MICHAEL CUTHBERTSON
Arts Writer

The year was 1973: a dichotomous time in rock. On top, Led Zeppelin strutted a young and sexy brand of rock ‘n’ roll. Underneath, “progressive” rock was getting technical — losing the dance-y, sex appeal of rock ‘n’ roll. Naturally, real rockers trashed this stuff as “guitar masturbation” and “boner jamming.”  

 Then there was Pink Floyd, who seemed to eclipse the rawness of rock and creativity of prog with their album Dark Side of the Moon. To me, this album represents the deepest statement in rock music.

 According to Pink Floyd bassist and vocalist Roger Waters, the album started as an epiphany that “life wasn’t going to start later, that it was already happening.” Sure enough, the album captures the feeling that life is racing by us. When I first heard Dark Side, I also was in such a place, feeling myself getting “older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.”  

 As an atheist, Dark Side is probably the most religious experience I can have. Waters’ lyrics do nothing less than address the whys of mortal life on earth. Surely, no one besides the Floyd could carry out such a mission.

 The album will keep you entranced, having but one sound break — at the end of “Money,” where one must flip the record. To me, Dark Side is one solitary piece of music. I guess you could call it progressive rock, but it’s so much better than all that. Unlike prog, Dark Side’s ideas do not sound arbitrarily linked.

 Binding the album together is the powerful, almost gospel-like female vocals that appear time and again. Greatest of these is Clare Torry’s vocal freakout on “Great Gig in the Sky.” Before improvising this part, the band directed her to “think about death.” Aptly, Torry sings with a primal pain. Her voice sonically captures how we really feel about death.

 Dark Side gives a more realistic picture of the world than can be found in universities and the like. “Us and Them” dares to say war is just a game of “with and without,” that war is simply “lines on the map moving side to side.” But doesn’t history class tell us war is about so much more?

 Of course, Pink Floyd knew such material was too hard hitting to reach the masses. They needed a message that was more easily swallowed, something like “People wanna be rich.” “Money” brought Pink Floyd just that. The song single-handedly brought the band superstardom. One might rightly label this “selling out” on Pink Floyd’s part. Still, “Money” is pretty eccentric for a hit single.

 The finale “Eclipse” responds to the question: what is life about, anyway? Lyrically, life is made to look drab and mechanical. But the actual music — of swelling vocals and synths — makes life sound liberating. Really, I feel the album’s end is a reminder of our freedom, a freedom to choose all that we “touch, see, taste, feel, love, hate,” and so on.  

 So while Pink Floyd looks at the darker side of the moon, they don’t leave us hopeless. The album questions how our world could be better. From it I realize: we don’t need to fight the way we do in “Us and Them.” Nor do we need to treat “loonies” as outcasts, like in “Brain Damage.”  

 So if your head explodes with dark forbodings too, I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.