psychoceramics: Fwd: Not in Kansas anymore

[John Tynes <rev @ tccorp.com>]

This isn't net.lunacy so much, but it is darn peculiar...


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>Subject: Not in Kansas anymore
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>You might have heard about this:
>
>
>
>By HELEN KENNEDY
>Daily News Staff Writer
>
>    Call it Dark Side of the Rainbow. Classic rockers are buzzing
>about the amazingly weird connections that leap off the screen when
>you play Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as the soundtrack to
>"The Wizard of Oz."
>
>    It sounds wacky, but there really is a bizarre synchronization
>there. The lyrics and music join in cosmic synch with the action,
>forming dozens upon dozens of startling coincidences the kind that
>make you go "Oh wow, man" even if you haven't been near a bong in 20
>years.
>
>    Consider these examples:
>
>    Floyd sings "the lunatic is on the grass" just as the Scarecrow
>begins his floppy jig near a green lawn.  The line "got to keep the
>loonies on the path" comes just before Dorothy and the Scarecrow start
>traipsing down the Yellow Brick Road.
>
>     When deejay George Taylor Morris at WZLX-FM in Boston first
>mentioned the phenom on the air six weeks ago, he touched off a
>frenzy.
>
>     "The phones just blew off the wall. It started on a Friday,
>and that first weekend you couldn't get a copy of 'The Wizard of Oz'
>anywhere in Boston," he said. "People were staying home to check it
>out."  It's fun, he said, because everyone knows the movie,and the
>album which spent a record-busting 591 straight weeks on the Billboard
>charts can be found in practically every record collection.
>
>     Dave Herman at WNEW-FM in New York mentioned the buzz a few
>weeks
>ago. The response more than 2,000 letters was the biggest ever in the
>deejay's 25-year on-air career.
>
>  "It has been just unbelievable," said WNEW program director Mark
>Chernoff. "I've never seen anything like this. "
>
>   The station plans to show the movie using the album as soundtrack
>at a small private screening tomorrow.
>
>   Rock fans always have loved to speculate about hidden messages in
>their favorite albums. But seeking connections between the beloved
>1939 classic kid flick and the legendary 1973 acid-rock album pushes
>the envelope of the music conspiracy genre.
>
>   Nobody from the publicity-shy band would comment, but Morris asked
>keyboardist Richard Wright about it on the air last month. He looked
>flummoxed and said he'd never heard of any intentional connections
>between the movie and the album.
>
>   But the fans aren't convinced it's just a cosmic coincidence.
>I'm a musician myself and I know how hard it is just to write music,
>let alone music choreographed to action," said drummer Alex Harm, of
>Lowell, Mass.,who put up one of the two Internet web pages devoted to
>the synchronicities. "To make it match up so well, you'd have to plan
>it."
>
>   Morris is convinced that ex-frontman Roger Waters planned the whole
>thing without letting his fellow band members in on the secret.
>
>   "It's too close. It's just too close. Look at the song titles.
>Look at the cover. There's something going on there," Morris said.
>
>   Here's how it works. You start the album at the exact moment when
>the MGM lion finishes its third and last roar. It might take a few
>times to get everything lined up just right.  Then, just sit back
>and watch. It'll blow your mind, man.
>
>   During "Breathe," Dorothy teeters along a fence to the lyric:
>"balanced on the biggest wave."  The Wicked Witch, in human form,
>first appears on her bike at the same moment a burst of alarm bells
>sounds on the album.
>
>   During "Time," Dorothy breaks into a trot to the line: "no one
>told you when to run."  When Dorothy leaves the fortuneteller to go
>back to her farm, the album is playing: "home, home again."
>
>   Glinda, the cloyingly saccharine Good Witch of the North, appears
>in her bubble just as the band sings: "Don't give me that do goody
>goody bull ---t."
>
>    A few minutes later, the Good Witch confronts the Wicked Witch
>as the band sings, "And who knows which is which" (or is that "witch
>is witch"?).
>
>    The song "Brain Damage" starts about the same time as the
>Scarecrow launches into "If I Only Had a Brain."
>
>    But it's not just the weird lyrical coincidences. Songs end when
>scenes switch, and even the Munchkins' dancing is perfectly
>choreographed to the song "Us and Them."
>
>    The phenomenon is at its most startling during the tornado
>scene, when the wordless singing in "The Great Gig in the Sky" swells
>and recedes in strikingly perfect time with the movie.
>
>     When Dorothy opens the door into Oz, the movie switches to rich
>color and and that exact moment the album starts in with the
>tinkling cash register sound effects from "Money."
>
>     Anyone who has ever nursed a hangover watching MTV with the
>sound off and the radio on can tell you how quick the brain is to turn
>music into a soundtrack for pictures. But this is uncanny.
>
>     The real fanatics will point out that side one of the vinyl
>album is the exact length of the black-and-white portion of the movie.
>And then there's that iconic album cover, with its prism and rainbow
>echoing the movie's famous black-and-white-into-color switch not to
>mention Judy Garland's classic first song.
>
>     The real clincher, though, the moment where even the most
>skeptical of cynics has to utter a small "whoa!," comes at the end
>of the album, which tails off with the insistent sound of a beating
>heart. What's happening on screen? Yep, you guessed it: Dorothy's
>got her ear to the Tin Man's chest, listening for a heartbeat.
>
>     Maybe it's just a string of coincidences. Maybe the mind is
>just playing some really cool tricks. Maybe some people just have
>waaaay too much time on their hands.  Or maybe, as Pink Floyd sings to
>close out the album, everything under the sun really is in tune.
>





John Tynes    r--@t--.com       []          The occult underground
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