Attempting to play a legendary band’s entire epic album was something of taboo in days past, but Dark Star Orchestra’s treatment of the Grateful Dead’s most famous live shows, and Phish’s rendition of Quadrophenia showed that it could be done. Nonetheless, tripping over the eclectic Oklahoman’s – The Flaming Lips – tackling Dark Side of the Moon gave me pause, and prompted several complete listens over the past few weeks as well.
It’s a serious success. In macro terms I would describe it this way: I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, going back to the Syd Barrett days of the late ’60’s up through and including the post-Waters work of the mid – ’80’s. I still love pulling out Meddle, Saucerful of Secrets, Animals, The Final Cut, you name it, but … I rarely play Dark Side these days. It’s not that I don’t adore it; it’s just that it was so overplayed in my youth, and continues to be a rock staple with my sons, that I rarely feel the need to listen to it again. TFL’s version (2010) has awoken me to the genius of the music again. I haven’t been this excited about Dark Side since I first heard it on 8-track being driven to high school by my sister and her future (and present) husband.
The Lips are faithful to the songs as well as the mood, including the between-song bits of “wisdom” that were written and read by Pink Floyd’s crew and employees of Abbey Road Studio on the original album (“I’m mad, I’ve always been mad…). Wayne Coyne’s vocals are sympathetic to both David Gilmour’s smooth lead as well as Roger Water’s haunting voice, but the guitar playing and treatments are modern, eschewing the slick production of Gilmour’s style and implementing an edgy urgency that is all Flaming Lips. There is a lovely dark-chocolate chunk of a bass line that opens “Breathe” and runs all through “side one,” coaxing the listener, somehow sacrilegiously, to get up and move.
Coyne also slips in a sonic salute to a few other more obscure Pink Floyd songs along the way, including “Careful with that Axe, Eugene,” “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” and “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.” I’ll let you find them (hint – use headphones, but why wouldn’t you with Dark Side of the Moon?). I’m impressed with this disc, and when I read recently that the band is now toying with early King Crimson music well, stay posted.
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