Comments on: Dark Side of Oz

Dark Side of Oz

Who_Am_I — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:45:44 -0800

Most of us saw The Wizard of Oz when we were kids, and discovered Dark Side of the Moon in high school. At some point someone decided to combine the two, and we ended up with the Dark Side of Oz (or Dark Side of the Rainbow). To set this up at home, you needed to start the album just as the MGM lion roared for the third time. Or you could watch it on Turner Classic Movies (who showed the film synched with DSotM in 2000). And now you can watch it on Google Video, while it lasts. My favorite part is when Dorothy walks out into the colors of Oz just as the cash registers of Money kick in.

By: Who_Am_I

Who_Am_I — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:47:06 -0800

I know we've talked about this before, but I figured since it's been 3 years and you can now watch it online, it merited a new post. Hope you guys agree.

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:50:52 -0800

Get a rope.

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:51:19 -0800

Just kidding.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:52:29 -0800

The comments on the Google Video link imply that it was misaligned (i.e. not on the third roar). How could you screw up something so.. so.. vital?

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:55:01 -0800

I spent six weeks in college trying to write and record an 33-ish minute EP that would tie in both thematically and rhythmically to Wizard of Oz on all three passes required to match the full running-time of the film. And then the goddam harddrive died as a direct result of my having hooked up the external CD burner to backup my work. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:56:45 -0800

My favorite part is when Dorothy walks out into the colors of Oz just as the cash registers of Money kick in. Which is, in all actuality, the only part of DSOTM that actually synchs up with The Wizard of Oz.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:00:59 -0800

Well, that's the trick, Afroblanco—if you can point to that one damningly perfect bit of synchronicity, it's makes a person much more willing to stretch for corroborating evidence. And that is a really good sync. Not only do you have Money kicking in for the color changeover, but just before that you get the final Great Gig denoument synced perfectly with Dorothy losing consciousness and collapsing onto the bed. Fantastic moment.

By: dog food sugar

dog food sugar — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:03:45 -0800

Oh thank you! I always wanted to see this and never got around to it. Now I am - years late.

By: everichon

everichon — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:06:27 -0800

I liked.

By: needs more cowbell

needs more cowbell — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:19:59 -0800

At least it's not on YouTube.

By: haikuku

haikuku — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:24:23 -0800

Thanks for psoting, I have always wanted to see it. All I need is an altered state....

By: haikuku

haikuku — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:24:57 -0800

posting, (maybe I'm altered enough)

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:25:14 -0800

I dunno, I was way disappointed by the DSOTM/Wizard synch. From the way people talked about it, I expected something that was "too weird to be coincidence," and what I got was just, well, coincidence. DSOTM/Wizard is one of those things like Snakes On a Plane - an internet meme, something that would have never gotten any attention had it not been for the internet. Besides, for pure entertainment value, I prefer the final sequence of 2001 synched with Atom Heart Mother.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:39:50 -0800

I'd heard it as the final act of 2001 + "echoes" off of Meddle. But I never tried either.

By: dglynn

dglynn — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:42:12 -0800

Try the "trip" part of 2001 with One of These Days by Pink Floyd, Afroblanco.

By: Gator

Gator — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:46:16 -0800

I like to watch old movies while listening to Hotel California to see if it synchs up in a significant way. And so far, no. Nothing has.

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:50:36 -0800

I saw this at a friends house once, we were sufficiently high and I wasn't terribly impressed. I suspect that 500 mics of fresh liquid LSD and a kick ass stereo might change my mind, but, with that combo I could watch the Andy Griffith show set to Koyaanisqatsi and have religious experience.

By: gorgor_balabala

gorgor_balabala — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:51:52 -0800

2001 trip part with ligeti not good enough? maybe i need more ganja (more than none).

By: wsg

wsg — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:52:11 -0800

Which is, in all actuality, the only part of DSOTM that actually synchs up with The Wizard of Oz. That's incorrect. At the precise moment when Margaret Hamilton appears on her bike to bitch about Toto, all the alarm clocks and bells start going off. I noticed also that just as Dorothy is running away, the singer says "No one told you when to run." Also, the chick singer is going crazy during the tornado and she settles down at the precise moment that Dorothy gets hit in the head by the window frame and there is a quieter interlude that lasts precisely as long as the house twirling in the tornado scene and stops just as Dorothy is walking out of the house, just in time for the cash registers. Also, the tempo changes at exactly the moment when Dorothy approaches the corn field where she meets the scarecrow. I was overall impressed with how well it synced up.

By: muckster

muckster — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:53:33 -0800

Jupiter and Beyond meets Echoes.

By: smackwich

smackwich — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:58:18 -0800

In retrospect, the effect of the synch seemed a great degree larger during my acid days.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:00:30 -0800

There are actually a bunch of parts that "mesh up" if you're willing to suspend skepticism for a bit. Most song transitions occur at an interesting part of the movie, and the entire Great Gig is, well, perfect. The screaming goes well with the utter chaos of the tornado, then Dorothy gets hit in the head by the shutters just as the screaming dies down (in the middle of the song) and becomes more moaning. What I found most disappointing about the whole thing is that the end doesn't mash up well at all. Perhaps if Dark Side had been an extra hour in length (or the WOZ an hour shorter), it would be interesting to see how Brain Damage/Eclipse worked with the end. Of course, that wouldn't work too well, either, since you'd lose the whole "If I Only Had a Brain Damage" sync-up.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:08:38 -0800

I saw tons of syncs with lyrics, rhythms, themes, etc.. If your looking for lawyer-like court-room evidence of an intentional sync, then maybe you don't get it?

