PINK FLOYD - THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (1973)

Músicos: Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright e Nick Mason + Dick Parry (saxofones), Clare Torry (voz em "The great gig in the sky), Lesley Duncan, Doris Troy, Barry St. John e Liza Strike(backing vocais).

Faixas:
Speake to me/Breathe
On the run
Time
Breathe (reprise)
The great gig in the sky
Money
Us and them
Any colour you like
Brain damage
Eclipse


Apesar de ser um grupo que nunca teve êxito com os singles, The dark side of the moon, álbum de 1973, conseguiu colocar a faixa Money no Top 20 americano, e mais importante ainda o facto deste álbum se ter mantido no Top 100 durante mais de uma década, quebrando uma série de recordes e tornando-se um dos álbuns mais vendidos de todos os tempos. Tratou-se de um álbum conceitual que lidava de temas como a loucura, a neurose e a fama, e que devido ao uso do novo equipamento de gravação de 16 faixas do estúdio de gravação Abbey Road Studios e ao grande investimento de tempo por parte do engenheiro de som Alan Parsons, estabeleceu novos padrões para a fidelidade do som

Estima-se que 1 em cada 14 pessoas com menos de 50 anos, nos EUA tenha uma cópia deste álbum.
O tema de Dark side of the moon terá sido em parte precipitado pela saída de Syd Barrett um dos membros fundadores dos Pink Floyd.
O álbum contém alguns dos mais complicados usos dos instrumentos e efeitos sonoros existentes à altura, incluindo o som de alguém correndo à volta de um microfone e a gravação de múltiplos relógios a tocar ao mesmo tempo. Uma versão quadrifónica, foi também editada com novas misturas. Durante as gravações os Pink Floyd desenvolveram novos efeitos tais como gravações em duas pistas das vozes e guitarras (permitindo a David Gilmour harmonizar consigo próprio impecavelmente), vozes dobradas e efeitos estranhos com ecos e separação dos sons entre os canais. Até hoje, Dark side of the moon é uma referência para os audiófilos que o usam para testar a fidelidade, dos equipamentos de áudio.
Outra característica do álbum são os trechos de diálogos entre as faixas. Os Pink Floyd entrevistaram várias pessoas, perguntando-lhes coisas relacionadas com os temas centrais do álbum, como a violência e a morte. O roadie “Roger The Hat aparece em mais que uma (give ‘em a quick, short, sharp, shock...”, “live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me...”). A frase no fim do álbum “there is no dark side of the moon really…matter of fact it is all dark” é do porteiro do estúdio na altura, Jerry Driscoll. Paul McCartney foi também entrevistado mas as suas respostas foram consideradas demasiadamente cautelosas para serem incluídas
Nos EUA, Dark side of the moon é o 18º álbum mais vendido de sempre, tendo permanecido 740 semanas nas tabelas da Billboard magazine, tendo no seu período mais longo permanecido 591 semanas consecutivas. O álbum chegou a Nº 1 nos EUA, Bélgica e França, até em 2002, 30 anos após o seu lançamento, foram vendidas nos EUA mais de 400,000 cópias, fazendo do álbum o 200º mais vendido desse ano. Em 2003 mais de 800,000 cópias do híbrido SACD de Dark side of the moon foram vendidas apenas nos EUA. “Time”, “Money”, e “Us and them” foram bastante tocadas nas rádios (sendo o single “Money” um sucesso de vendas também.
Dark side of the moon foi editado em “Super Audio Compact Disc” (SACD), com uma mistura de som surround 5.1 DSD a partir das fitas de estúdio de 16 faixas, por ocasião do 30º aniversário do seu lançamento. Tornou-se algo surpreendente o facto de James Guthrie ter sido chamado para fazer a mistura do SACD em vez de Alan Parsons, engenheiro do LP original. Esta edição do 30º aniversário ganhou 4 prémios do “Surround Music Awards” de 2003.
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Wizard of Oz
Quando o álbum é tocado simultaneamente com o filme de 1939 The Wizard of Oz (O Mágico de Oz, no Brasil, O Feiticeiro de Oz, em Portugal) ocorrem algumas correspondências entre o filme e o álbum. [1]. Por exemplo o som da caixa registadora no princípio de “Money” aparece exactamente quando Dorothy pisa pela primeira vez a estrada dos tijolos amarelos, que é também o momento em que o filme passa de preto e branco para cores, no momento em que a bruxa má aparece é tocada a palavra black, a bater de coração no fim do álbum ocorre quando Dorothy tenta ouvir o coração do homem de lata, e muito mais. A banda insiste que isso são puras coincidências.
Quando este facto começou a vir a público em 1997, despoletou um enorme interesse neste fenómeno. Uma pequena comunidade espalhou-se à volta de vários 'sites' [2] para explorar melhor esta ideia. Quer as correspondências sejam verdadeiras ou imaginadas, alguns fãs do álbum gostam de ver "Dark side of the rainbow", como é chamada muitas vezes esta combinação. A sincronização é conseguida fazendo pausa (de preferência a versão em CD) mesmo no principio e parando a pausa quando o leão da MGM ruge pela terceira vez. Os membros dos Pink Floyd desmentem qualquer relação entre o álbum e o filme num MTV especial sobre o grupo em 2002. Eles afirmam que não poderia esta relação ser planejada por não poderem reproduzir o filme no estúdio, visto na altura não existirem ainda os videogravadores (videocassetes).
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"Está bem equilibrado e bem construído, dinâmica e musicalmente e eu acho que o humanismo apresentado é bastante apelativo. É satisfatório. Penso também que é o primeiro álbum deste género. As pessoas citam muitas vezes S F Sorrow dos The Pretty Things de serem de um molde similar - foram feitos no mesmo estúdio e sensivelmente na mesma altura - mas eu penso que terá sido provavelmente o primeiro completamente coerente que foi feito. Um concept album, mate! Sempre pensei que teria um êxito extraordinário. Tive o mesmo pressentimento em relação a The Wall. [...] mas claro, "Dark side of the moon" acabou com os Pink Floyd de uma vez por todas. Ter tanto sucesso é o objectivo de qualquer grupo e quando o atingimos, é o fim. No meu ponto de vista, eu acho que os Pink Floyd acabaram há tanto tempo como isso."
- Roger Waters - Junho de 1987, com Chris Salewicz

