> --
> Follow the Yellow Rock Road
>
> A Floydian analysis of 'The Wizard of Oz'
> 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 'TheWizard 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 synchroneities.  "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.

>
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