If I were to choose three albums I’d want with me if stranded on a deserted island, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon would top the list. I’ve spent innumerable hours in the dark listening to the album through headphones, imprinting the music on a cellular level. I own the record on vinyl, cassette and compact disc, have a re-mastered copy, both an a cappella and orchestral version, a picture disc and Japanese import. I drive around with a copy of Pink Floyd and Philosophy tucked down in the seat of my car to read from when I find myself with a few extra minutes to kill. Why, I very nearly lost a love to my passion for Dark Side. It's a long story.
Coming up on its 37-year anniversary this month, The Dark Side of the Moon is a landmark album that has remained on the Billboard 200 for 751 weeks, longer than any other album in history. With sales estimated at 45 million copies worldwide over the past four decades, it is considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time. A masterpiece. A work of art that has touched a collective nerve. So, why on earth would someone–anyone–want to completely remake it? I mean, why tamper with perfection?
Dark Side snob that I am, I found it incredulous that The Flaming Lips had done just that. Those confetti-shooting, Oklahoma Citians whose frontman routinely traverses the audience in a man-sized plastic bubble and whose biggest hit was called “She Don’t Use Jelly,” were taking on the deeply cerebral and dignified Floyd in a track-by-track cover. It’s sacrilegious, I tell you. Like rewriting The Ten Commandments.
The Flaming Lips, that neo-psychedelic/space/experimental/alternative rock band from Norman, Oklahoma, are as famous for the circus-like atmosphere of their live shows (which feature balloons, puppets and a pair of giant hands) as they are their bizarre song and album titles like “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles” and “Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a Suicide Bomber).” The band, formed back in 1983, cut several albums on an indie label throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s before signing to Warner Bros. in 1993 and recording their only U.S. hit, the aforementioned “She Don’t Use Jelly.” Although commercial success on a Pink Floyd-sized scale has so far eluded them, The Flaming Lips have received much critical respect and have picked up three Grammy Awards over the years, including two for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
The band released their 12th studio album, Embryonic, in October 2009 and followed it up a mere two months later with The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon, their 13th studio album and first cover, which was released for download on iTunes this past December. I approached this latest remake with much skepticism but found The Lips’ treatment of Dark Side surprisingly listenable, dare I say downright delightful.
Joining The Flaming Lips on this existential romp is vocalist Wayne Coyne’s nephew’s band, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, while the colorful Henry Rollins takes on the album’s various speaking parts with the non-lexical vocables of Clare Torry on “The Great Gig in the Sky” falling to Canadian singer/songwriter Peaches. Make no mistake, this is not your local cover band doing Dark Side. In The Lips’ hands, the album takes on a certain Tim Burtonesque quality. Theirs is not a note-for-note reinterpretation which has allowed them the liberty of taking Pink Floyd’s music just a shade darker, a little creepier, making it even more surreal and twisted than its prototype. It’s the same Dark Side of the Moon, but oh so different.
Take the album opener “Breathe” for example. Where the Pink Floyd version is ethereal and haunting, The Flaming Lips mussy it up a bit with a loud, fuzzy bassline and a demented, urgent tempo that denies us the peaceful flow of the original. Then there’s the band’s brassy, digitally distorted take on “Money,” probably the most well-known song on Dark Side. If fans take issue with any song on the remake, it will be this one. On the flip side, though, is “Us and Them”, whose dreaminess remains intact as does the unnerving lunacy of “Brain Damage.” Sticking more faithfully to the original work here and there helps to ground listeners and perhaps make us more receptive to the album as a whole.
The Flaming Lips & Company take on Dark Side of the Moon and absolutely make it their own. They treat the work with the respect befitting one of the greats while adding a spit shine to songs that are nearly four decades old. They bring the album fresh to a whole new generation while managing to keep diehard fans onboard for the ride.
The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon is messy and raucous and good fun. I’ve made a place for it among my collection as a companion piece to the original–in all its many formats. One of these days I’m going to screw in a black light bulb, tack my velvet poster of the iconic prism to the wall, and fire up the lava lamp. Give this latest redo a more proper listen.
This past New Year’s Eve, The Flaming Lips performed their version of Dark Side live in its entirety just after the stroke of midnight. Although the band considered it a one-off performance, the material was so well received that they will play the album again at Bonnaroo 2010, which is set for June 10-13 in Manchester, Tennessee. They have a midnight slot at the festival on opening night where they will top off a Flaming Lips set with The Dark Side of the Moon played in its entirety starting around 2:30 AM. With Pink Floyd off the radar for the foreseeable future, The Flaming Lips just may be as close as we’ll get to hearing the album performed live again.
