MTV News Segment
It's been almost 10 years now since the original "breaking" of the story in the mainstream press, of everyone's favorite synchronicity Dark Side of the Rainbow. I've always felt it was a shame that people who discovered this later mostly missed out on the frenzy this sparked back in 1997. While digging in some of my arkives, I found the actual video of the segment. So, I've uploaded that to YouTube.com, again for your viewing pleasure. The transcript of the segment follows the break...
Did Pink Floyd Take A Trip To Oz?
aired 05/30/1997, Week In Rock
Anyone familiar with the work of beat writer William Burroughs will recall his interest in combining random film footage with a totally unrelated soundtrack, and sometimes discovering an unexpected, and startling synchronicity.
For the past couple of years, the Internet has been buzzing with stories of just such a mysterioso linkage between Hollywood's 1939 munchkin classic, The Wizard Of Oz, and -- this is the mysterioso part -- Pink Floyd's 1973 art-rock monument, The Dark Side Of The Moon. This may sound like pure bong-wash, but the story went mainstream this week, and well, it really is kind of strange.
 | GEORGE TAYLOR MORRIS, Disc-Jockey, WZLX-FM: The weird thing about the Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon phenomenon that's been going around is that it's been going around for quite a while. |
| MICHAEL JOHNSTON, Synchronicity Arkive Website: I heard from another source that it's been known about on the Pink Floyd newsgroup since 1994. | |
| MORRIS: I did get a call of a girl who said, 18 years ago I went to a party where some guy tried this and it worked. |
 | MTV: Who first discovered this phenomenon, and when, remains a mystery. But Boston disc jockey, George Taylor Morris, touched off a national frenzy recently when he mentioned, on air, the bizarre correlation between Pink Floyd's 1973 album, "Dark Side Of The Moon," and the 1939 movie classic, "The Wizard Of Oz." |
| MORRIS: I just mentioned it, just briefly on the air. If you play the "Dark Side of the Moon" against "The Wizard of Oz" as a soundtrack, all of these amazing coincidences happen. |
| MTV: Here's how it works: play "The Wizard Of Oz" from the top and wait for the MGM lion to appear. Immediately following the lion's third roar, start "Dark Side Of The Moon." Turn the stereo up and the TV down. You'll know you're in sync if producer Mervyn Leroy's credit hits on the musical transition. Now simply kick back and judge for yourself both the lyrical and musical synchronicity. |
| MORRIS: I'll tell you the thing that totally blew me away, of all the coincidences that seemed to happen, is when "Great Gig in the Sky" is on and the tornado is whirling. The movie took on a completely different feel for me there. |
| JOHNSTON: And coming up we have actually one of the best transitions here. As it goes to color, "Money" comes up which is the next song. As near as I've been able to determine, it's pretty much a cosmic coincidence. | |
 | ALAN PARSONS, Engineer, Dark Side of the Moon: There simply wasn't mechanics to do it. We had no means of playing videotapes in the room at all. I don't think VHS had come along by '72, had it? |
| JOHNSTON: It doesn't seem like there's a lot of evidence to support that it's intentional. But that certainly doesn't undermine how cool it is to sit and watch it. | |
| So far, the only comment from the Floyd camp has come from drummer Nick Mason, who says "It's absolute nonsense, it has nothing to do with The Wizard Of Oz. It was all based on The Sound Of Music." | |
click here for mtv.com's transcript
click here for the YouTube.com page for the embedded video
Recent comments
2 days 30 min ago
2 days 22 hours ago
3 days 11 hours ago
3 days 20 hours ago
4 days 9 hours ago
6 days 9 hours ago
6 days 21 hours ago
1 week 21 hours ago
1 week 1 day ago
1 week 2 days ago