After 32 years

I've finally caught up :-)

Yep, I finally like The Dark side of the Moon[^]. I wrote a while ago about my introduction to Pink Floyd[^].

It was love at first hearing back in 1968. I'd never heard a band like them and, to this day, no one comes close in the rock arena as far as this old fart is concerned. The first Pink Floyd album I owned was Ummagumma; that was the first album readily available in Melbourne in 1970. As they grew in popularity it became easier to aquire Pink Floyd albums. I got 'Obscured by clouds' in 1971, the soundtrack to More as a remainder in 1971, 'Echoes' in 1972 and so on.

And then came 1973. For whatever reason we were blitzed by ads for the new Pink Floyd album 'The Dark side of the Moon'. I was one of the first to buy and I hated the album. It didn't sound at all (to my ears) like Pink Floyd. You understand that I didn't, at the time, notice the paradox between my expectation that each new Pink Floyd album would sound like it's predecessor and my corresponding acceptance of the vast difference between Mahlers First Symphony and his last.

Toward the end of 1973 it was impossible to attend a party without being assailed by 'us and them'. Everywhere one went one heard that hated album. I retreated into classical music and pretty much missed the entire rock scene from 1973 until 1997 (my return is the subject of another story I might relate sometime soon).

Strangely enough, 'The Dark side of the Moon' is the first CD I ever owned. Not that I bought it; my first wife Sue gave me my first CD player for my 33rd birthday, 1987. To accompany it she gave me that album on CD. I fear I was so untactful as to remark 'I'd have chosen something else'.

Our marriage collapsed 2 weeks later. Nope, I don't imagine now that it collapsed because of that thoughtless comment; it had been on it's last legs for a while before then though I didn't know it. But for those first few months of feeling abandoned I clung to recent memories of the thoughtless things I'd said and done and wondered 'if I hadn't'. Memory is selective; I don't remember remembering back more than a couple of months at the time but now, 18 years down the track, I see that it was inevitable.

All of this was brought about by watching Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii[^]. Interesting film; I remember seeing it at Monash University as a student club activity in 1979. 37 years down the track hearing Pink Floyd can still raise goosebumps.