31 ms·

Pink Floyd, 'The Wizard of Oz,' and me

85 points by tintinnabula 3y ago

uaas 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230625092045/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/21/magazine/dark-side-of-the-rainbow-pink-floyd-wizard-of-oz.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230625092045/https://www.nytim...
malablaster 3y ago
It’s simply a neat coincidence. I bet AI will eventually discover lots of cool patterns for us.
- uaas 3y ago
  This is a funny comment, given how the linked article ended.
- itomato 3y ago
  I think it’s more likely for it to help find the origins in USENET and fan newsletters.
detourdog 3y ago
I enjoyed the article's focus on the less convenient mashup of the analog and the digital world. I really enjoy reflecting on that time pre-www. We use to have to go to record stores, magazine stores, and the movies to stay current. Sometimes it seems I experience depression instead of boredom with all these opportunities.
abhaynayar 3y ago
I was with chilling with a bunch of friends in my college room in 2018 when one of them played Any Color You Like on YouTube. Since then, I have been enamored by their music. I go through phases of listening to The Dark Side of the Moon, and even now, after so many years, I haven't gotten bored of it. It's just too good, and eternal.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  "When the record was finished I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me and I remember playing it for my wife then, and I remember her bursting into tears when it was finished. And I thought, "This has obviously struck a chord somewhere", and I was kinda pleased by that. You know when you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else. And at that point I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a pretty complete piece of work", and I had every confidence that people would respond to it." -Roger Waters https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/roger-waters-revisits-the-dark-side-58519/ https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/roger-waters-revi...
cogogo 3y ago
I never knew this was so big of a thing. I remember hearing about it some time in the 90s and thinking it was probably bullshit - that there was no way the two works could synchronize well - but it still had some mystique. Don’t remember hearing about it again since but I’m not more than a very casual Pink Floyd fan. Enjoyed learning about the origins even if they aren’t fully known.
floor_ 3y ago
I think this one it much more interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn7MmS3vazU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn7MmS3vazU Echoes lines up with the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- dylan604 3y ago
  With those visuals, pretty much any psychedelic sound will work. On a tangent, it’s interesting to me that 2001 was made before the time of fly-bys from Voyagers (by nearly a decade) so the fuzzy images of Jupiter were probably some of the best available at the time. In only the 40+ years since, we’ve had Cassini and Juno bringing even more details than Voyagers, and all of that imagery is so entrenched now that 2001’s fuzzy images look fake
- fnord77 3y ago
  I don't see how this lines up. the shifts in the music don't correspond to the scene changes.
- nervousvarun 3y ago
  That one is mentioned in teh article as one that "didn't take" but I agree it works well.
smitty1e 3y ago
You're looking at the Wicked Witch, and Waters intones "Black...", as her apparel is. Then the camera shifts with him saying "...and..." to land on Dorothee in her "blue" dress. "And who knows which is which, and who is who?" Great stuff.
smitty1e 3y ago
> didn’t come up with the idea of pairing these two works. I’m not the inventor of “The Dark Side of the Rainbow.” But in a strange sort of accident, I played a key early role in its becoming a cultural phenomenon. I realized years ago that doing something is only half the job; communicating the accomplishment is the balance. "Wow, you're smart, Smitty," said advertisers.
- BellsOnSunday 3y ago
  Whoever worked out how to light a fire must have been very popular for a while, and then rapidly lost ground to the person who gave it a name.
lapcat 3y ago
> Before my article, “The Dark Side of the Rainbow” was just a word-of-mouth thing on an early internet message board. Hardly anyone knew about it, and those who did had no idea who came up with the idea or where it started. This legend was already going around college dorms in the late 1980s. I don't know the origin either, but things spread by word of mouth in ways other than the internet. For example, I had friends who were Deadheads.
- bena 3y ago
  Our high school did a showing of this in our theater when I was a junior, circa 1996-1997. It was an urban legend. Slight disagreements about which lion roar to start the album on. Reasons why each song correlated to the events on screen, etc. I thought there were some coincidences, but hardly worked as a soundtrack.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    Yeah, I always found it sort of underwhelming!
    - literalis 3y ago
      You obviously weren't high enough. It totally works if you are super high. It works though the same way that I will think I made some masterpiece of music while being super high and then when I listen the next day sober it is just 4 bars of total shit. It still sounded like a masterpiece in the moment. Marijuana is amazing at finding and grafting meaning on to things that aren't really there or just totally ordinary.
  - zorked 3y ago
    I think it syncs very well to the point that it is so hard to believe it's a coincidence - there are so many points where it lines up. It is NOT a soundtrack for the movie. It does not have the same themes as the movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=627aciBA2E8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=627aciBA2E8
- JohnBooty 3y ago
f_allwein 3y ago
I don’t get it, in general. Dark side of the Moon is 42:50 minutes, Wizard of Oz is 101 minutes (source : Internet). How can they be synchronous?
- S_A_P 3y ago
  You restart the album. I was party to a screening this way back in college and while there are some things that line up with the movie pretty well but it doesn’t seem like a lost soundtrack to the movie.
javajosh 3y ago
Oh come on, everyone knows the right way to watch Wizard of Oz is with Steely Dan's Gaucho, Can't Buy a Thrill, and Aja, in that order.
tsumnia 3y ago
Years ago I found a copy of "The Dark Side of Planet Earth", a copy of the first episode to the Original Planet Earth series overlaid with the album. Whether intentional or not, the phenomena when a lyric or chord syncs up with the action on the screen is incredibly cool and can change the vibe. There's gotta be a pareidolia like term for finding audio sync ups. Near the opening the camera is panning over some polar bear cubs finally leaving hibernation. In the opening show, this is a playful upbeat moment that makes the scene look like the cubs are playing. However with Dark Side, the scene changes to some intense life or death situation as like the cubs are at risk of falling off a cliff in an attempt to get to their mother. "Money" starts right as B-roll of Spring is in full bloom; "Us and Them"'s line 'up and down' corresponds to shots of a great white shark jumping and falling to catch a seal; and a lot of the general b-roll syncs up with instrumental pieces. ...I think I'll watch it again tonight for fun :D
Joeboy 3y ago
Pink Floyd kind of got their first flush of success doing gigs with an innovative light show created by their landlord, who was a lecturer at Hornsey Art College. In the '70s they started projecting films behind the band as they played. Three of their eight pre-Dark Side albums (including Zabriskie Point here) were soundtracks. Us and Them started off as a piece for the Zabriskie Point soundtrack, where I believe it was supposed to be used as kind of ironic counterpoint to footage of riots. So in a way it's not too surprising their music makes a good soundtrack. They (well mostly Roger) always had the full audiovisual experience in mind. Edit: The instrumental section of Money is based on the live soundtrack they did for the moon landing in 1969.
- default-kramer 3y ago
  At first I thought you were making a joke about the moon landing being filmed on a movie set. Nope! This is actually a really cool fact I hadn't heard before. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-moon-landing/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-moon-landing/ > When viewers in the U.K. gazed upon their television sets on July 21, 1969, they were witnessing history. Man was setting foot on the Moon for the first time, and providing the soundtrack was legendary rock band Pink Floyd. > The BBC recognized how historically significant the Moon landing would be and planned its programming accordingly. Over a 10-day period the network provided more than 27 hours' worth of material that was about or inspired by the Moon landing. These included news reports, children’s shows and Moon-centric entertainment.
ralusek 3y ago
Can someone please explain Pink Floyd to me? Is it the lyrics that are cool? Do you have to be on drugs? I'm not being facetious, I would very much appreciate a link to a song, more specifically a part of a song that you like, and ideally a brief blurb about why you like it. I've tried on multiple occasions to listen to them, and my experience every time has been "this must just not be one of the songs people like."
- scojomodena 3y ago
  Comfortably Numb is my favorite song, of all types. For me, David Gilmour's amazing guitar solos are the best part. Psychedelic rock is the genre and I don't know anyone else that sounds like this band. https://youtu.be/x-xTttimcNk https://youtu.be/x-xTttimcNk
  - Joeboy 3y ago
    > Comfortably Numb Good pick IMO. Narratively, it evokes stories of Syd Barrett's increasing inability / refusal to function as part of the band. Syd was like the archetype of the creative genius who flew too close to the sun and crashed to Earth, leaving the band after 1.5 albums. Roger Waters sings the verses, David Gilmour sings the choruses. The song went through multiple iterations and was apparently more or less the end of their ability to work productively together. I'm left pretty cold by both musicians' solo outputs, but together they were an absolutely brilliant team. This is one a few tracks where they switch vocals mid-song, all of which I love. The choruses touch on the theme of a lost youth. Over the years the band had three main songwriters (maybe four if you count Rick Wright), and they all leant heavily into this area. It's classic Floyd territory. The closing solo is just deathlessly epic. If I had to cite one thing that made me want to learn to play guitar, it'd be that solo. Still sounds incredible 40 years and an almost entirely unsuccessful musical career later. But maybe it's just not ralusek's cup of tea and that's fine. Also sometimes it's the fate of brilliant things that they get copied so much it's hard to see what the fuss was about.
- nzoschke 3y ago
  Listen to Dark Side of the Moon start to finish. If you have and still don’t like Floyd, that’s ok. They are amazing musicians, pioneers of psychedelic rock, modern studio recording, and storytelling through long play albums. Imagine buying this LP in 1973 when there was far far less entertainment options in general. Fast forward to now and it still sounds fresh and modern and transports me somewhere else for an hour.
nzoschke 3y ago
