By 1973, Pink Floyd's early days as a psychedelic jam band were waning, and the band was in search of a new focus. Founding lead singer and songwriter Syd Barrett had by then taken his own chemically-induced trip to the dark side, never to return, and while the remaining band of David Gilmour (guitar & vocals), Roger Waters (bass & vocals), Richard Wright (keyboards) and Nick Mason (drums) had talent aplenty, they lacked direction.

Not for long. The Dark Side Of The Moon -- with lyrics by Waters and music by the whole band -- would launch Pink Floyd from a quirky footnote to end-of-the-60s English psychedelia to global prog-rock icons, guaranteed stadium sellouts any time they chose to hit the road for twenty-five years afterwards.

It's been said that 1975's Wish You Were Here is the band's tribute to Syd Barrett. The Wall (1979) was of course the band's magnum opus, a massive concept album about -- again -- a rock star who grows up alienated from society and gradually goes mad. Thematically, Dark Side is a dry run for both, the original template from which their ideas seemed to spring. The key themes are all here -- dislocation and alienation, societal greed crushing individual identity, and eventual retreat into madness.

This album contains classic lines -- "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way"; "Money, it's a gas, grab that cash with both hands and make a stash"; "And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes / I'll see you on the dark side of the moon." And classic moments -- the layered, pulsating synthesizers of "On The Run"; Clare Torry's orgasmic vocals on "The Great Gig In The Sky" (now that's what I call an explosion of soul!); the fantastically atmospheric special effects sprinkled throughout the album -- clocks, cash registers, snatches of conversation; not to mention the endlessly sampled "Money," simply the most spot-on examination of greed ever recorded.

The production is truly incredible -- crystal-clear without losing the band's sometimes-raunchy edge, and full of creative flourishes. In collaboration with engineer Alan Parsons -- who would go on to have quite a career of his own as a producer and bandleader -- the band created a full-spectrum aural experience that was ground-breaking in its unpredictability and inventiveness.

The most remarkable thing about this album today, though, is the way it flows seamlessly from moment to moment, track to track. It was, if not the very first concept album, the very first concept album to not just stick to a set of ideas and themes all the way through, but explore them fully, evocatively, and without intermission. DSOTM is, in essence, a single 44-minute piece of music broken up only by the need on the original version to flip the LP over on your turntable. And not only does it work, it's bloody brilliant every step of the way.

If you only own ten rock albums, this has to be one of them; without this disc, the storyline is incomplete. Absent the smashing success achieved by DSOTM, there would be no space-rock, no symphonic rock, no electronica, no concept albums, no elaborate production effects, no stadium-sized laser shows, no (and he would be the first to admit it) Alan Parsons Project. All of those ideas and concepts and dreams can be traced directly back to the success of this landmark album. No respectable rock collection is complete without it.

Rating: A

User Rating: A-

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