Dark Side of the Moon is my favorite album of all time. When I was a sophomore in college, I had an early NAD CD player. I put Dark Side of the Moon on at the beginning of the fall semester, pressed repeat, then play, and listened. I’d turn the volume down occasionally but not very often; usually I turned it way up. At the end of the semester, I pressed the stop button and turned my CD player off and then flew home to Dallas for winter break.
Today, a friend sent me a link to this amazing rendition of part of Dark Side of the Moon played by the Trinity Orchestra. If you are a Pink Floyd fan, it’s worth eight minutes and 24 seconds of your life.
I still listen to Dark Side of the Moon all the time. I’ve got it in my car (the only CD I have in my six CD changer) on repeat. I have it on my headphones that I swim with – my standard swim has turned into whatever I can do in 42 minutes and 59 seconds. And when I really need to grind something out, it’s what I listen to.
CU just received a $17 million grant from NASA to probe the faint sounds of the early universe and better understand the lunar environment. I wonder if the Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies will adopt Pink Floyd as their official band. Whenever I hear of something NASA is funding, I think of the exchange between Josh and Leo in the West Wing episode The Warfare of Genghis Khan.
Leo McGarry: My generation never got the future it was promised. Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel’s exactly the same. We don’t even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh Lyman: The personal computer?
Leo McGarry: Where’s my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?
I think Go Fast is making my Jet Pack.
Given that I have poor impulse control, I want it now.