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.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

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

A Deep, Track-by-Track Analy­sis of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd’s Musi­cal Jour­ney Through the Stress­es & Anx­i­eties of Mod­ern Exis­tence

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

A preter­nat­u­ral­ly tal­ent­ed, pre­co­cious child, bare­ly out of tod­dler­hood, in pow­dered wig and knee-breech­es, caper­ing around the great hous­es of 18th cen­tu­ry Europe between vir­tu­oso per­for­mances on the harp­si­chord. A young boy who can play any piece any­one puts in front of him, and com­pose sym­phonies extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly with ease…. Few scenes bet­ter cap­ture the mythos of the child prodi­gy than those report­ed from the child­hood of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart.

If Milos Forman’s Amadeus is any reli­able guide to his char­ac­ter, if not his his­to­ry, Mozart may nev­er have lost his boy­ish charm and exu­ber­ance, but his musi­cal abil­i­ty seemed to mature expo­nen­tial­ly as he com­posed hun­dreds of sonatas, quar­tets, con­cer­tos, and operas, end­ing with the Requiem, an aston­ish­ing piece of work by any mea­sure, despite remain­ing unfin­ished in the year of his death, 1791, at the age of 35.

While those fever­ish scenes of Requiem’s com­po­si­tion in Forman’s film may be ten­u­ous­ly attached to the truth, the sto­ries of Mozart the preschool and boy­hood genius are well attest­ed. Not only did he play with unbe­liev­able skill for “emper­ors and empress­es in the courts of Europe,” but “by the time he was six he had com­posed dozens of remark­able pieces for the key­board as well as for oth­er instru­ments,” notes Willard Palmer in an intro­duc­tion to Mozart’s most pop­u­lar works. “His first efforts at com­po­si­tion began when he was only four years old.”

He com­posed sev­er­al short pieces the fol­low­ing year, and you can hear them all per­formed above. At the Mor­gan Library’s site you can also see a scanned man­u­script image of four of those com­po­si­tions, writ­ten in Mozart’s father’s hand. Leopold Mozart—the dri­ving stage-parental force, as we know, behind Wolfgang’s child­hood career as a tour­ing marvel—notated these first attempts, cred­it­ing them to “Wolf­gangerl,” in what is known as the Nan­nerl Note­book, from the nick­name of Mozart’s old­er sis­ter, Maria Anna.

Leopold, Kapellmeis­ter of the Salzburg court orches­tra, rec­og­nized not only Wolfgang’s musi­cal tal­ents, but also those of Nan­nerl, and he devot­ed his time to over­see­ing both his children’s train­ing. For sad­ly obvi­ous rea­sons, the elder Mozart did not con­tin­ue to per­form, and the note­book named for her does not con­tain any of her com­po­si­tions, only Leopold’s exer­cis­es for the chil­dren and her broth­er’s first orig­i­nal work. In addi­tion to Mozart’s ear­li­est pieces, it may also con­tain music com­posed by him at 7 or 8 years old—more exten­sive works that might, says Mozar­teum researcher Ulrich Leisinger, bridge the short, sim­ple first pieces and his first major com­po­si­tions.

Nonethe­less, we have dozens of Mozart’s com­po­si­tions through­out his child­hood and teenage years. Sev­er­al of those ear­li­er pieces come from the so-called Lon­don Note­book, a sketch­book kept dur­ing Mozart’s time in Eng­land between 1764–65. Here, writes Ele­na Abend, we find him “extend­ing his musi­cal themes com­pared to his ear­li­er com­po­si­tions.” And yet the music “almost always has a play­ful­ness about it.” It’s a qual­i­ty that nev­er left Mozart’s work, exclud­ing the awe­some Requiem, of course, but then this final mas­ter­work was com­plet­ed by oth­er com­posers, none of them with Mozart’s light­ness of spir­it, which we can trace all the way back to that first piece, “a court­ly lit­tle com­po­si­tion.” Writes Abend, “grace­ful­ness is essen­tial in per­form­ing the piece.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Per­for­mance of a Mozart Com­po­si­tion That Had Been Lost for Cen­turies

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of Mozart’s Music, Com­posed from Ages 5 to 35

Mozart’s Diary Where He Com­posed His Final Mas­ter­pieces Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness