Those of you that have been following along know that up to this point, my Pink Floyd experience has been Dark Side Of The Moon courtesy of a guy named Chip from The Academy Days and The Wall which was a devastatingly poignant punctuation at the end of The Rise & Fall Of ’84.

I liked  Pink Floyd well enough, it just didn’t occur to me to dig any deeper. I had seen that album cover with the guy on fire but never really considered exploring Pink Floyd any deeper. That notion floors me given how I feel about Pink Floyd today. I guess that’s just the nature of Evolution.

I have a guy named Tim to thank for my introduction to Meddle and more specifically Echoes. Tim and I worked together at Pizza Hut back in The Roach Days. We ,ust have been talking about Pink Floyd as we closed one night. He couldn’t belive that I had never heard Echoes.  So it was decided that we’d check it out after work.

Tim was an early audiophile. He had collected an impressive quadraphonic stereo system with high end components and four industrial strength Klipsch professional grade speakers.  When we got to his house, he meticulously arranged all four speakers  around a pair of bean bag chairs in the center of his living room floor.  This was still years before Surround Sound was popular. He was ahead of his time. He was also the first guy i knew that saw the importance of bass. His Dodge Dart was bumping years before those bass tubes where everywhere.

He put a single candle on top of each speaker and we sat on the bean bag chairs and by candle light absorbed Echoes. The song turned out to be 23 minutes long and while we listened, the effort to set up the speakers and candle became justified.

I bought Meddle and though I enjoyed it, it wasn’t until the 1990’s that it slipped into the number on spot of my all time favorite Pink Floyd albums.  I just love the whole thing.  Man, I’m listening to San Tropez right now and thinking it is such a great piece. The piano part reminds me of Vince Guaraldi a little.

Pink Floyd, The Wizard Of Oz & Stanley Kubrick

I can’t imagine how Aric and I heard about The Dark Side Of The Moon & The Wizard Of Oz thing back in The Roach Days. That seems like a perfect thing for the yet undiscovered Internet.  It must have been the old school grapevine. Somebody told us that if you play The Wizard Of Oz on your TV but turn the sound down and instead listen to The Dark Side Of The Moon, you would see a lot of strange coincidences.  I don’t remember how to start it. It was something like when the MGM lion roars the second time, press play on your CD player. It was fun to try and I remember seeing Dorothy walking on the fence during Balanced on the biggest wave. The Great Gig In The Sky seemed to go along with the tornado sequence. My favorite was at the end of the album. When Dorothy puts her ear to the chest of the Tin Man to listen, the heart beats.

Now, I mention this to demonstrate that this kind of thing was fairly common back in The Roach Days. We would often turn on some nature show with the sound turned down and find coincidences with whatever music was playing.  One night we were watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. During that last portion, Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite.  Somebody suggested that the lights whizzing by were like a Pink Floyd light show.  The original thought was to find a few of my favorite Pink Floyd songs and set them to those visuals. I taped 2001 off A&E when it ran again.  At first I discarded Echoes which was a favorite but I thought it would be too long of a song for that section of video. When I timed, the video, I discovered that it was the same length as the song, almost to the exact second. The results seem too good for coincidence.

To recreate this, put 2001 in your DVD player and Meddle in your CD player. Go to the last scene in the move then skip back a few seconds so you have time to let it roll while you get ready ro press play on the CD player.  The screen will go black then the words Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite will appear.  When they do, press play.  The first Ping should happen just as the words fade out. The rest of the ride is automatic.  There are several scenic changes throughout the video and in every time, the music seems to not only change but change to something that matches the pacing and mood of what is on the screen.  Check it out down below.

In the 1990’s I saw that 2001 was going to be broadcast on a movie channel. I configured my stereo and VCR to capture the video from cable and the sound from the CD player. The tape turned out great. In the 21st century I did the whole thing with DVD, CD and PC.

One Of These Days

A Pillow Of Winds

San Tropez

Echoes