"I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, been over the edge for yonks, been working me buns off for bands..."
-Speak to Me-
To be brutally honest, never realized that there was a sung/spoken part in the (largely silent) opening track "Speak to Me" until I came upon this website. I never even knew about the existence of that particular website until, literally, two minutes ago. But anyway, the March of 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's most important, well-known, and weirdly still very relevant, album called Dark Side of the Moon.
I feel like I have to post something thoughtful for this one.
(Takes a deep breath)
OK - here we go...
It's a mildly humid night, tonight. The only wind that is blowing is coming from a stand fan behind me, slightly to my left. Seated in front of my PC with an almost-empty glass of water, with "Time" playing in the background - "It's a very thoughtful, and yet inspiring song" - I thought to myself.
Flashback to 2003, it was my first time listening to Dark Side, so yes, admittedly, I'm not going to even slightly pretend that I know shit about what the album stands for. What I do know, though, was that a copious amount of drug was involved in the making of this album - and possibly in the proceedings of millions of lives who listened to this album on their big hi-fi stereo, in their living room, lying down, stoned, on the floor.
It must have been quite an experience.
Anyway, back in 2003, I still remembered clearly this one class, Poetry with Miss Adibah, the pseudo-bitch uber-feminist lecturer, where we were given a group assignment where we had to come up with our own poem, and then we have to read it in front of the class.
Neither one of us remembered anything about the assignment, right until the moment when we were in the class and the lecturer announced: "Okay, so we'll begin with the ladies group first to recite their poetry".
It was one of my 'oh shit' moment.
Luckily at the time I kind of remembered by heart almost the entirety to the lyrics of the song "Time". With time fast ticking away, I put pen to paper...
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.
Much, much later when I look back at it, the irony of it kind of stings. I mean I can safely say that 78 percent of my time back in university I have spent it on doing meaningless things that at the end of it amounts to nothing. Not that I did not enjoy it, far from it for me to regret it - but if I could have done something else more worthwhile back then, I would have certainly done it. Back then, when my family is still living in Subang Jaya, a place that is remarkably bleak and weary from what I can recall, I was still trying to come to terms with who I actually am.
I looked around me and I see everyone else is... normal. And here I am, wallowing in self-pity, and self-doubt, and self-hatred, all mixed together in equal measure.
Us, and them
And after all we're only ordinary men.
And speaking of Subang, I still remember my old mate Pa'an, who remarked to me, aware of the bleakness of his surrounding as well, that Subang "is just like Manchester".
Manchester - because at the time we were both listening to a particular Mancunian band with equally bleak song called "Powder Blue". Not because any of us had actually been to Manchester.
What moved me when I listen to Dark Side of the Moon? Well, to put it in a way that a young listener such as me can only fully grasp, by comparison with the band's other releases, content-wise, I'd say it's not the most outstanding of all. The arrangement isn't what I would reckon to be memorable, as opposed to, say, "Shine on You, Crazy Diamond" or "Echoes". From start to finish, they are more sort of lukewarm and 'just about there'. But what made it significant though is in the theme. It's very grand, larger than life, and very 'out-there'. It's the kind where people high on marijuana goes "Woah, dude!"
From what I understand, it was more of a joke rather than the real thing. Not that I have tried smoking weed.
Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don't be afraid to care.
Leave but don't leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.
Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.
On a gentle note, David Gilmour lets the listener in with these assuring opening line (refer above), like the way a father would whisper into the ears of his newborn son/daughter, welcoming him/her into the world. Then as the note soars into the second verse, the flow was interrupted with a dizzying synthesizer line, harrying the listener along random clips of female announcer announcing flights and distorted evil laughter, before it ends with a boom. Then came a masterpiece:
Well, yeah, the video is kind of shitty, with all that flashing colours and still pictures expanding and contracting and countless reference to the band and the album (the pyramid is one), and the endless stream of pictures of all shapes and sizes of clocks - okay 70's video clips, we get it, this song has the word time in it.
But if you look beyond the cheesy video clip and pay attention to the song, you will be greeted with what I would say one of the best song (ever) from the most important album of our lifetime. "Us and Them" is the second best song (ever).
"And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I
don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying?
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime."
-The Great Gig in the Sky-
Back in 2002 if I'm not mistaken, there was a Malaysian post rock band called Damn Dirty Apes, and they did an interview in the long-gone music magazine Tone where they describe their debut album Ape Kill Ape as the current generation's version of Dark Side of the Moon.
The only thing I could think of at the time was: "how silly of them. Nobody can ever recreate Dark Side of the Moon. Not even Pink Floyd themselves. It's a special moment that happened once, and forever remembered in a lifetime". Thank you Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason, and Alan Parsons, and everybody else who was involved in the making of this album.
It is truly spectacular.
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
P/S: I'm just guessing that these words in the song "Brain Damage" is a reference to Syd Barret. Just a hunch.
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