Wikipedia

O quarto álbum mais vendido de todos os tempos - atrás de Thriller (de Michael Jackson), Saturday Night Fever (Trilha do filme Embalos de Sábado a Noite) e Rumours do Fleetowood Mac, e uma das obras primas do rock. Passados 30 anos desde seu lançamento, o famoso "disco do prisma" continua a arrebatar novos admiradores com sua extraordinária unidade, impecável produção e riqueza individual de cada faixa. A exemplo de "Forever Changes" do Love, "Bryter Laiter" de Nick Drake, uma maturidade e articulação raros de se encontrar no universo pop (quantas outras bandas poderiam não apenas citar contextualizar Thoureau como o Floyd fez em "Time"?) . Entre as batidas cardíacas que que abrem e fecham o álbum representando o ciclo da vida se delineiam um rosário de temas que mapeiam as principais neuroses do homem contemporãnio: alienação (Breathe), ansiedade (Time), isolamento (Us and them), ambição (Money) e a insanidade como única saída real (Brain Damage) . O lado escuro da lua representa a obscura alma humana e nem certo sentido tudo se resolve dentro de uma ambiguidade de conceitos: a loucura é explorada sob um manto de racionalidade e a tecnologia de última geração utilizada para construção de uma obra permeada de humanismo trágico. Num outro plano, existe o espectro de Syd Barrett como fonte, o Pink Floyd pôde sustentar uma comparação com The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Cada trabalho desde More funcionou como um ensaio gradual até a elaboração de uma produto sem arestas.A excelência do material disponível juntou-se a experiência adquirida após 6 anos de estrada e 7 álbuns. Há total distribuição nas contribuições e tanto Gilmour, Waters ou Wright são peças imprescindíveis do resultado final.