I recall downloading a bootleg divx of this mashup back in university. Great album, great film, great mashup, particularly under the effects of THC. I’ve explored audio video mashups a lot in the past few years as a DJ and VJ. Some are available on my Vimeo [1], a favorite being a mashup of Rock & Rule (Clive Smith 1983) and Another Bugged Out Mix (Erol Alkan 2005) [2]. After a lot of experimentation I think I can explain the effect… Film and music are both forms of story telling. See Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” for the best explanation of this, how we’re pretty much all telling the same “hero” story over and over again. A great film presents one or more story arcs with an intro, build up, a downfall due to conflict, then another rise to overcome conflict, maybe a big surprise twist, then a nice plateau for the ending. A great DJ set follows a similar pattern with its energy and build ups and drops. So does a great album, especially a truly artistic album like Dark Side of the Moon. It’s fractal pattern… A single song tells a story with a smaller arc. A single film scene has a flow. Overlap really interesting music and video with their independent ebbing and flowing story telling and you’re bound to get lucky where they line up really well from time to time. Sometimes you get so lucky it feels like more than a coincidence. Particularly when the source materials have an actual similar theme or influence and if viewers are an altered state and you are adding your own internal narrative to the mix. Despite seeing this formula I still think it’s magic. All artists are tapping into some sort of universal creative spirit and are taking and sharing influences consciously and unconsciously. I am always searching for more people exploring these types of mashups and finding great videos to explore. Some good stuff on the Synkronocity Archive! [1] https://vimeo.com/grepz https://vimeo.com/grepz [2] https://vimeo.com/700268028 https://vimeo.com/700268028
k3vinw 3y ago
The two pair well together. I first got to experience this by following instructions I found on a random Internet forum. Just warm up the cd player by setting it on repeat disc mode, hit play, followed by pause. Now start playing the video and cd together on the third roar of the MGM lion and enjoy the show! Later I transcoded my dvd copy (probably with ffmpeg) with a multi audio track mp4 so I could enjoy the original or the dark side moon complete with subtitles :)
default-kramer 3y ago
"We like to watch old movies while listening to Hotel California to see if it syncs up in a significant way and so far no nothing has." - Mort Goldman on Family Guy PSA: If you like Pink Floyd, try Eloy, specifically these albums: * Ocean - Not their absolute best, but the last 4 minutes of Poseidon's Creation demonstrate the bass+synth interplay that made me love this band. * Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes - Has Shine on You Crazy Diamond lost some of its luster? This album contains almost the same song; don't overplay it and it will hit hard every time you listen to it. * The Tides Return Forever - The title track rewards the patient. You might be tempted to skip forward but please don't and it will pay off. * Ocean 2 - Seems like most Eloy fans are kinda "meh" on this one, but I love it.
fortran77 3y ago
I'm always surprised at who the "elite hackers" on HN regard as heroes: https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/roger-waters-criticized-nazi-uniform-anne-frank-berlin-show-1235340333/ https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/roger-waters-criticized...
- emilsedgh 3y ago
  Roger Waters has been wearing that uniform at least since 1980's [0]. He becomes a fascist to criticize fascism not to advocate. It's like trying to cancel Charlie Chaplin for becoming a Fascist. Back then he wasn't a critic of Israel and therefore nobody cared. I'm a Jew and I don't think he is anti semitic. That's absurd. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5K9z1AerQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5K9z1AerQw
  - philwelch 3y ago
    I’m not a big fan of Roger Waters for a few reasons, but I agree with you. The Wall is a weird, depressing, overwrought psychodrama, but despite those flaws, it still has some great tunes and does not endorse fascism.
- Joeboy 3y ago
  Trying to distil that into something coherent - the central argument would be that Waters' show, which employs fascist iconography in pursuit of an antifascist message, is a bit near the knuckle in Berlin due to the city's history? I mean, I guess I can see that but would point out it didn't seem to be an issue when he did a high profile, all-star rendition of the same piece in Berlin in 1990[0], and also he rejigged the show for recent Frankfurt gig, AIUI because he came to sympathize with the point in the paragraph above. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_%E2%80%93_Live_in_Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_%E2%80%93_Live_in_Ber...
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > it didn't seem to be an issue when he did a high profile, all-star rendition of the same piece in Berlin in 1990 He touched some "sensible souls" (journalists payed to have a different opinion).
dave333 3y ago
I do something similar watching the French TGV record setting speed run 574.8 kph https://youtu.be/EOdATLzRGHc https://youtu.be/EOdATLzRGHc while listening to Tangerine Dream's "Stratosfear" https://youtu.be/2w8VsvJ40sM https://youtu.be/2w8VsvJ40sM The TGV clip now has a couple of partially unskipable ads that mess up the timing - the music now slows down before the train does.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  > The TGV clip now has a couple of partially unskipable ads that mess up the timing There is a Firefox addon that manages to skip most embedded advertising.
gwern 3y ago
With audio and video embeddings, this might be automatable now. Embed, say, 10s snippets of both movies & looped-albums, and then treat it as a dynamic programming problem to find minimum total distances summed over the length of the movie.
housebear 3y ago
If you think that's cool, try listening to Ice Cube's "Predator" while watching the action film Predator...

