely contributed, put in his efforts on "Speak to Me," "Time," and the Waters-less "Colour." Finally, Roger Waters put down most of the album's music, laid down all the bass-lines as usual, thought up the album's concept, and wrote all the lyrics. If that's not enough, he made himself heard on "Brain Damage," "Eclipse," and the chorus of "Time." Anyway you put it, THIS is the true Pink Floyd; all contributing, all acknowledged.

The band's titanic success was continued on later albums like 1975's "Wish You Were Here," 1977's "Animals," and 1979's "The Wall," although by that time the band had begun to fall apart from Waters' power obsession. By 1983, the band had slipped to a Water's-solo-project version of itself, with "The Final Cut," and finally a break-up. But never would the band see the success or experience the musical genious of "Dark Side of the Moon." So pop this in, take another listen, and remember- even if you don't believe the hype- after this album, music would never be the same....


Rising Of The Moon!!!   March 28, 2004
 199 out of 225 found this review helpful

Once in a while, a rock band or other musical entity puts out an album that, quite simply, changes the face of music history. And yet, Pink Floyd was a rather unlikely group of musical innovators: An excellent singer/guitarist(David Gilmour) who was, until the release of this album, best known merely as "Syd Barrett's replacement," (Barrett, still regarded by many fans as the band's true musical genius, had recently taken leave of his senses and was apparently holed up somewhere watching the floor relate to the walls); a fine bassist/writer/singer/perfectionist (Roger Waters) still tortured by his fatherless upbringing; a low-key keyboardist and rather good singer and writer (Rick Wright) who stayed in the background as much as possible; and finally, a rather thoughtful percussionist and sound-effects wizard (Nick Mason), whose most lasting claim to fame would be as the man who vocalized the chilling spoken word threat in the band's classic "One Of These Days". An unlikely band of innovators, to be sure. And yet, Pink Floyd was properly positioned in the right place at the right time with the right sound. The year was 1973, the musical revolution started in the sixties was still in full swing, FM radio was in it's infancy (Recently taken over by hippie-types who longed for hours and hours of nice, spacy, commercial-free programming). In a word, rock music was the touchstone of our generation, just as television had been the touchstone of our parent's generation, and computers would be to our childen's generation. Those of us in high school or college spent hours every night and weekend, gathered around the stereo in someone's apartment or room, getting high, drunk, or just daydreaming, pondering such important questions as "What makes Teflon stick to the pan?" (Thank you, Gallagher!) In many of these listening spaces, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon was the album of choice, sometimes listened to over and over again. The mad mutterings of "Speak to Me," the celestial swirl of "Breathe", the jet-propulsive paranoia of "On the Run," and "Time," a favorite subject of young questers everywhere (along with madness, death, and pizza), "The Great Gig in the Sky" (with Claire Torry's incredible vocal-cries of universal anguish, "Money", first-rate blues rock, "Us and Them", hypnotic yet thought-provoking, "Any Colour You Like," sheer beauty, "Brain Damage", the madman inside all of us, and "Eclipse," the perfect thematic coda. All received by us, the grateful listeners, in our various states of consciousness (altered or otherwise), and then purchased, time and again, from music stores. Dark Side of the Moon was the ONE ALBUM that every rock fan (and many wouldn't otherwise be caught dead listening to rock music) had to own. Why??? After thirty years, I can offer only a tentative answer: Most people cannot stand to ruminate for long about ourselves and our place in the universe, yet every human being on the face of this earth will at sometime wonder: Why are we here??? The Pink Floyd, through this classic masterwork, holds no answers for us, yet it is as if they are offering to accompany us as we journey toward self-discovery, making the transition easier, soothing the pain, quieting the hurt even as they force us to see inside ourselves. Thanks, guys, from all of your fellow voyagers. I think I can safely speak for many when I say the road to self-awareness would have been much bumpier if I had not traveled it in your celestial vehicle. I say once, and I say again, SHINE ON, YOU CRAZY DIAMONDS and rock on, even unto the darkest part of the dark side of the moon.


Still weird, but Pink Floyd streamlines their songwriting and find amazing critical & commercial success with this album   October 6, 2007
 73 out of 76 found this review helpful

The problem with some albums (most of The Beatles' catalogue, Zeppelin, Radiohead, etc) is so much has been written about them there's not a lot new to say. For DARK SIDE OF THE MOON I figured I'd examine the record more in the context of their catalogue overall, as this is not very often examined in Amazon reviws.

As I've said in other reviews, Pink Floyd has always been a weird band. There's a reason why they're considered the ultimate space-rock band. And while there are other albums in their catalogue that are even spacier and more strange than the perennial favorite DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (ATOM HEART MOTHER and PIPER AT THE GATES OF DOWN, to name but two), it is here, on this album, that the band trimmed back their wild experiments to manageable songs. And once the general public figured out what Pink Floyd was capable of, they bought the record in droves.

Pink Floyd has a sizeable catalogue that dates before DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. While the Pink Floyd Faithful know these albums, a lot of fans don't know these records, and if they go looking for another DARK SIDE, they are often puzzled at the music they do find. There's a reason for that.