Waters comparece com achados poéticos (Sun is the same in relative way but you're older) para melodias já prontas como "Time" e quando em "Brain Damage", por exemplo, se aventura a compor música e letra. Os versos surgem econômicos e contundentes (You lock the door/and throw away the keys/there's someone in my head but it's not me). Até mesmo Nick Mason, responsável pela edição da fita com vozes de fundo tem uma fundamental participação. Respondendo perguntas do tipo "o que você acha da morte?" ou "Qual foi seu último ato de violência?", pessoas escolhidas aleatoriamente tecem ao longo das canções, comentários paralelos que se integram aquilo que se escuta. Também merecem créditos o produtor Chris Thomas pela mixagem da gravação quadriofônica e Alan Parson pela adesão de efeitos como a caixa-registradora que abre "Money" ou os relógios de "Time". As gravações se iniciaram em Junho de 72 e continuaram em pequenos estúdios até Janeiro de 73, quando o LP foi para as lojas em Março, o grupo, satisfeito com o resultado, aguardava uma entusiástica recepção. O que ninguém podia prever era o nascimento de um fenômeno capaz de resistir ao disco, new have, rap, lambada etc. "Dark Side..." vendeu mais de 20 milhões de cópias, permanecendo 15 anos entre os 200 mais procurados nos Estados Unidos, um recorde ainda hoje, computado no livro dos recordes, o "Guiness Book" e se tornou a óbvio escolha para o primeiro CD lançado na EMI. Segundo a lenda entre Floydianos, as cópias não estavam sendo feitas da matriz e David Gilmour teria ordenado que o erro fosse corrigido imediatamente. A excepcional aceitação levou a EMI- e isto não é lenda-a manter um filial na Alemanha produzindo CD's de "Dark Side..." em tempo integral.

A Review of Dark Side Of The Moon (Rolling Stone)One of Britain's most successful and long lived avante-garde rock bands, Pink Floyd emerged relatively unsullied from the mire of mid-Sixties British psychedelic music as early experimenters with outer space concepts. Although that phase of the band's development was of short duration, Pink Floyd have from that time been the pop scene's preeminent techno-rockers: four musicians with a command of electronic instruments who wield an arsenal of sound effects with authority and finesse. While Pink Floyd's albums were hardly hot tickets in the shops, they began to attract an enormous following through their US tours. They have more recently developed a musical style capable of sustaining their dazzling and potentially overwhelming sonic wizzardry. The Dark Side of the Moon is Pink Floyd's ninth album and is a single extended piece rather than a collection of songs. It seems to deal primarily with the fleetingness and depravity of human life, hardly the commonplace subject matter of rock."Time" ("The time is gone the song is over"), "Money" ("Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie"), and "Us And Them" ("Forward he cried from the rear") might be viewed as keys to understanding the meaning (if indeed there is any definite meaning) of The Dark Side of the Moon. Even though this is a concept album, a number of the cuts can stand on their own. "Time" is a fine country-tinged rocker with a powerful guitar solo by David Gilmour and "Money" is broadly and satirically played with appropriately raunchy sax playing by Dick Parry, who also contributes a wonderfully-sated, breathy solo to "Us And Them". The non-vocal "On The Run" is a standout with footsteps racing from side to side successfully eluding any number of odd malevolent rumbles and explosions only to be killed off by the clock's ticking that leads into "Time". Throughout the album the band lays down a solid framework which they embellish with synthesizers, sound effects and spoken voice tapes. The sound is lush and multi-layered while remaining clear and well-structured. There are a few weak spots. David Gilmour's vocals are sometimes weak and lackluster and "The Great Gig in the Sky" (which closes the first side) probably could have been shortened or dispensed with, but these are really minor quibbles.The Dark Side of the Moon is a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement. There is a certain grandeur here that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock. The Dark Side of the Moon has flash -- the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superbperformance.Loyd Grossman, Rolling Stone, 5-24-73.
By condensing the sonic explorations of Meddle to actual songs and adding a lush, immaculate production to their trippiest instrumental sections, Pink Floyd inadvertently designed their commercial breakthrough with Dark Side of the Moon. The primary revelation of Dark Side of the Moon is what a little focus does for the band. Roger Waters wrote a series of songs about mundane, everyday details which aren't that impressive by themselves, but when given the sonic backdrop of Floyd's slow, atmospheric soundscapes and carefully placed sound effects, they achieve an emotional resonance. But what gives the album true power is the subtly textured music, which evolves from ponderous, neo-psychedelic art-rock to jazz fusion and blues-rock before turning back to psychedelia. It's dense with detail, but leisurely paced, creating its own dark, haunting world. Pink Floyd may have better albums than Dark Side of the Moon, but no other record defines them quite as well as this one.