85 points by tintinnabula 3y ago

uaas 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230625092045/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/21/magazine/dark-side-of-the-rainbow-pink-floyd-wizard-of-oz.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230625092045/https://www.nytim...

malablaster 3y ago

It’s simply a neat coincidence. I bet AI will eventually discover lots of cool patterns for us.

uaas 3y ago
This is a funny comment, given how the linked article ended.
itomato 3y ago
I think it’s more likely for it to help find the origins in USENET and fan newsletters.

detourdog 3y ago

I enjoyed the article's focus on the less convenient mashup of the analog and the digital world. I really enjoy reflecting on that time pre-www. We use to have to go to record stores, magazine stores, and the movies to stay current. Sometimes it seems I experience depression instead of boredom with all these opportunities.

abhaynayar 3y ago

I was with chilling with a bunch of friends in my college room in 2018 when one of them played Any Color You Like on YouTube. Since then, I have been enamored by their music. I go through phases of listening to The Dark Side of the Moon, and even now, after so many years, I haven't gotten bored of it. It's just too good, and eternal.

dreamcompiler 3y ago
"When the record was finished I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me and I remember playing it for my wife then, and I remember her bursting into tears when it was finished. And I thought, "This has obviously struck a chord somewhere", and I was kinda pleased by that. You know when you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else. And at that point I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a pretty complete piece of work", and I had every confidence that people would respond to it." -Roger Waters https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/roger-waters-revisits-the-dark-side-58519/ https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/roger-waters-revi...

cogogo 3y ago

I never knew this was so big of a thing. I remember hearing about it some time in the 90s and thinking it was probably bullshit - that there was no way the two works could synchronize well - but it still had some mystique. Don’t remember hearing about it again since but I’m not more than a very casual Pink Floyd fan. Enjoyed learning about the origins even if they aren’t fully known.

