Solar eclipse on April 8th

[Corey]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3230024a11,00.html

Neat!

[Adam]

Fascinating. I am taking an Astronomy course right now in my quest to finish up my degree. Did you know that the longest possible time for a solar eclipse is 7 minutes (give or take, I forgot the exact time).

Also did you know that the same face of the moon always faces earth? So there really is a 'Dark Side of the moon' as far as what we can see. Also the dark spots on the moon are old volcanic activity.

Adam.

[Corey]

Pink Floyd is never wrong...

[Adam]

Although the "Dark Side of the Moon" does get light.. we just can't see it so Pink Floyd is half right

Adam.

[JimS]

Actually, if you listen closely to the words in the album, it says “there is no dark side of the moon, only light.”

[Corey]

Found a copy of the complete lyrics from Dark Side of The Moon. The quote is, ""There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark." That tiny lyric sparked an amazing amount of literary debate, interpretive essays, etc. It's literally been discussed by millions of people all over the world. I love that!

http://pink-floyd.lyrics-songs.com/lyrics/67052/

For my money the lyrics from Eclipse are superb. I like stuff like that. I mean really, at the end of the day, what are we writing for if not to explore connections and take a step back? The problem is that, like all good art, the benefit is in internalizing your own interpretation, and people are just too distracted anymore to spend more than 15 seconds parsing art before they are ready to summarize their final opinion on it.

Take wine for example. They take a sip of wine, fill out a scorecard, then move onto the next one. 50-100 years spent aging in a bottle to get judged within 15 seconds. No room for serendipity. And for what? The real benefit is in the human experience attached to consuming the wine, not in the mere possession of the raw liquid itself. In the exact same way the benefit of good lyrics is in reflecting on how they relate to your own experience, not the physical presence of words on a page.

All pop music professionals these days judge 100% of the productions they back based upon the first 15 seconds of each piece. If their accountant doesn't drool within 15 seconds of hitting play, they simply won't back the project. Period. They demand to make money off every single artist, on every single deal, in every single market, every single time. In the days of Pink Floyd it was different. Record companies had a much more holistic approach which left room for the best artists to really shine.

Can you imagine if they had applied today's standards back then to people like Carlos Santana, Joni Mitchell, or Tom Waits? We never even would have heard of them...

[JimS]

So this must be what happens to brains as they get older. You’re correct in what the actual words are. I really remembered it wrong, I thought it was a woman’s voice during Big Gig In The Sky. I even fired up the old CD, because I was still fairly certain I was correct. I wasn’t. At about 3:33 into Big Gig, the woman says “I never said I was frightened of dieing”.

I had my facts all messed up on that. It’s been a few years since I’ve listened to it, but I probably have listened to it more times than I have any other album.

Perhaps it’s a matter of me hearing that which I want to hear, instead of what was actually said, or perhaps the old noggin ain’t what it used to be. It seems odd to be wrong about something I can hear in my head so vividly. I think I would rather memories get fuzzy rather than vividly wrong.

The good part of all this, is that if I think hard enough, I just might be able to remember and listen in my head, to a couple more Pink Floyd tunes that they never actually made.


Of course, in this day and age, I’m not sure if that would be considered fair use of intellectual property.

[Corey]

Perhaps it’s a matter of me hearing that which I want to hear, instead of what was actually said

I have listened to and read quite a few interviews with the members of Pink Floyd from a variety of periods throughout their evolution, and I'm 100% certain that's exactly what they hoped would happen when people listened to their music. Whether one says "it's all light" or "it's all dark", it's essentially the same metaphor, i.e. perspectives are not always what they seem. They were definitely all about *ignoring the semantics* and just connecting the dots. I've heard them say that they intentionally wrote very universal lyrics in an effort to get people to ignore the words and just consider the broader concepts. In fact that seems to be the cornerstone of their "literary style".

I think it's cool that the song/album became part of your vernacular like that anyhow. To me that says a lot.

[Derek]

The 'Dark side' album also holds records for the most weeks in the charts.

According to Billboard, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon has been on the charts for an astounding 1,285 weeks. That's just under 25 years! Its closest rival is James Taylor's Greatest Hits, checking in at 573 weeks on the chart. James can expect to reach Pink Floyd's record number in about 13 1/2 years.

The album spent 724 weeks on The Billboard 200, including 591 consecutive weeks from 1976 to 1988. Then in 1991, with the institution of the Pop Catalog chart, the album returned to the chart where it has resided for the past 10 years almost entirely in the Top 10.

some other interesting facts

[gbrown]

But to get back to astronomy:

First Lights Celestial Newsletter

[Corey]

Wow, neat factoids Derek, I never knew that.

[Adam]

great link gbrown. From the video of where the eclips will hit it looks like I don't get to see it, Neither does Corey but Mark may be able to.. go Mark! Get some picts man

Adam

[eric_darling]

Pink Floyd's film "Live at Pompeii" is fantastic, and really delves into their thought and creation processes.

[Corey]

So true...

[Corey]

You know it's funny. I haven't thought about Live at Pompeii for years and then suddenly after you mentioned it yesterday it showed up in my dream last night.

Vivid as can be. I woke up right when it was most memorable too so I can remember it 100%. Nothing eventful, seems like I was a roadie on set or something to that effect, mostly setting up mic stands and moving gear around. The only thing was that when I remembered that huge shot where they zoom in on the band from up above I could see my cat BooBoo running around the place, catching mice. Interesting juxtaposition. In the dream, the cat took on equal value to the band and I was sort of trying to keep one eye on him so he didn't get in any of the shots but he was anyway and no one seemed to mind. It all seemed so normal.

I remember reading once years ago that today Pompeii is inhabited by a bunch of cats who live off the mice there which must have been the basis for all this but clearly your post was the catalyst. Now I have to go find that DVD and re-watch it.