It’s become what I call one of my ‘life idles,’ something that continually runs in the background of my awareness, like knowing that putt Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies in the freezer prior to eating them makes them all that more delicious (a hint given me by my buddy Bill’s wife Barb), or that when I watch repeats on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson I am reminded that Mr. C. was and always will be the master of the late-night talk show genre. So, when I read that Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon was approaching an unprecedented 1,000 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart this year, I wasn’t surprised. I merely digested this fact as one of those things I always knew…it’s a great album, has been busting that Billboard chart for decades and will probably always do so.
Yes, the milestone speaks to the album’s resonance across generations as I know there are other albums enjoying a long run and deserved iconic reputation. Why DSotM has spoken so clearly to so many for so many years has been the subject of plenty of articles and conjecture (and just for the record, while I like this album well enough it doesn’t even rate as one of my top three Floyd albums), who really knows why we like the things we do?
And really, who cares?
I just know that there was a time that The Dark Side of the Moon, “Hotel California” (song and album), “Hey Jude” (song) so much of the art we consider classic/iconic/great, did not exist. Sticking with rock songs to illustrate whatever point I am on about here (and search me, if I have a clue what I am on about here) the summer of 1977, regarded by many knowledgeable rock historians as the greatest summer of music ever (well, at least regarded so by this rock historian) “Hotel California” was pretty much blaring out of my radio 24/7 (or so it seemed) right alongside the classic rock song “Barracuda.” I love both songs, but I recall sitting ‘up at the park’ at the dead end of my street thinking, ‘If I hear either one of these songs anymore today, I am going to scream!’
I did and yet didn’t.
But the summer before, there was no hide nor hair of these tunes.
So, there was a time before. As there was before old Leonardo had old M. L. sit for him, as there was before Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman” (currently enjoying another celebrated run) as there was before “Stairway To Heaven” was even a thought in Jimmy P.’s head (although some do argue that the song’s main riff did exist before, in Spirit’s 1968 track, “Taurus,” but that’s a lawsuit for a different time)
You get my point. There was a time before. There will always be a time before. But a Darkside of the Moon, a Mona Lisa, a Star Trek (the original series, thank you very much) have become so locked in our heads as classics we just feel their idle all the time, never really contemplating (unless you happen across useless screeds such as this) the time before.
