The Dark Side of the Moon

Syd Barrett, the guitarist with Pink Floyd, was a creative genius in his TIME, having written such psychedelic RELICS as "ARNOLD LAYNE" and "SEE EMILY PLAY", where his abstruse lyrics were sometimes OBSCURED BY CLOUDS.  Sadly, his overuse of the psychedelic drug LSD led to BRAIN DAMAGE and mental illness. In A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON, he's rumoured to have walked all the way from London to his home in Cambridge.

It's with SORROW  we remember that Syd Barrett (1946-2006) and Richard Wright (1943-2008) are no longer with us and they're now COMFORTABLY NUMB, having both gone to THE GREAT GIG IN THE SKY. I've never seen Pink Floyd perform live IN THE FLESH, but their music will live on forever.  No Prog-Rock band will ever ECLIPSE the music of Pink Floyd, no matter how much TIME goes by in THE ENDLESS RIVER of eternity.

The space-themed songs of Pink Floyd SPEAK TO ME with special appeal because one of my passions in life is ASTRONOMY DOMINE. It's nice to STOP for a moment and dream of ONE OF THESE DAYS leaving MOTHER Earth behind and flying ROUND AND AROUND the universe forever. It'd be GOODBYE BLUE SKY as I SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN. I'd be LEARNING TO FLY with A NEW MACHINE capable of unimaginable speeds in INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE. I'd fly with the PULSE jets FLAMING past THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON towards the FAT OLD SUN and then out into the EMPTY SPACES beyond. Eventually, I'd arrive at the Alpha Centauri CLUSTER ONE star system looking for SIGNS OF LIFE where there are TWO SUNS IN THE SUNSET. I've often wondered IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE in the vast universe or is there NOBODY HOME.

I REMEMBER A DAY back in the mid-1960's when landing a man on the Moon seemed about as likely as seeing PIGS ON THE WING. At the TIME, THE DOGS OF WAR had just been unleashed in Vietnam, when the USA took the disastrous decision to MEDDLE in a foreign war in a faraway land. The more recent calamitous decision to invade Iraq in 2003 has resonant ECHOES of the Vietnam War. Both terrible wars bring into stark contrast the POLES APART difference between war and peaceful space exploration.

American Presidents KEEP TALKING about one day landing a man on Mars and plans are now COMING BACK TO LIFE for a Mars mission. I have HIGH HOPES that we'll one day land men on Mars and that will be A GREAT DAY FOR FREEDOM. I'll be LOST FOR WORDS if it ever happens in my lifetime. It'll be ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL of space exploration where MONEY is no barrier to scientific discovery. The first men on Mars will be FEARLESS explorers who've made THE FINAL CUT and they won't RUN LIKE HELL at the prospect of ONE SLIP leaving them MAROONED on a distant planet.

Thanks to the Internet, we're now living through some of THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES and Prog Archives is ONE OF THE FEW websites devoted to Prog-Rock. It's just the website we needed to BREATHE new life into the genre, which appeared to be dying out in the late 1970's with the arrival of Punk Rock. It was a case of US AND THEM, with "Us", the prog-rockers, ranged against "Them", the punk-rockers. Prog-Rock is now COMING BACK TO LIFE with a vengeance and there's much MORE than A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS just waiting to be rediscovered in the wonderful world of Prog-Rock. The choice of music these days is virtually unlimited and it's not a case of ANY COLOUR YOU LIKE as long as it's black. To any of my friends who haven't yet discovered this amazing site, I say WISH YOU WERE HERE with me to enjoy it.

I can hear the DELICATE SOUND OF THUNDER outside and the rain's pounding against THE WALL. I'm a lover of all ANIMALS, and I often wonder how  PIGS, SHEEP and DOGS cope when they're ON THE RUN outside in the middle of a thunderstorm. I love to watch a thunderstorm at nighttime and I'll often open the curtains in order to LET THERE BE MORE LIGHT coming in from the distant flashes of lightning, which are never OBSCURED BY CLOUDS.

All song and album titles in HIGHLIGHTS by Pink Floyd