Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.
In this Love Letter To A Record series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.
Asha Lorenz, Sorry – Pink Floyd, Dark Side of The Moon(2018)
When I was in year 6 I was in love with a boy called Christopher, we were about 9 years old. He was obsessed with two things, the R. A. F. and Pink Floyd. I wanted to be close to him – so I got these little collector packs in the corner shop, they were kind of like Match Of The Day football cards but they had fighter airplanes on them and an army dog tag inside and I also bought The Dark Side Of The Moon.
…I made a little collage card for him on his birthday, with our faces stuck over Roger Walters and David Gilmore, which hopefully he found as amusing as me.
It was the first actual record I bought, I got it from Portobello Market with my Dad for my birthday. It had TWO “limited edition” posters inside and some stickers. I didn’t actually have a record player and I already owned the CD, I just wanted to put it on my wall. I adored the Dark Side Of The Moon. All the guitar parts were just as important as the lyrics, I would sing the lyrics and also do the guitar noises, I’d know all of the guitar notes on air guitar. ‘Us and them’, ‘Time’ and ‘Brain Damage’ were my favourite tracks on the album.
The phat drop in ‘Time’ and the guitar solo in ‘Brain Damage’ that comes in after “And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes, I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”. The weird ideas that are induced in ‘Us and Them’. I think I just thought it was crazy and cathartic music when I was younger. I liked how the musical ad-libs mimicked what the lyrics were talking about, like the laugh in ‘Brain Damage’ and the cash register sounds in ‘Money’. I think it had an influence on the early songs I made on the computer. My absolute favourite Pink Floyd track, ‘Comfortably Numb’ isn’t actually on this album but it was definitely a gateway into lots of new music for me.
I’m thankful for Christopher’s good music taste. I’m not sure what he’s up to now but it’s nice to think that we probably still share the same sentiments on the importance of this album in our lives. I like it when an album is attached to a person – like an extension of your love, something that’s in between you and will always bring you together.
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