A quick search on YouTube for “The Dark Side of OZ” gets you the Wizard of Oz film with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon playing over the top. There’s been an internet rumor floating around for a lotta years now that Gilmour, Waters, et al. used visual cues from the movie to time some of their songs and musical ideas on the album, a claim denied by every band member and the producer. Whoever put this particular YouTube video together obviously used some professional sound syncing equipment to line it up exactly right, and I gotta admit, there are some pretty amusing moments. When the album is started at exactly the right time to make all of the “proof” work, the orchestral flourishes over the opening credits are replaced about halfway in by the heartbeat, which is kinda creepy and cool. When Dorothy falls in the pig pen (and miraculously comes out with her dress pigshit-free) there’s a pretty on-point accompanying downward musical crash, “the softly spoken magic spell” line comes while Professor Marvel is using the fake crystal ball to trick her into going back home, and the timing is especially good for The Great Gig in the Sky. The length of Clare Torry’s wordless vocal matches the time it takes for the twister to lift the house up and set it back down on the grou…in Oz. And then, the big moment every DSOTM/Oz conspiracy theorist points to, the instantly recognizable bassline from Money starts exactly when Dorothy opens the door to the Technicolor Oz. That’s where I call bullshit.
DSOTM was released eleven years before there was a CD version of it. That critical gap, the one between Dorothy’s house coming in for a landing and her opening the door to a family-friendly acid trip, is between side 1 and side 2 of the album. An exact time between when Great Gig ends and Money starts doesn’t exist, it was a gap manufactured to fit the rumor. To start with, the band recorded the album in bits and pieces, adding songs and sound effects whenever inspiration struck or a lyric was finished. I’ve seen the documentaries; they definitely weren’t recording the songs in any kind of running order. Nobody was thinking “Money has to come next, or we’ll be too late for Glinda’s grand bubble entrance.” Truth is, they weren’t even planning to keep Ms. Torry’s wordless vocal, they brought her into the studio to improvise something over the music while they fleshed out Great Gig’s lyrics, and later realized that the wailing she did was too damn cool to replace.
So, the real-world gap between the two songs is however long it took to turn the record over and drop the needle on side 2 back in the day. I’m thinking for a lot of people in 1973, it went something like this:
1. Realize side 1 has stopped, open your eyes, blink to focus.
2. Get up and grab some chips or twinkies. Or chips and twinkies. Munch down.
3. Load the bong again or roll another doobie. Light up.
4. Sit back down on the couch.
5. Remember that you were going to turn the album over.
6. Get up again and go play side 2.
All told, 30 minutes could have realistically passed between the two songs, which would place the opening of Money at about the spot where the Wicked Witch of the West is standing on top of the shack in the forest, flinging a little fireball at the scarecrow. Cool scene, but harder to see an immediate connection.
Why am I going on about this? Because the Dark Oz rumor is a small part of the mythologizing of classic rock, something I think about often, and a long and winding road of barely relevant connections led me to start writing. For a lot of aging baby boomers, the idea of “classic rock” is myth-making at its finest, and the idea of combining some of the best popular music ever made with another form of high art plays right into the story. For a lot of folks of a certain age, all the great rock and pop music happened while they were irresponsible youngsters with free time and disposable income (and still watched The Wizard of Oz annually), and stopped in the early 80’s when marriages, kids, and jobs focused their attention elsewhere. After that, the legend states, popular music became trivial – too shallow, poppy, and overtly commercial for the boomers' refined, newly-adult sensibilities – and it became socially acceptable, almost noble, to let it go and move on.
“Music will never be that good again, you were right to focus on overtime and choosing the right preschool instead” was the theme of Classic Rock Radio when it arrived over the airwaves and in our pocketbooks the 1980s. CRR listeners had moved on. Stereos had been sold or given away, albums and tapes became the lifeblood of suburban yard sales, right alongside “my god what were they thinking?” table lamps. Perfect time to start reading the eulogies and erecting the statues. It was easy to talk to fellow boomers about the how it used to be, and definitely wasn’t anymore. You knew for sure, according to the new radio format, that Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Stones, and the Who definitely recorded 4 or 5 great songs each back in the day. Every bit as good as the same number of Boston and REO Speedwagon songs in permanent rotation. And I totally get it, for some listeners those songs are all their life needed, or needs today.
But a lot of us recognized the myth, and we didn’t move on. Great music didn’t stop in 1982, or 1992, or 2002, or…pick a year, any year. It just kept going without a lot of baby boomer attention. Yeah, the good stuff became harder to find when radio packaged everything to fit demographics, but classic music has continued to be released every week, month, and year since CRR told you it died. That’s part of the mission of this blog. I’m gonna throw out reviews of a lot of albums that came out between the days when you packed your turntable (remember those?) in a box and donated it to Goodwill and now. Fabulously entertaining records, important records, records that are prime fodder for the heart, the mind, and the articulated hips. Call me a mythbuster. You can stream just about anything these days, so give ‘em a shot if, to paraphrase Don McLean, the music used to make you smile (a long, long time ago). They’re probably not a big enough part of the popular zeitgeist to be combined with classic kid’s movies, but I’m thinking maybe they should be.
The Black Pumas – I’m starting with this one because I just played it a couple days ago, and it’s a prime example of something that’s been lost over the years. This excellent LP takes me back to the days when white, black, Latino, Asian, and whatever teenagers were all given the same songs to listen to on the radio, before demographic compartmentalization became commercial radio’s business model. When I sat at my parent’s kitchen table in the evening and tuned their transistor radio to WHDF, I heard Motown, Stax, Al Green, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Otis and Aretha, all mixed in with the other Top 40 hits. I loved every damn one of them and still do. Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone was as big a thrill as the Rolling Stones. The Chi-Lites, the Stylistics, the Spinners; holy crap that was great stuff. The Black Pumas put me right back there. Soul grooves, popping bass, funk guitar and keyboards, vocals that purr and growl. The songs sound perfectly modern and classically soul and R&B at the same time, with an occasional rock kick in the pants. The opening song, Black Moon Rising, starts with an unaccompanied drum roll, the drum drops right into a sweet and funky pocket with the bass, and the fun starts for real and doesn't let up. It’s a little embarrassing to be reminded when I’m listening that I’ve never been able to dance worth a shit, but if you can, you will.
TODAY’S EARWORM: The Black Pumas – Colors (2019).
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