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The Dark Side of the Rainbow

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Dark Side of the Rainbow (also known as Dark Side of Oz or The Wizard of Floyd) is the name used to refer to the act of listening to the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon while watching the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz for moments where the film and the album appear to correspond with each other. The title of the music video-like experience comes from a combination of the album title and the film's song "Over the Rainbow". It is also a reference to the rainbow from a prism design on the cover of the Pink Floyd album.

History

Although the Dark Side of the Rainbow effect has become famous, its origin is murky. In 1994, fans of Pink Floyd discussed the phenomenon on the Usenet message board alt.music.pink-floyd. At that point, knowledge of who first thought of combining the two works, and why, was already lost.

Since then, several waves of attention rippled through popular culture. In August 1995, a newspaper in Fort Wayne, Indiana, published the first mainstream media article[1] about the synchronicity, citing alt.music.pink-floyd. Soon afterward, several fans began creating websites in which they touted the experience and tried to catalog comprehensively the corresponding moments. A second wave of awareness began in April 1997 when a Boston radio DJ discussed Dark Side of the Rainbow on the air, leading to further mainstream media articles and a segment on MTV news.[2]

In July 2000, the cable channel Turner Classic Movies aired a version of Oz with the Dark Side album as an alternate soundtrack.[3] That same month, an episode from season two of the animated television show Family Guy aired that made reference to the effect; entitled "The Story on Page One", the episode included Peter Griffin saying to Luke Perry, "I'm telling you, Dark Side of the Moon totally syncs up with the Wizard of Oz!" (Also, in the January 2002 episode "Stuck Together Torn Apart," from Family Guy season three, the character Mort Goldman tells Griffin that he and his wife "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.")

In the 2005 film The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, Pepe the Prawn can be heard to say Those of you who have Dark Side of the Moon, press play now.

Several music groups have also alluded to the phenomenon. In February 2003, the reggae cover-band group Easy Star All-Stars released a cover album of The Dark Side of the Moon entitled Dub Side of the Moon, which they claimed was intentionally edited to be "compatible" with The Wizard of Oz. In June 2003, the alternative rock band Guster released an album containing the song "Come Downstairs & Say Hello," which opens with the lines "Dorothy moves/To click her ruby shoes/Right in tune/With Dark Side of the Moon." On the DVD commentary track of Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, Jack Black states at one point that "if you start playing Dark Side Of The Moon at this point in the film... It doesn't sound very good at all!" before laughing.

Dark Side of the Rainbow has also turned up in the funny pages. In June 2006, a "Born Loser" newspaper comic strip built a punch-line around a headache the main character developed while listening to the Dark Side of the Moon while watching The Wizard of Oz.

In 2007, a Mr. Deity comedy skit made a play on Dark Side of the Rainbow by saying "Put a copy of Dark Side on, and then start reading the Book of Revelations about 35 seconds in.", after saying "Isn't that the tripiest thing you ever read?" (referring to the Book of Revelations). On the episode of the Colbert Report that aired 10/3/07, Stephen Colbert introduced his guest, former Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, as someone who "had seen the Dark Side of the Moon." Colbert promised to ask him if "he saw it while listening to the Wizard of Oz soundtrack."

Synchronicity

Fans have compiled more than one hundred moments[4] of perceived interplay between the film and album, including further links that occur if the album is repeated through the entire film. This synergy effect has been described as an example of synchronicity, defined by the psychologist Carl Jung as a phenomenon in which coincidental events "seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality."[5] Detractors[6] argue that the phenomenon is the result of the mind's tendency to think it recognizes patterns amid disorder by discarding data that does not fit. Psychologists refer to this tendency as apophenia. Under this theory, a Dark Side of the Rainbow enthusiast will focus on matching moments while ignoring the greater number of instances where the film and the album do not correspond.

Accident or planned?

Pink Floyd band members have repeatedly insisted that the reputed phenomenon is coincidence. In an interview for the 25th anniversary of the album, guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour denied that the album was intentionally written to be synchronized with Oz, saying "Some guy with too much time on his hands had this idea with combining Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon."[7]

On an MTV special about Pink Floyd in 2002, the band dismissed any relationship between the album and the movie, saying that there were no means of reproducing the film in the studio at the time they recorded the album.

On March 3, 2006 at the Canadian Music Week conference in Toronto, Alan Parsons, the album's recording engineer, told an audience during a question-and-answer session that there had been no effort to integrate the album with the film.

A report presumably intended to be humorous states that in the 1930s MGM owned a time machine for employees to use. Allegedly one employee travelled to the future and brought back a copy of the album and the movie was intentionally made to match the album and not the other way around. (The inventor of this report was almost certainly aware of the works of Douglas Adams).

Replicating the effect

Real or imagined, the effect is usually created by pausing a CD of the album at the very beginning, starting the DVD or tape of the film with the TV volume muted, and un-pausing the CD when the black-and-white MGM lion roars for the third time. (Note some versions have a color lion also. The black and white lion is the right one to use for the sync.) A minority of devotees argue that un-pausing the CD on the first roar produces a superior alignment.

Most users have explored this phenomenon using the original or 1994 re-issue editions of the album. Note that 1993's 20th Anniversary re-issue edition (the version included in the "Shine On" box set) altered the run-times of many of the tracks, so that version would not create the Dark Side of the Rainbow effect. By contrast, 2003's 30th Anniversary re-issue edition is acceptable because it largely restored the original run-times.

Another factor that could affect the quality of the perceived synch is the version of the film used. The NTSC version, used in the United States, runs 101 minutes while the PAL version, used in Europe, runs 98 minutes (due to the system's transfer rate of 30(NTSC) rather than 25(PAL) frames per second). Most users who have made websites touting the effect appear to be based in the USA. When using a PAL version of the DVD, digitally speeding up the album by 4.16% prior to starting fixes any problems with syncing.

Variations on the theme

The fame of the Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz synchronicity has prompted some fans to search for correspondences using many other albums or films. Opportunities for perceived syncs between the tonal content of any music and any film's images appear to be common, but the sheer frequency of lyrical connections that are the hallmark of Dark Side of the Rainbow are rare.

Perhaps the oldest variant involves neither Dark Side of the Moon nor The Wizard of Oz. Since the mid-1990s, some websites devoted to the Dark Side of the Rainbow have also made note of a claimed synchronicity between the "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" third act in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and the lengthy Pink Floyd song "Echoes" from the 1971 album Meddle. Again the correspondences are primarily tonal rather than lyrical; among them, both the track and the sequence are the same length, 23 minutes and 31 seconds. Fans also note that director Stanley Kubrick reportedly asked Pink Floyd to score the film, and that former band leader Roger Waters reportedly has said he regrets having turned down the offer. [8] It may also be a coincidence that the Pink Floyd album Echoes was released in 2001. There have also been suggestions that there is synchronicity between Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner with the 1975 Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here. Also, Disney's Alice in Wonderland is reportedly synced with the Pink Floyd album The Wall.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is allegedly synchronized with Rush's 2112. Disney's Snow White, is said to sync with the Queens of the Stone Age album Lullabies to Paralyze. Also, Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad) is said to line up with the Mars Volta album De-Loused in the Comatorium. Rumor has it that the Linkin Park album Minutes to Midnight can be synchronized with the film The Number 23[9] and Buckcherry's album 15 actually produces an amazing sync with the movie Idle Hands[10]. Probably one of the best synchronizations comes from the film Daft Punk's Electroma and the album Human After All, but it is not clear if Daft Punk designed this to work out correctly or not. It is also said that Queen's album A Night At the Opera syncs with the film Night at the Museum and that the film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring syncs with Led Zeppelin IV.

There has also been variations on what to do once Dark Side Of The Moon finishes. The most common is to put the record on repeat and play it through 2 1/2 times. It should be noted that if the album is played on repeat, it seems to "re-sync" itself with the respective scenes; and at the end of the film when Dorothy finally awakens, the lyric can be heard, "Home, home again. I like to be here when I can." Other suggestions include playing two subsequent Pink Floyd albums after Dark Side of the Moon finishes: the 1977 concept album Animals and the 1971 album Meddle. It is also possible to get a very convincing synch by pausing the movie at the very end of Dark Side and restarting it with the start of "The Division Bell".

References

  1. ^ http://members.aol.com/rbsavage/floydwizard.html
  2. ^ http://www.synchronicityarkive.com/node/297
  3. ^ Chicago Sun Times "Dark Side of Oz" (July 3, 2000)
  4. ^ http://members.cox.net/stegokitty/dsotr_pages/printable.htm
  5. ^ http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/synchronicity
  6. ^ http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdarkside.html
  7. ^ http://members.cox.net/stegokitty4/sounds/dv_dsotmwo-oz.mp3
  8. ^ (Shaffner, Nicholas (1991). Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. Harmony Books. p. 142. ISBN 0-517-57608-2.)
  9. ^ http://www.synchronicityarkive.com/node/740
  10. ^ http://www.synchronicityarkive.com/node/741
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