The Dark Side of the Moon deals conceptually with the pressures of modern life that can drive normal human beings to insanity: materialism, the increased pace of life and travel, the encroachment of old age and death, the inhumanities of society and armed conflict. These themes are not just delivered with words, but are suggested with sounds and lyrics. For example, the sound of an airplane crash in the track "On the Run" represents a fear of flight. "Time" discusses how quickly life can slip by those who are unaware of it, using actual alarm bells to wake the listener. "The Great Gig in the Sky", which had a working title of "The Mortality Sequence", comments on the nature of death. The lyrics and sound effects of "Money" flippantly endorse greed for ironic effect, and states that it is "the root of all evil today". "Us and Them" deals with interpersonal conflict and the insanity of warfare. The meaning of "Any Colour You Like" is not as clear as the other songs, but it is thought to represent the fear of taking risks when taking choices - the song title came from an answer frequently given by a studio technician to questions put to him: "You can have it any colour you like", which was a reference to Henry Ford's description of the Model T: "You can have it any color you like, as long as it's black". "Brain Damage" reaches out to the outsiders ("lunatics") who may be the only people that recognise society's faults. It also is about their former member Syd Barrett. Finally, "Eclipse" describes the true essence of a person through the impact they have left on others.
Precursors to the Dark Side concept can be found in many of Pink Floyd's earlier works. The band had previously performed a conceptual piece, The Man and the Journey, based on the everyday life of a man during their 1969 European tour. Roger Waters' lyrical obsession with insanity was in part precipitated by the departure of Syd Barrett (a founding member of Pink Floyd) following his mental collapse. Perhaps most important to the gestation of Dark Side is the song "Echoes" from Meddle, which also deals with interpersonal relationships using progressive ambient music. However, the decision to tackle individual parts of life in an album-length concept work is said to have been conceived during a band meeting in Nick Mason's kitchen circa late 1971.
Roger Waters wrote all of the lyrics (a first for Pink Floyd), and created the early demo tracks in a small garden shed-turned-recording studio near his house.
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Recording
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios between June 1972 and January 1973, the album sessions made use of the most advanced techniques available for recording instruments and sound effects in rock music at that time. Along with the conventional rock band instrumentation, Pink Floyd added prominent synthesizers to their sound, as well as some unconventional noises: an assistant engineer running around the studio's echo chamber (during "On the Run"), myriad antique clocks chiming simultaneously (as the intro to "Time"), and a specially-treated bass drum made to sound like a human heartbeat (at the beginning and end of the album).
Another novelty found on Dark Side is the metronomic sequence of sound effects played during "Speak to Me" and "Money". This was achieved by laboriously splicing together recordings of ringing cash registers, clinking coins, tearing paper, and buzzing counting machines onto a two-track tape loop (later adapted to four tracks in order to create a unique "walk around the room" effect in quadrophonic presentations of the album). Pink Floyd also perfected the use of other studio techniques such as the doubletracking of vocals and guitars (allowing David Gilmour to harmonise flawlessly with himself), flanging effects, odd trickery with reverb and the panning of sounds between channels. To this day, audiophiles use The Dark Side of the Moon as a reference standard to test the fidelity of audio equipment, despite the fact that it was originally mixed from third-generation tape with Dolby noise reduction.[1]
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Voices
Snippets of dialogue between and over the top of the songs are also featured on the recording. Roger Waters devised a method of interviewing people, whereby questions were printed on flashcards in sequential order and the subject's responses were recorded uninterrupted. The questions related to central themes of the album, such as madness, violence and death. Participants were commandeered from around Abbey Road, placed in the darkened studio in front of a microphone, and told to answer the questions in the order which they were presented. This provoked some surprising responses to subsequent questions; for example, the question "When was the last time you were violent?" was immediately followed by "Were you in the right?" [2]
