April 4 - Brain Damage/Eclipse

In one of the finest closings of any album of any time, Pink Floyd closed their album The Dark Side of the Moon from 1973 with the duo of Brain Damage and Eclipse. While this album really flows from one song to the next, there are several singular moments that are standouts, but to me, this end has always been spectacular. The Dark Side of the Moon was the moment when the transformation from a psychedelic band to the symphonically progressive Pink Floyd most people know was complete. It did not happen overnight - just listen to the live portion of Ummagumma or the album Meddle, whose Echoes takes up a whole side - but at this point in their career, they developed the music live, then took their time using the studio - Abbey Road Studio, to be precise - as an added instrument. The use of tape loops is very audible in these two songs, and that was a technique that was used over and over again on the album to great effect.

This iteration of Pink Floyd was led by Roger Waters, but my personal belief is that what made them so great at this point in their career was the tension between the very edgy Waters and the more melodically sensitive David Gilmour. If you listen to their albums from The Dark Side of the Moon through The Wall, you can hear this play out throughout - then The Final Cut could be as much a Roger Waters solo album as A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell could be David Gilmour solo albums. Now, I am not trying to downplay the importance of Nick Mason on drums and Rick Wright on keyboards here - they really are integral part of the sound of Pink Floyd - but the Waters/Gilmour relationship was in my opinion as important as the push and pull between Lennon and McCartney in The Beatles.

I was introduced to Pink Floyd at weekend seminars with the teetotaling organizations I was a member of - and it was strengthened during an 8th grade work experience I spent with Jørund Hølaas, who was working for both Radio Ung and NGU at the time. He was a huge Pink Floyd fan, with several live recordings as well as a complete collection of their music - and it didn't take me long to get hooked. Of course, their moody and sometimes brooding music also lent itself well as a soundtrack to both regular teenage angst and periods where my depression took over. I have spent many an hour in my dark room with The Dark Side of the Moon blasting at full force. Listening to it today is a little different than it was, but the catharsis reached at the finale still gets me the same way, and I hope to share that with you today. Please take a moment to listen to Brain Damage and Eclipse from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.