floor_ 3y ago

I think this one it much more interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn7MmS3vazU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn7MmS3vazU Echoes lines up with the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

dylan604 3y ago
With those visuals, pretty much any psychedelic sound will work. On a tangent, it’s interesting to me that 2001 was made before the time of fly-bys from Voyagers (by nearly a decade) so the fuzzy images of Jupiter were probably some of the best available at the time. In only the 40+ years since, we’ve had Cassini and Juno bringing even more details than Voyagers, and all of that imagery is so entrenched now that 2001’s fuzzy images look fake
fnord77 3y ago
I don't see how this lines up. the shifts in the music don't correspond to the scene changes.
nervousvarun 3y ago
That one is mentioned in teh article as one that "didn't take" but I agree it works well.

smitty1e 3y ago

You're looking at the Wicked Witch, and Waters intones "Black...", as her apparel is. Then the camera shifts with him saying "...and..." to land on Dorothee in her "blue" dress. "And who knows which is which, and who is who?" Great stuff.

smitty1e 3y ago

> didn’t come up with the idea of pairing these two works. I’m not the inventor of “The Dark Side of the Rainbow.” But in a strange sort of accident, I played a key early role in its becoming a cultural phenomenon. I realized years ago that doing something is only half the job; communicating the accomplishment is the balance. "Wow, you're smart, Smitty," said advertisers.

BellsOnSunday 3y ago
Whoever worked out how to light a fire must have been very popular for a while, and then rapidly lost ground to the person who gave it a name.

lapcat 3y ago

> Before my article, “The Dark Side of the Rainbow” was just a word-of-mouth thing on an early internet message board. Hardly anyone knew about it, and those who did had no idea who came up with the idea or where it started. This legend was already going around college dorms in the late 1980s. I don't know the origin either, but things spread by word of mouth in ways other than the internet. For example, I had friends who were Deadheads.

bena 3y ago
Our high school did a showing of this in our theater when I was a junior, circa 1996-1997. It was an urban legend. Slight disagreements about which lion roar to start the album on. Reasons why each song correlated to the events on screen, etc. I thought there were some coincidences, but hardly worked as a soundtrack.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  Yeah, I always found it sort of underwhelming!
  - literalis 3y ago
    You obviously weren't high enough. It totally works if you are super high. It works though the same way that I will think I made some masterpiece of music while being super high and then when I listen the next day sober it is just 4 bars of total shit. It still sounded like a masterpiece in the moment. Marijuana is amazing at finding and grafting meaning on to things that aren't really there or just totally ordinary.
- zorked 3y ago
  I think it syncs very well to the point that it is so hard to believe it's a coincidence - there are so many points where it lines up. It is NOT a soundtrack for the movie. It does not have the same themes as the movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=627aciBA2E8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=627aciBA2E8
JohnBooty 3y ago

f_allwein 3y ago

I don’t get it, in general. Dark side of the Moon is 42:50 minutes, Wizard of Oz is 101 minutes (source : Internet). How can they be synchronous?

S_A_P 3y ago
You restart the album. I was party to a screening this way back in college and while there are some things that line up with the movie pretty well but it doesn’t seem like a lost soundtrack to the movie.

javajosh 3y ago

Oh come on, everyone knows the right way to watch Wizard of Oz is with Steely Dan's Gaucho, Can't Buy a Thrill, and Aja, in that order.

tsumnia 3y ago

Years ago I found a copy of "The Dark Side of Planet Earth", a copy of the first episode to the Original Planet Earth series overlaid with the album. Whether intentional or not, the phenomena when a lyric or chord syncs up with the action on the screen is incredibly cool and can change the vibe. There's gotta be a pareidolia like term for finding audio sync ups. Near the opening the camera is panning over some polar bear cubs finally leaving hibernation. In the opening show, this is a playful upbeat moment that makes the scene look like the cubs are playing. However with Dark Side, the scene changes to some intense life or death situation as like the cubs are at risk of falling off a cliff in an attempt to get to their mother. "Money" starts right as B-roll of Spring is in full bloom; "Us and Them"'s line 'up and down' corresponds to shots of a great white shark jumping and falling to catch a seal; and a lot of the general b-roll syncs up with instrumental pieces. ...I think I'll watch it again tonight for fun :D

