The idea of an orches­tra per­form­ing 1970s pro­gres­sive rock sounds at first like the stuff of purest nov­el­ty. And while the excess­es of that move­ment bent on the artis­tic “ele­va­tion” of rock-and-roll quick­ly became easy tar­gets, its music has unde­ni­able res­o­nances with the clas­si­cal canon, broad­ly defined. In a piece on the mod­ern reeval­u­a­tion of “prog-rock,” The New York­er’s Kele­fa San­neh quotes a Rolling Stone crit­ic label­ing the ambi­tious new sound “jazz-influ­enced clas­si­cal-rock” in a 1972 review of the debut album of Emer­son, Lake and Palmer, who lat­er “reached the Top Ten, in both Britain and Amer­i­ca, with a live album based on its bom­bas­tic ren­di­tion of Mussorgsky’s Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion.”

King Crim­son, anoth­er pil­lar of the sub­genre, once played a “fero­cious set” that end­ed with “Mars, the Bringer of War,” from Gus­tav Hol­st’s The Plan­ets suite — as an open­er for the Rolling Stones. But no band to rise out of the prog-rock fer­ment has made more of an impact, or more fans, than Pink Floyd.

Their 1973 release The Dark Side of the Moon remains, as of this writ­ing, the fourth best-sell­ing album of all time (to say noth­ing of its T‑shirts and dorm-room posters), and though its ten songs fair­ly demand trib­ute, pay­ing prop­er homage to their elab­o­rate com­po­si­tion and pro­duc­tion is eas­i­er said than done. Enter the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dublin’s stu­dent-run Trin­i­ty Orches­tra, who take it on in the video above, filmed at Christ Church Cathe­dral dur­ing 2012’s 10 Days in Dublin fes­ti­val.

“Time,” the best-known of The Dark Side of the Moon’s album tracks, is here rearranged for a full orches­tra, band, and singers, and going by sound alone, you might believe you’re lis­ten­ing to one of the Floy­d’s more rich­ly instru­ment­ed live shows (not that they were known to skimp in that depart­ment). But there’s no mis­tak­ing this orches­tral ver­sion of “Wish You Were Here” (from their epony­mous fol­low-up album) for the gen­uine arti­cle, cer­tain­ly not because of inad­e­quate musi­cian­ship, but because most of the musi­cians are play­ing man­dolins. Con­duct­ed by Boris Björn Bag­ger, these Ger­man play­ers include not just man­dolin­ists but the late Michael Rüber front and cen­ter on elec­tric gui­tar — an all-impor­tant instru­ment, it seems, no mat­ter how far rock pro­gress­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of The Dark Side of the Moon in Full

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

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

If the age of Amer­i­can musi­cal satire is behind us, Tom Lehrer may have end­ed it sim­ply by being unsur­pass­ably good at it. No less a com­e­dy-song mas­ter than “Weird Al” Yankovic still walks among us, of course, but he spe­cial­izes in broad par­o­dy rather than bit­ing irony. Despite hav­ing retired from pub­lic life, Lehrer too lives on, and at 92 has tak­en action to assure his work a longer exis­tence by releas­ing it into the pub­lic domain. On his offi­cial site you’ll see a state­ment from the man him­self: “All the lyrics on this web­site, whether pub­lished or unpub­lished, copy­right­ed or uncopy­right­ed, may be down­loaded and used in any man­ner what­so­ev­er.”

Direct­ly below his mes­sage you’ll find a list of near­ly 100 of Lehrer’s songs, which when clicked lead to down­load­able PDFs of their lyrics, and in some cas­es their sheet music as well. Ready for you to repur­pose are such sig­na­ture num­bers as “The Masochism Tan­go,” “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park,” and “The Ele­ments,” a ver­sion of the “Major-Gen­er­al’s Song” from Gilbert and Sul­li­van’s Pirates of Pen­zance that name-checks each and every one of the phys­i­cal ele­ments known in 1959.

That Lehrer has also includ­ed the “Aris­to­tle ver­sion” of “Ele­ments” — in full, “There’s earth and air and fire and water” — just hints at the many play­ful touch­es to be found in this col­lec­tion of mate­ri­als.

