Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

awful and just plain stupid

Oh my goodness, I was forced to listen to this (expletive) bummer of a CD recently and my brother, who is a doctor, almost went into shock at the sight of me: palpitations, eczema, hot and cold rushes I got.

This CD is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. There is not one good note on this filthy disc. It hurts my eyes and ears to see so many dumb dogs run around believing this p.o.s. actually is worth a lousy nickel.

Tracks among others are ALL simply atrocious: Time is a drag, just a slimy piece of I don't know what, Money would be OK if it wasn't a complete King Crimson ripoff, Any color you like is a laughable joke, The great gig in the sky tries to compete with great bands like Tavares and Village People but fails miserably, Brain Haemorrhoids is horrible and respectless Us and them is just plain boring.

Rufus Bingham

An incredible masterpiece

This is such an incredible work. It is almost like an opera. Just well thought through, the musicianship is of the highest level and the creativity is amazing. Note, that while many people do, you do not have to get stoned to listen and fully enjoy this album!:)
It is an album that you turn on and just sit back and listen to. A main event for the first time listener.

Still a classic after all these years.

Honestly, what could I say about this album that hasn't already been said in thousands of rock and roll essays, books, word of mouth, etc, etc, etc? This is one of the few albums I can listen to that has absolutly NO FILLER, I've memorized the songs, and I can hear something new everytime I hear it. Powerful isn't the right word to describe this album. Revolutionary is the word. First off, the music is absolutly fantastic. Even listening to earlier Floyd albums, I would've never predicted that they would come up with something so thought-provoking, so soulful, and so powerful as this. Whether it's the floating feel of Breathe, the dark funk of Time and Money, the acid-soaked jazz of Us and Them, or the powerful anthems of Brain Damage and Eclipse, the music is excellent. Gone are the free-form noisy jams of the past, replaced by a deeper understanding of melody and resonance. Also, some great additions are a backing soul group, and a saxaphone player to give the music some extra depth and diversity. Could the band honestly make a song like Money, with a 7/8 time signature and sax solos a few years back without Syd? Most likely not. Second, the lyrics are spellbinding. There's some powerful one-liners that really hit home with the listener, especially in tracks such as Time (How on earth David Gilmour could still sing the lines "The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older/Shorter of breath and one day closer to death" while he's 65 and not feel suicidal is beyond me.) and Us and Them. They lyrics are three-dimensional, almost fourth-dimensional in their abstract way. Finally, no previous album boasted such an immaculate production or such a huge load of special effects. Beating hearts, wild laughter, maniac phrases, airplanes exploading, money ringing, clocks ticking, all of this to emphasize madness. And it works! It really, really works. It sounds like a man slowly going insane. From this point on, Pink Floyd became the giant Space Rock band that they would be infamous for. It would only be a few more years until it backfired on them.

I just don't get it

Honestly, I just don't get it. My father has many worthwhile classic rock CDs and LPs and I have actually been fed on this kinda music and I must say I can appreciate quite a few albums, Ledzep 2 and 3, Pearls before swine, Jim Pepper, Silver apples (hey, this is cool music) and so many more.
When my dad said that this album was one I would most certainly like I really had to laugh. I've been coming back to this since I was 5 and I just couldn't believe that this was once considered a worthwhile album.
To me, it's more of an involuntary hodgepodge of atrocious ideas and non-sequitures.
Take a song like Us and them, it's *so* boring, DUH!, Any colour you like is basically OK but one song alone can't carry an album, can it?
Money is nothing but a lame rip-off of the great King Crimson song 'Catfood'.
Well, I am sorry, but this is notsomuch classic rock as the equivalent of horse manure soup.

Therefore no more than 2 stars.

Chance Watson

One of rock's great ironies

In my freshman year of high school, 1996, I had to listen to Dark Side of the Moon while watching Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece Metropolis because my world history teacher thought it fit with the movie perfectly. While I was watching the movie, I tried to correlate the album with the movie and I couldn't. Instead I was annoyed and wish I could watch the silent movie the way it was intended. Let me tell you right now, Metropolis WAS NOT what Roger Waters had in mind when he wrote the songs for Dark Side of the Moon. Dark Side of the Moon is one of those albums that could grow on you if you gave it a chance. Thing is, I am not one of the listeners who is willing to buy it and let it grow on me, since I prefer faster music. However, just because I prefer faster music, does not mean I am close-minded. For example, I think Massive Attack's slow album Mezzanine is one of the greatest albums of all time. About a year after hearing Dark Side of the Moon in my world history class I decided to give it a second chance. I listened to the album in my room, by myself, and I felt detached emotionally. This is very challenging music and the commercial appeal of the album is one of rock's great ironies. There's a lot to admire about Dark Side of the Moon: the lyrics are thoughtful, the vocals are melodic and emotional, the instrumentation is complex, and the production is stellar. The sound effects were pioneering at the time; it's hard to imagine Kraftwerk, Gary Neuman, and electronica's offspring without Dark Side of the Moon. However, there's a difference between admiration and enjoyment. The overall tone of the album is very pessimistic. Dark Side of the Moon is a gloomy experience. It is not the kind of album to put you in a good mood. It is a work of art, maybe profound even, but for music listeners such as myself, sometimes that is just not good enough. B-