Joeboy 3y ago

Pink Floyd kind of got their first flush of success doing gigs with an innovative light show created by their landlord, who was a lecturer at Hornsey Art College. In the '70s they started projecting films behind the band as they played. Three of their eight pre-Dark Side albums (including Zabriskie Point here) were soundtracks. Us and Them started off as a piece for the Zabriskie Point soundtrack, where I believe it was supposed to be used as kind of ironic counterpoint to footage of riots. So in a way it's not too surprising their music makes a good soundtrack. They (well mostly Roger) always had the full audiovisual experience in mind. Edit: The instrumental section of Money is based on the live soundtrack they did for the moon landing in 1969.

default-kramer 3y ago
At first I thought you were making a joke about the moon landing being filmed on a movie set. Nope! This is actually a really cool fact I hadn't heard before. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-moon-landing/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-moon-landing/ > When viewers in the U.K. gazed upon their television sets on July 21, 1969, they were witnessing history. Man was setting foot on the Moon for the first time, and providing the soundtrack was legendary rock band Pink Floyd. > The BBC recognized how historically significant the Moon landing would be and planned its programming accordingly. Over a 10-day period the network provided more than 27 hours' worth of material that was about or inspired by the Moon landing. These included news reports, children’s shows and Moon-centric entertainment.

ralusek 3y ago

Can someone please explain Pink Floyd to me? Is it the lyrics that are cool? Do you have to be on drugs? I'm not being facetious, I would very much appreciate a link to a song, more specifically a part of a song that you like, and ideally a brief blurb about why you like it. I've tried on multiple occasions to listen to them, and my experience every time has been "this must just not be one of the songs people like."

scojomodena 3y ago
Comfortably Numb is my favorite song, of all types. For me, David Gilmour's amazing guitar solos are the best part. Psychedelic rock is the genre and I don't know anyone else that sounds like this band. https://youtu.be/x-xTttimcNk https://youtu.be/x-xTttimcNk
- Joeboy 3y ago
  > Comfortably Numb Good pick IMO. Narratively, it evokes stories of Syd Barrett's increasing inability / refusal to function as part of the band. Syd was like the archetype of the creative genius who flew too close to the sun and crashed to Earth, leaving the band after 1.5 albums. Roger Waters sings the verses, David Gilmour sings the choruses. The song went through multiple iterations and was apparently more or less the end of their ability to work productively together. I'm left pretty cold by both musicians' solo outputs, but together they were an absolutely brilliant team. This is one a few tracks where they switch vocals mid-song, all of which I love. The choruses touch on the theme of a lost youth. Over the years the band had three main songwriters (maybe four if you count Rick Wright), and they all leant heavily into this area. It's classic Floyd territory. The closing solo is just deathlessly epic. If I had to cite one thing that made me want to learn to play guitar, it'd be that solo. Still sounds incredible 40 years and an almost entirely unsuccessful musical career later. But maybe it's just not ralusek's cup of tea and that's fine. Also sometimes it's the fate of brilliant things that they get copied so much it's hard to see what the fuss was about.
nzoschke 3y ago
Listen to Dark Side of the Moon start to finish. If you have and still don’t like Floyd, that’s ok. They are amazing musicians, pioneers of psychedelic rock, modern studio recording, and storytelling through long play albums. Imagine buying this LP in 1973 when there was far far less entertainment options in general. Fast forward to now and it still sounds fresh and modern and transports me somewhere else for an hour.

nzoschke 3y ago

I recall downloading a bootleg divx of this mashup back in university. Great album, great film, great mashup, particularly under the effects of THC. I’ve explored audio video mashups a lot in the past few years as a DJ and VJ. Some are available on my Vimeo [1], a favorite being a mashup of Rock & Rule (Clive Smith 1983) and Another Bugged Out Mix (Erol Alkan 2005) [2]. After a lot of experimentation I think I can explain the effect… Film and music are both forms of story telling. See Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” for the best explanation of this, how we’re pretty much all telling the same “hero” story over and over again. A great film presents one or more story arcs with an intro, build up, a downfall due to conflict, then another rise to overcome conflict, maybe a big surprise twist, then a nice plateau for the ending. A great DJ set follows a similar pattern with its energy and build ups and drops. So does a great album, especially a truly artistic album like Dark Side of the Moon. It’s fractal pattern… A single song tells a story with a smaller arc. A single film scene has a flow. Overlap really interesting music and video with their independent ebbing and flowing story telling and you’re bound to get lucky where they line up really well from time to time. Sometimes you get so lucky it feels like more than a coincidence. Particularly when the source materials have an actual similar theme or influence and if viewers are an altered state and you are adding your own internal narrative to the mix. Despite seeing this formula I still think it’s magic. All artists are tapping into some sort of universal creative spirit and are taking and sharing influences consciously and unconsciously. I am always searching for more people exploring these types of mashups and finding great videos to explore. Some good stuff on the Synkronocity Archive! [1] https://vimeo.com/grepz https://vimeo.com/grepz [2] https://vimeo.com/700268028 https://vimeo.com/700268028

