Today brings me to 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, an aural road map of the path to madness. An amazing collection of songs by any standards, certified Platinum 15 times over, remaining on the Billboard album chart an astounding 741 weeks (that's a little over 14 years to you and me).
'The Great Gig in the Sky', the last track on side one (for those of you who remember 'albums' ) remains the most poignant 4:47 of my musical experience...a wordless requiem for mortality.
this 4:47 taught me all that music could possibly be...this 4:47 taught me the depth of human expression that could be contained in a single voice without utterance of a single word...this 4:47 still causes every hair on the back of my arms to stand up tingling...this 4:47 of the most profound wordless vocal performance ensured that all screeching-self-proclaimed-diva's that come after will fall hopelessly short of the mark.
beneath it all, beneath the swell and surge of instrumentation, between the rise and fall of session singer Clare Torry's august exaltation, somewhere around the three minute and thirty second mark lies the most terrifying words a stoned-out paranoid teen could almost here: 'if you can hear this whisper, you're dying'*...first time heard sent you scurrying for the turntable to back it up, crank the volume and play it again and again, making sure you heard what you thought you heard, making sure at all costs, that everyone had heard it.
as the stunned euphoria finally fades enough for you to realize that side one is over, the constant clack-clack-clack-clack of the needle stuck in the last groove, you flip the platter and a brilliant concept album works itself to sublime conclusion.
until tomorrow....
*it wasn't until i listened to Dark Side of the Moon on CD that i realized what that slight whisper was actually saying, "I never said I was frightened of dying."
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