Pre-1973, Pink Floyd was very much on the outer edges of rock music. Like The Grateful Dead, they played by their own rules, and invented and subverted their own musical forms into something druggy, ethereal, and far beyond the scope of any normal popsong. Listening to early Pink Floyd records is like an audio-acid trip, and it's surprising that not only did they get to release such experimental music, with no real chance of getting radioplay or singles, but they got to release so many albums of it. With today's market and expectations and pro-tools mentality of the quest for the perfect popsong that will be the next big hit, the early PF records would never have been released.

All this changed in 1972, when Pink Floyd released their criminally underrated soundtrack OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. The true precursor to DARK SIDE, OBSCURED was recorded just as the initial sessions for DARK SIDE began. Moving away from the side-long suites and long winding instrumentals, OBSCURED features 10 songs, only four of which are instrumentals, with the other six songs being very akin to the DARK SIDE songs. It is with OBSCURED that Pink Floyd began writing music that would be much more accessible to the general record-buying public.

Pink Floyd continued in the direction they began with OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. Streamlining their music, Pink Floyd forwent the rather bizarre experiments that made up the bulk of their previous work. But don't think they sold out. Everything in DARK SIDE has precedent in their previous work.

While there's nothing that truly sounded like DARK SIDE in 1973, the music sounds very much like a culmination of all their previous experimentation (not counting Barret's PIPER) dating from 1968 to 1972. But rather than let their audio love of sound effects get away with them ("Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"), or draw their often fascinating instrumental music to gargantuan proportions ("Echoes", "Atom Heart Mother") that only prog fans will wade through, the band took the elements of their overall sound, streamlined it, and used much more accessible songwriting, but still being true to their artistic vision.

And it is a vision and a sound that a lot of people love. DARK SIDE epitomizes what the band was capable of. Filled with sound effects, spacey music, turbocharged [turbocharted] instrumentals, DARK SIDE takes elements from all of the band's previous albums and utilizes them here. A lot of the sound effect work is rather famous, especially the interview snippits that engineer Alan Parsons and the band sprinkled throughout the album. Paul McCartney was interviewed, but seasoned by years of media coverage, the band felt his answers were too guarded and not as off-the-cuff as they wanted. The "I'm drunk" line was by Henry McCullough. There's also a barely audible orchestral version of The Beatles "Ticket To Ride" that can be briefly heard at the end of "Eclipse".

Pink Floyd always had the potential to be not only great musicians and rock artists but also commercially. But let's not kid ourselves. Without DARK SIDE, they would not be the commercial juggernauts that they have become today. Had they broke up with OBSCURED, today Pink Floyd would be one of those cult bands that a lot of people haven't heard of, but that those who do know them find them very interesting.

And that is why DARK SIDE is their definitive album, and one of the biggest selling albums ever. It is here on DARK SIDE that Pink Floyd went from being beyond a cult band with some rather esoteric, rather impenetrable music, to being a very successful band with the same sonic identity, but more streamlined and much more accessible to the general pubic.









(As far s the whole Dark Side of the Rainbow phenomena goes, where Wizard of Oz and the album syncs, apparently it is unintentional, or so the band claims. Pretty bizaare how well they sync if indeed it is unintentional).


The greatest musical achievment in recorded history   July 25, 2000
 43 out of 48 found this review helpful

The greatest musical achievment in recorded history. That's right. This is it. No one has ever come close since. The heart beat, the scream, laughter, and madness... it could only be Pink Floyd's Dark Side. For the handful of people who haven't heard it lets take a look shall we.

The album focuses on the certain pressures a human encounters in his/her life. Time (Breathe, Time), Stress (On The Run), Money (Money), Division (Us and Them, Any Colour You Like, Death (Great Gig), and finally mental instability (Brain Damage).

Withtin each of these topics resides more metaphor and meaning, which varies from listener to listener.

The album has 3 instrumentals and 6 lyrical tracks. At the time of writing, lyricist/bassist Roger Water states "I was 29 when finally realizing my life had already begun" (Not exactly word for word, but same idea).

As a band, the Floyd were at their creative peak working as a group. They wrote and composed music together, more than any other album since. If all you heard of Dark Side is Money or Time on the radio please don't judge it according to separate songs. You MUST listen to it strait through to get the emotion and feel that Dark Side gives each listener.

Pink Floyd have always been underrated for their amount of emotion they put into their records, and give to there audiences. Any true fan such as myself will tell you that they are almost an institution, a religion, and a following. They have some of the most dedicated fans around. Fans, that when they feel down and have no hope, hold on and cherish this music that they listen to in darkend rooms, all accross the world. It has nothing to do with drugs, it has to do with magic. Magic that enable listeners to know every world, drum beat, and guitar riff. That is what Dark Side is about. It was Pink Floyd's way of connecting to those who would listen. And alot of people have listened. It's easy to identify with, after all it is about human life and what we all experience everyday of our lives. That is why it is the greatest music ever, because its about humanity, something all know a lttle about. Some just pretend they don't.