k3vinw 3y ago

The two pair well together. I first got to experience this by following instructions I found on a random Internet forum. Just warm up the cd player by setting it on repeat disc mode, hit play, followed by pause. Now start playing the video and cd together on the third roar of the MGM lion and enjoy the show! Later I transcoded my dvd copy (probably with ffmpeg) with a multi audio track mp4 so I could enjoy the original or the dark side moon complete with subtitles :)

default-kramer 3y ago

"We like to watch old movies while listening to Hotel California to see if it syncs up in a significant way and so far no nothing has." - Mort Goldman on Family Guy PSA: If you like Pink Floyd, try Eloy, specifically these albums: * Ocean - Not their absolute best, but the last 4 minutes of Poseidon's Creation demonstrate the bass+synth interplay that made me love this band. * Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes - Has Shine on You Crazy Diamond lost some of its luster? This album contains almost the same song; don't overplay it and it will hit hard every time you listen to it. * The Tides Return Forever - The title track rewards the patient. You might be tempted to skip forward but please don't and it will pay off. * Ocean 2 - Seems like most Eloy fans are kinda "meh" on this one, but I love it.

fortran77 3y ago

I'm always surprised at who the "elite hackers" on HN regard as heroes: https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/roger-waters-criticized-nazi-uniform-anne-frank-berlin-show-1235340333/ https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/roger-waters-criticized...

emilsedgh 3y ago
Roger Waters has been wearing that uniform at least since 1980's [0]. He becomes a fascist to criticize fascism not to advocate. It's like trying to cancel Charlie Chaplin for becoming a Fascist. Back then he wasn't a critic of Israel and therefore nobody cared. I'm a Jew and I don't think he is anti semitic. That's absurd. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5K9z1AerQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5K9z1AerQw
- philwelch 3y ago
  I’m not a big fan of Roger Waters for a few reasons, but I agree with you. The Wall is a weird, depressing, overwrought psychodrama, but despite those flaws, it still has some great tunes and does not endorse fascism.
Joeboy 3y ago
Trying to distil that into something coherent - the central argument would be that Waters' show, which employs fascist iconography in pursuit of an antifascist message, is a bit near the knuckle in Berlin due to the city's history? I mean, I guess I can see that but would point out it didn't seem to be an issue when he did a high profile, all-star rendition of the same piece in Berlin in 1990[0], and also he rejigged the show for recent Frankfurt gig, AIUI because he came to sympathize with the point in the paragraph above. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_%E2%80%93_Live_in_Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_%E2%80%93_Live_in_Ber...
- hulitu 3y ago
  > it didn't seem to be an issue when he did a high profile, all-star rendition of the same piece in Berlin in 1990 He touched some "sensible souls" (journalists payed to have a different opinion).

dave333 3y ago

I do something similar watching the French TGV record setting speed run 574.8 kph https://youtu.be/EOdATLzRGHc https://youtu.be/EOdATLzRGHc while listening to Tangerine Dream's "Stratosfear" https://youtu.be/2w8VsvJ40sM https://youtu.be/2w8VsvJ40sM The TGV clip now has a couple of partially unskipable ads that mess up the timing - the music now slows down before the train does.

kwhitefoot 3y ago
> The TGV clip now has a couple of partially unskipable ads that mess up the timing There is a Firefox addon that manages to skip most embedded advertising.

gwern 3y ago

With audio and video embeddings, this might be automatable now. Embed, say, 10s snippets of both movies & looped-albums, and then treat it as a dynamic programming problem to find minimum total distances summed over the length of the movie.

housebear 3y ago

If you think that's cool, try listening to Ice Cube's "Predator" while watching the action film Predator...