I wandered into Amazon Prime video on Friday night. I ended up watching a documentary The Making of Dark Side of The Moon. They explicitly made an observation that I have told people myself — you can definitively bisect Pink Floyd’s discography at the Meddle album. Specifically right before the last song, Echoes, a 20 minute opus that would set the stage for the most epic run of album per unit of time in history:
1973: Dark Side
1975: Wish You Were Here
1977: Animals
1979: The Wall
Echoes was a preview of Dark Side and really dialed in so much of what they hinted at in their prior albums and especially in the movie scores and soundscapes they crafted.
They are such a compelling band not just for what they created but the arc of their career and how it lined up with the music they created. You can practically feel the band’s mindset as you travel through the discography and hear them evolve. I’ve toyed with doing a write-up based on the various docs I’ve watched and my own joy of the music but I can see it just being a long Twitter thread if the inspiration holds long enough above my personal activation threshold.
If you are a fan then this doc, Momentary Lapses, is worth your time.
Friday, I also watched the Amazon original Slash: Raised On The Sunset Strip. I’ve read plenty of books about GnR including Slash’s biography. He was raised in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and his parents were both creative designers. The young Saul Hudson was regularly in the company of folks like David Bowie, David Geffen, and many music artists you’d all recognize. I’ve previously mentioned the Echo In The Canyon doc which accompanies this Slash one well, as it is set in the 60s and 70s while the Slash doc takes the baton into the 80s and beyond. The cameos in the Slash doc are fun with the Dave Grohl one being especially interesting for anyone familiar with Axl Rose’s run-in with Kurt Cobain at the 1992 VMAs.
If you have any interest in this stuff you can get some leads in some of my prior posts:
The Sunset Strip Pilgrimage (Link)
Movies For Your 60s Nostalgia Fix (Link)