Not just a singer-song­writer but a math­e­mati­cian who worked at both the Los Alam­os Sci­en­tif­ic Lab­o­ra­to­ry and the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency dur­ing the Cold War, Lehrer did­n’t shy away from address­ing the tech­ni­cal, the polit­i­cal, and the top­i­cal in his music. “Wern­her von Braun” sends up the rock­et sci­en­tist secret­ly recruit­ed by the Unit­ed States from defeat­ed Nazi Ger­many (“Don’t say that he’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal / Say rather that he’s apo­lit­i­cal”). “New Math” gives a sim­i­lar treat­ment to the Sput­nik-spooked U.S.‘s ill-advised scram­ble to reform math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion, and I got a laugh out of the song in child­hood despite grow­ing up long after the retrench­ment of New Math itself.

Whether hear­ing or read­ing Lehrer’s lyrics today, one mar­vels at both how they’ve retained their bite, and how wide­ly they were con­sid­ered too edgy for air­play in the 1950s. The BBC, for exam­ple, banned ten of the twelve songs on his debut album, includ­ing “Be Pre­pared,” which spins the Boy Scout’s mot­to into an ode to mis­be­hav­ior (“Be pre­pared to hold your liquor pret­ty well / Don’t write naughty words on walls if you can’t spell”). But now we’re free to craft new con­texts to make them trou­bling again, and with the hol­i­days com­ing up, this assures us very Lehrer Thanks­giv­ings, Christ­mases (“Mix the punch, drag out the Dick­ens / Even though the prospect sick­ens”) and Hanukkahs (“Here’s to Judas Mac­cabeus / Boy, if he could only see us / Spend­ing Hanukkah in San­ta Mon­i­ca”) to come. Enter his site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

Tom Lehrer’s Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly and Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Inclined Singing and Song­writ­ing, Ani­mat­ed

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune “The Ele­ments”

We’re All Doomed!: Weird Al Yankovic Tries to Make Sense of the Dis­as­trous Trump vs. Biden “Debate”

The Music, Books & Films Lib­er­at­ed into the Pub­lic Domain in 2020: Rhap­sody in Blue, The Mag­ic Moun­tain, Sher­lock, Jr., and More

Every Pos­si­ble Melody Has Been Copy­right­ed, and They’re Now Released into the Pub­lic Domain

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Get­ting banned from a venue can hurt a band’s career, but in most every case I’ve heard about, it’s a cloud with a gold­en lin­ing. Hard­core band Bad Brains built a lega­cy on get­ting banned in all of D.C.‘s clubs. Elvis Costello’s career didn’t seem to suf­fer much when he was banned from Sat­ur­day Night Live in 1977. Jimi Hen­drix’s ban­ning from the BBC did­n’t hurt his image any. Then there’s the Doors….

The band earned the dis­tinc­tion of being the first to have a mem­ber arrest­ed live onstage in the infa­mous “New Haven inci­dent” of 1967. Three months ear­li­er, they per­formed live, no mim­ing, on The Ed Sul­li­van Show. Things did not go as smooth­ly as the pro­duc­ers may have hoped,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock. No, Jim Mor­ri­son didn’t expose him­self or antag­o­nize the audi­ence.

On the con­trary, giv­en the Doors’ oth­er noto­ri­ous “inci­dents,” the offense is as mild as it gets—Morrison sim­ply sang the lyrics to “Light My Fire” as writ­ten, defy­ing pro­duc­ers’ request that he change “Girl, we couldn’t get much high­er” since it sound­ed like a drug ref­er­ence. Not only did they ask Mor­ri­son to change the lyric, but they also appar­ent­ly asked him to sing “Girl, we couldn’t get much bet­ter,” which doesn’t even rhyme.

One can see why he would have resist­ed.

“Band mem­bers have giv­en vary­ing accounts of whether they ever agreed to change the line or not,” UCR notes. Accord­ing to The Ed Sul­li­van Show site, a pro­duc­er came into the dress­ing room, told the band they should smile more, and told them the line was “inap­pro­pri­ate for a fam­i­ly show on nation­al tele­vi­sion.” As soon as he left the room, Mor­ri­son said, “We’re not chang­ing a word.”

The band went on after Rod­ney Dan­ger­field, a last-minute replace­ment for anoth­er com­ic. They played “Peo­ple Are Strange,” then the offend­ing song. Dan­ger­field became a reg­u­lar on the Sul­li­van show. The Doors–booked for six more appearances–never went on again, though they had plen­ty of oth­er TV book­ings and wild, dis­as­trous stage shows to keep them busy.

When informed after the show that they’d been banned, Mor­ri­son report­ed­ly said a most Jim Mor­ri­son thing: “Hey, man, we just did the Sul­li­van show.”

Watch a clip of the per­for­mance just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Jimi Hen­drix Wreaks Hav­oc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From the BBC (1969)

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