A Live Studio Cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Finish

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is such a work of art that to split it up into nine tracks–like clas­sic rock radio has done for years–always sounds non­sen­si­cal. How can you just end “Breathe” on that final chord and not fol­low it with the ana­log drones of “On the Run”? How can you play “Brain Dam­age” and not end with “Eclipse”? And how dare you fade the long coda of “Mon­ey” and segue into a car com­mer­cial?

You can’t, moral­ly speak­ing, I’m telling you.

So that’s why I like the cut of the jib of the Mar­tin Miller Ses­sion Band, who com­mit to cov­er­ing the entire­ty of Dark Side of the Moon in this one long stu­dio per­for­mance. Accord­ing to Miller’s Patre­on page, this is the only full album they’ve cov­ered so far, and they pull through admirably.

And the thing that is refresh­ing here is that the band cov­ers the album up to a point, but not slav­ish­ly. It’s not the Flam­ing Lips’ decon­struc­tion or the sur­pris­ing­ly still lis­ten­able 8‑Bit ver­sion, but nei­ther is it the kind of trib­ute band like Brit Floyd (below). When Miller solos, he’s not aping David Gilmour. The key­boardist Mar­ius Leicht has his own knobs to twid­dle, so to speak. And drum­mer Felix Lehrmann will nev­er ever be con­fused for Nick Mason. (In fact, he gets a lot of grief in the com­ments for being too flash, but when you watch Miller’s oth­er videos and see him giv­ing Stew­art Copeland a run for his mon­ey on their Police med­ley, you see where he’s com­ing from.)

Know­ing what you’re in for, ques­tions arise: are they going to include the var­i­ous spo­ken sam­ples sprin­kled through­out (“I don’t know I was real­ly drunk at the time,” “There is no dark side of the moon real­ly…”). Answer: yes indeed, and fun­ny they are too. Does a sax­o­phon­ist turn up for “Mon­ey” and “Us and Them”? Answer: Yes, and it’s Michal Skul­s­ki. Who can pos­si­bly match Clare Torry’s pipes on “The Great Gig in the Sky”? Jen­ny Marsala does, thank you very much.

So I would set­tle in and try to unlearn your mem­o­ry of every note and beat on the 1973 clas­sic. By doing so, you’ll hear the album anew.

And after that, if you’re still han­ker­ing for that “even bet­ter than the real thing” vibe, enjoy this full con­cert, cir­cu­lar pro­jec­tion screen and all, by the afore­men­tioned Brit Floyd, play­ing Liv­er­pool in 2011.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

Clare Torry’s Rare Live Per­for­mances of “Great Gig in the Sky” with Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

Bea­t­les Trib­ute Band “The Fab Faux” Per­forms Live an Amaz­ing­ly Exact Repli­ca of the Orig­i­nal Abbey Road Med­ley

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.


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Comments (10)
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  • John says:

    Its bril­liant , they have done a fan­tas­tic job , they have put a lot of work to get it right .

  • Damir says:

    Tech­ni­cal­ly excel­lent, gui­tar / vocal stiff, sound even irri­tant, not in ade­quate ener­gy and feel­ing, drum­mers sound is fan­tas­tic, but just not in the mood like play­ing some oth­er band not Floyd. I have heard much bet­ter PF cov­ers.
    Keyboard/effects, back vocals great, bass superb.

  • #KRZYL8T says:

    PERFECTION
    #KRZYL8T W #KOOLAIDSMILES

  • Jaime says:

    I under­stand that they can’t sound exact­ly the same as PF, how­ev­er, lot’s of changes and mod­i­fi­ca­tions found.

    The Dark Side of the Moon is a clas­si­cal, such as any Beethoven’s sonata; I can’t imag­ine some­one per­form­ing Bach replac­ing chords and tones con­vinient­ly.

  • Jeff Gibson says:

    The female vocal­ist was Out­stand­ing!

  • Frank says:

    Then you need to get more. There is a dif­fer­ence between “play­ing” Bach/Pink Floyd (as it’s writ­ten), and doing a Bach/Pink Floyd cov­er. Just like the cov­er of thou­sands of songs done all over the world and the inter­net.
    Pick your favorite, then type it into YouTube fol­lowed by the weird “cov­er” and pre­pare to [appar­ent­ly] be dis­ap­point­ed with the world. Here’s one of dozens of exam­ples… it’s a group that just does mod­ern­ized ren­di­tions of Bach. https://youtu.be/e6Kyap5BTfo

  • David says:

    Nice work and I’m glad you done it your way rather than try­ing to be a dupli­ca­tion. Whats the point of music if the main pur­pose is to try and sound exact­ly the same as what you and I had already heard and can hear again any time we want? Am I lucky to be old enough to remem­ber being at the 1975 PF live per­for­mance of this at Kneb­worth Park? That was some­thing absolute­ly impos­si­ble to for­get and lis­ten­ing to your ver­sion brings back many mem­o­ries of that day. It is great to hear a fresh take of a sem­i­nal album that respects the orig­i­nal work but isn’t a clone and adds anoth­er dimen­sion to the mix. Many thanks. Well done.

  • Darren says:

    It’s not like it’s not bad but makes you want to lis­ten to the real deal again so that’s what I’m about to do two 👍👍for one of the best band’s that ever formed

  • Frank Decaterina De caterina says:

    excel­lent crafts­man­ship!!

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