Recordings of road manager Roger "The Hat" Manifold were the only ones obtained through a conventional sit-down interview, as the band members couldn't find him at the time and his responses (including "give 'em a quick, short, sharp shock..." and "live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me...") had to be taped later, when the flashcards had been lost. Another roadie, Chris Adamson, was on tour with Pink Floyd at the time and recorded his explicit diatribe that opens the album ("I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, over the edge for yonks...").
Pink Floyd's executive road manager Peter 'Puddie' Watts (father of actress Naomi Watts) contributed the repeated laughter during "Brain Damage" and "Speak to Me"; the monologue about "geezers" who were "cruisin' for a brusin" and the often-misheard "I never said I was frightened of dying" (during the middle of "The Great Gig in the Sky") came from Peter's wife, Myfanwy 'Miv' Watts.
The responses "there's no reason for it, you've got to go some time" (during "The Great Gig in the Sky") and closing words "there is no dark side of the Moon really... matter of fact it's all dark" (over the "Eclipse" heartbeats) came from the Abbey Road Studios' Irish doorman at the time, Gerry Driscoll. Paul and Linda McCartney were also interviewed, but their answers were considered too cautious for inclusion. McCartney's bandmate Henry McCullough contributed the famous line "I don't know, I was really drunk at the time."
Alan Parsons engineered the album while on staff at Abbey Road. He once said in an interview that he swapped shifts with colleagues in order to work on the whole project.[citation needed]
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Success
The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the best-selling albums of all time worldwide, and the 20th-best-selling album in the United States. It peaked at #1 on The Billboard 200. Though it held the #1 spot for only one week, it spent a record total of 741 consecutive weeks (over 14 years) on that list. It was on the chart from its release until leaving the chart on April 23rd 1988. To this day, it occupies a prominent spot on Billboard's Pop Catalog Chart, reaching #1 when the 2003 Hybrid SACD edition was released and sold 800,000 copies in the U.S. alone. On the week of May 5, 2006, Dark Side of the Moon achieved a combined total of 1500 weeks on the Billboard 200 and Pop Catalog charts.
Sales of the album worldwide total over 40 million as of 2004, with an average of 8,000 copies sold per week and a total of 400,000 in the year of 2002 — making it the 200th-best-selling album of that year nearly three decades after its initial release. It is estimated that one in every 14 people in the U.S. under the age of 50 owns or owned a copy of this album.[3] According to an August 2, 2006 Wall Street Journal article, although the album was released in 1973, it has sold 7.7 million copies since 1991 in the U.S. alone and continues to log 9600 sales per week domestically.[4]
The LP was released before platinum awards were introduced by the RIAA on January 1, 1976, and it initially only received a gold disc. However, after the introduction of the album on CD, Dark Side would eventually be certified Platinum in 1990 and then Diamond by 1999 in America. It is now at 15x Platinum and counting. "Time", "Money" and "Us and Them" remain radio call-in request favourites, with "Money" having sold well as a single in its own right.
The Dark Side of the Moon was re-released as a 30th anniversary Hybrid SACD with a 5.1 channel DSD surround sound version remixed from the original 16-track studio tapes. Some surprise was expressed when longtime producer James Guthrie was called in to make the SACD rather than the original LP engineer, Alan Parsons. This 30th anniversary edition won four Surround Music Awards in 2003, the same year that Rolling Stone magazine named Dark Side of the Moon the 43rd greatest album of all time. The Dark Side of the Moon was also re-released in 2003 on 180-gram virgin vinyl and included reprints of the original posters and stickers that came with the original vinyl release, along with a new 30th anniversary poster.
In 1997, The Dark Side of the Moon was named the 6th greatest album of all time in a 'Music of the Millennium' poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 1998, Q magazine readers placed it at number 10, while in 2001 the United States cable television channel VH1 placed it at number 51.
In 2006, The Dark Side of the Moon was voted the ultimate life changing track (despite being the only full album in the shortlist) in a Music Club poll conducted by the Jeremy Vine radio show on BBC Radio 2.[5]
(Wikipedia)