Might appeal to fans of Space 1999   October 18, 2004
 36 out of 78 found this review helpful

Oh I'm only kidding- this album isn't worth 1 star, but how can I get you all reading all these words if I give it the 2 or 3 stars I think it deserves? You see the 1 star and you want to read on to see how on earth a dumbass could award this life changing mastepiece such a low score! Besides some give it 5 stars without really meaning it so it evens out in the end.

Oooh I liked Dark Side Of the Moon when I was 18. It was so slick and mysterious. You see at the time I was into bands like Queen that had poncey "melody" *shudder* and Iron Maiden who were just brainless Neanderthals. It was high time I listened to some REAL music. The Floyd. Yeah. Totally legendary. And Dark Side is their magnum opus. The pinnacle of intelligent rock. One of the defining moments in the history of popular music. The atmospheric hearbeats, the mellow, spacey guitar runs of Breathe. What a fantastic start. I'm truly listening to the sound of deepest space here. And the repeated electronic loop of On The Run, with it's mysterious spoken passages. What is it? It sounds like a woman speaking over a PA ystem about flights to Rome. I can see the sheer GENIUS of that! And The great Gig In the Sky with it's soulful wailings. Money too, the more mainstream track with Waters in fine vitriolic form about how corrupt the music business is! It's all about making money! Oh no! I'm with Roger in feeling outrage too! And it's so obvious that The "dark side of the moon" is a clever metaphor for madness. And even the cover fits pefectly. A prism. The prism means both madness and the dark side of the moon. It's all so obvious! Pink Floyd really know how to churn out some clever stuff!

That's all great. But that's what I thought when I was 18. Hearing it more dispassionately 16 years later I don't think there's much good music on The Dark Side Of The Moon. The guitar run on Breathe is so mundane. The electronic loop on On The Run? You could do better these days on a music making software program. The singing on Great Gig In the Sky has no form or melody to it. I can just imagine Waters saying to the session singer "Right make it loud and soulful, but none of this *melody* bullsh*t. That's for commercial bands" And Us And Them to me sounds like something you might hear on Sesame Street circa 1971. Us....us...us....and...them....them....them... .None of the members are exceptional at what they do. Waters isn't the best singer, Gilmour isn't the best guitarist, Mason isn't the best drummer... you get the idea. In fact virtually nothing on Dark Side is MUSICALLY very good. For me Time and Brain Damage are stll quite good songs. So a band wrote some good songs, Whoopee. I could list a hundred bands who have written "good" songs. Dark Side Of The Moon ( and Pink Floyd in general) is mainly about EFFECT. The overall effect, the "sound landscape", is what makes it a noteworthy album. Some might find this reason to laud it. I don't particularly. And really, what's the dark side of the moon got to do with madness? The ideas which seem to obvious to impressionable 18 year olds don't really hold any water (no pun intended) to closer inspection. Dark Side To me is a clever album in that it can make you believe you're hearing a masterpiece, but really it's to pop music what Star Wars is to movies. Lots of cool efects to suspend disbelief, but not much else beyond that.

These days I don't take Pink Floyd seriously. I've outgrown Pink Floyd in the same way that I've outgrown watching The A Team. One entertained me at age 13, the other at age 18. In my opinion Pink Floyd appeal to a specific age group roughtly 16-25 or so. Their themes of mystery, madness and whining about how life sucks when you've got a mountain of cash no longer appeal to me now, and there isn't really much good music backing it up. Most Pink Floyd bores me to tears now. Trying to find the substance behind the aural chicanery (or less charitably, "wankery") of their albums is like chasing a rainbow. Some might find this a worhtwhile pursuit. I don't. These days I actually prefer Iron Maiden and Queen to pretentious Pink Floyd. Things have turned full circle indeed. But I don't hate Pink Floyd now either. And really, people like Beethoven, Wiliam Byrd and Bach have written stuff better than any pop/ rock group, and in much greater quantities than the most prolific band. The best pop music is something to entertain you. Some rave about "The greatest musical achievment in recored history" when speaking about Dark Side Of The Moon. I can listen to arty pop music and enjoy it, but I don't take it all that seriously, unlike most Floyd fans. If you're the type who thinks Picasso was a genius then Pink Floyd are for you. Because while Picasso's paintings can draw attention for being odd, at the end of the day his paintings are from a technical point of view absolute crap. I won't go so far in saying the same for Pink Foyd, but really the main appeal lies in the presentation, not the music itself. Similarly people like to eat caviar because it has such high brow and classy connotations. But really it's just fish eggs. Prententiousness is seemingly part of the human condition.

I can cautiously recommend Dark Side Of the Moon to the listener, because it does have some worth, even if nothing more than a museum piece of popular culture. But I don't think that it's because the MUSIC is great. Some- and I mean SOME- Pink Floyd is quite good music IMO, but I need a lot of patience to find it amongst the overgrown sonic weeds of their albums. When people apply genius status to Pink Floyd it just makes me smile. But everyone reading this is actually a die hard Floyder who probably want my guts for garters for not giving it 5 stars anyway.