9/22/72 – Hollywood Bowl – Pink Floyd perform complete DSOTM 6 months before LP’s release.
EXPERIENCE ROCK HISTORY!
PINK FLOYD – The Dark Side Of The Moon – 3/1/73 – Capitol SMAS 11163
This album remained on the Billboard charts for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988 – that’s fifteen years with over fifty million copies sold; and since volumes have been written about the album and it has been dissected from every angle, 00individual thought it would be nice to share the experience of what it was like to be at Ground Zero for DSOTM’s release and the addicting impact it had on people in general, and a Monster Pink Floyd Fan in specific.
After co-managing historic Crane’s Record Store in Inglewood, California, the Home of the Fabulous Forum, and then managing the Crane’s Store in Palos Verdes; 00individual became acquainted with the One-Stop distributors through runs to pick up stock for the store.
In early ’72 one of the major L.A. distributors, Record Rack Merchandise, offered him a lucrative position as a Rack Jobber: a Record and Tape Buyer for Retailers; basically a traveling Record Store Manager.
By early ’73 00individual was deep into Rack Jobbin’ and had absorbed so much info on all categories and genres of Music and Pop Culture that John Cusack’s character in the movie High Fidelity was just one facet of his knowledge. Unfortunately with that expansive exposure to music he became somewhat jaded, he had exhausted every known genre, discovered and listened to the best of Rock, Blues, Pop, Jazz, Soundtracks, Electronica, Classical, Comedy, Country and Western, Folk, Spoken Word, Song Stylists, Broadway Shows, and Easy Listening. Soundtracks became another glorious world to explore and he did with nearly five hundred original soundtrack albums in his vinyl collection of over thirty-five hundred choice albums.
But then there was one event that held the promise of future sonic excitement; on September 9, 1972 00individual experienced his favorite band; Pink Floyd, live at the Hollywood Bowl. They performed the complete DSOTM in Quadrophonic sound – six months earlier than the album’s release.
PF transcended their own plateau of greatness and created another level where they unveiled an emotionally-moving masterpiece, a perfect blend of light and dark, of outward observation as well as inward. Filled with raunchy rock, heavenly choruses, a Capella solos, stratospheric guitar excursions, soul-grabbing bass lines, sexy and savage keyboard riffs, perfect percussive rhythms, dreamy, melancholy, and cool saxophone passages, and lyrics that surely changed lives;
PF started the concert off with the debut of their new album; “The Dark Side of the Moon”, in its entirety. Immediately the Bowl was entranced and spellbound by “Breathe”, “On the Run”, and “Time”, but it was the outright rock of “Money” that blew everyone away as the sound of huge cash-registers circled the Bowl in Quadraphonic sound! 00individual remembers the exhilaration of the whacked-out music he was hearing – they weren’t even halfway through before he knew that Rock ‘n’ Roll as he knew it (and as he liked it) was again being defined by PINK FLOYD.
He rarely brought a camera to concerts, but since he had good box seats he did and caught a split-second classic Pink Floyd moment-in-time through his Minolta SRT 101 during “Careful with that Axe, Eugene” as the crescendo builds, and just as Waters screams; pink-lit smoke bombs exploded and filled the stage! A truly amazing rare analog shot from that classic era. (See header photo.)
Eagerly, no, fiendishly he then awaited the release of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon.
Then on Thursday March 1, 1973, 00individual arrived to work to see sealed boxes of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon straight from the Capitol Records’ distributor. After pulling orders and adding new releases for all his accounts’ next day delivery, he snagged a copy of DSOTM for himself. It’s not always about being the first but for archival purposes it’s pertinent.
00individual vividly remembers coming home to the quaint little place in Inglewood he shared with his girlfriend, and once inside he turned on his Quadraphonic sound system, expertly sliced open the heat-shrinked cellophane wrap and inhaled the newly minted straight from the factory vinyl fragrance that was released to excited olfactory senses.
He ceremoniously descended the vinyl onto the turntable, triggered the slo-mo damp on the needle/cartridge arm to touch down, silently . . .
. . . and the symbolic heartbeat sound of life began the birth of an evolved Pink Floyd.
The lyric and sonic righteous, bold, and brilliant on-all-levels journey that Pink Floyd led and achieved made it hard to listen to other far less advanced albums . . . for a while at least.
If you don’t know the rest of the story, listen to the album, if you have, then you do.
But wait, there’s more Pink Floyd goodness; 00individual witnessed Rock ‘n’ Roll History;
Last tour with Roger Waters – DSOTM in its entirety and Echoes as the encore!
L.A. Sports Arena 1975!
FRONT ROW CENTER!
THREE NIGHTS!
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The Peak Of The Pinnacle Of Rock!
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
1973!
Click on the “Pink Floyd Zone” logo to unlock the cosmic vault of Rare PF Bootleg Vinyl!
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