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:12:27 -0800

Andy Griffith show set to Koyaanisqatsi and have religious experience. Mayberry out of Balance?

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:13:17 -0800

i watched plan 9 from outer space with the shaggs' philosophy of the world and saw god, man

By: JWright

JWright — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:13:35 -0800

I was sold when Dororthy was balancing on the pig pen, and then falls in. The lyric is, "And balanced on the biggest wave, you race toward an early grave." She falls, the Cowardly Lion (in farm clothes) jumps in to save her, and the music changes. Neat.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:19:10 -0800

Jupiter and Beyond meets Echoes. That was pretty good!

By: kumazemi

kumazemi — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:20:03 -0800

I have to think that the whole thing balances on the tornado sequence with "great gig in the sky" (as others have said). There are some other somewhat notable coincidences but nothing is as interesting as this sequence. The old Floyd fan in me actually got chills for just a second when I saw that. I have to believe that whover initially started playing with this idea probably thought to synch up the film at that point, and everything else just expanded out from there. The concept is pretty entertaining, and a few moments of the actual viewing are cool, but I think it's real goofy if anyone really takes it seriously. The biggest let down of the whole thing is obviously the ending which just fizzles out halfway through the movie with nothing important going on at all. On another note, I wonder if a lot of the popularity of this comes from a new generation of people actually hearing the entire DSOTM album in one go. It's a fairly short record, so this isn't really a duanting task, but I bet a lot of the fans of this synch would have never heard it all together otherwise.

By: 2sheets

2sheets — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:34:19 -0800

After hearing about this for years I finally checked it out yesterday, and found it to be incredibly lame.

By: rolypolyman

rolypolyman — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:55:57 -0800

Anyone tried The Matrix and Duran Duran's Rio? When Neo's hiding in his cubicle during "Hungry Like The Wolf" and we see Agent Smith, we hear "I'm on the hunt, I'm after you"..

By: Fuzzy Monster

Fuzzy Monster — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:59:24 -0800

Once a buddy of mine and I watched Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' while listening to The Beatles Anthology. The Beatles started to sing 'Sexy Sadie' right when the metallic robot woman was rising from the ground. Sheer coincidence, but nonetheless pretty damn cool.

By: DonnieSticks

DonnieSticks — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:01:07 -0800

The colors, man. The colors...

By: premortem

premortem — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:05:42 -0800

For what its worth, the synch also works well playing DSotM along with the cartoon Alice in Wonderland. There are the rabbit holes, cheshire cats, and tweedle dumb all come in at appropiate moments coinciding with the album. ...or maybe it was just the shrooms.

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:14:26 -0800

rolypolyman made me LOL

By: LooseFilter

LooseFilter — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:17:18 -0800

afroblanco: DSOTM/Wizard is one of those things like Snakes On a Plane - an internet meme, something that would have never gotten any attention had it not been for the internet. That's some historical myopia--you must be a young 'un. The Wizard of Oz was released in 1939, acid first made in 1943, and DSOTM in 1973. This has been around a lot longer than the web. I know I saw "the sync" in high school, and that was certainly before it ever could possibly have become an internet meme.

By: gimonca

gimonca — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:39:55 -0800

Try Elvis' musical numbers in "King Creole", and replace the sound with Devo playing "Wiggly World". Wiggle, wiggle wiggle!

By: charlesv

charlesv — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:47:15 -0800

[laughs at afroblanco] I was still using Mosaic when I saw this for the first time, and it had been around for quite a while already.

By: amethysts

amethysts — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:49:52 -0800

i enjoyed this very much. i especially liked how there was sort of a wild west show-down theme when ms. gulch was talking to the auntie to take the dog away.

By: MjrMjr

MjrMjr — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:55:01 -0800

I watched WOZ/DSOTM with two freinds while on some really good acid and weed about 8 yrs ago. It was a mindblowing experience in a 'whole is greater than the sum of its part' sort of a way, although there's really no way that I could describe it that would do it justice.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 12:05:13 -0800

Better still: Front 242's 06:21:03:11 Up Evil as the audio bed for Pinocchio in Outer Space, immediately followed by 05:22:09:12 Off synched with Eraserhead. (Playing the second CD, then the first with Blade Runner works just as well.)

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 12:43:25 -0800

Better still: Front 242's 06:21:03:11 Up Evil as the audio bed for Pinocchio in Outer Space, immediately followed by 05:22:09:12 Off synched with Eraserhead. (Playing the second CD, then the first with Blade Runner works just as well.) ::blink::

By: Joey Bagels

Joey Bagels — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:00:56 -0800

When I was in high school, I figured out a way to synchronize "Leave It" by Yes to the Death Star battle at the end of Star Wars. I was a weird kid.

By: SassHat

SassHat — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:22:45 -0800

My favorite part has always been when Money plays and Dorothy steps out into Oz to the sounds of cash registers, and also when the Munchkins dance, it's in perfect synch to the base line (that was the part that freaked me out the most).

By: sucka_mc

sucka_mc — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:31:37 -0800

Having seen it finally, I think I can kind of put perspective on how much synching actually happens. Did Pink Floyd write this album in order to do this? Nope. Not even close. When mixing it down did someone take some creative liberties in how long to time a few transitions for some insane inside joke? Maybe. This album always struck me as having a lot of (ahem) dead air where you hear similar things over and over again. It would probably be pretty easy to pad a few repetions + or - in certain points. Padding to fit certain time spans is really common when making commercials/tv shows or whatever, so this scenario seems far less far-fetched, at least to me.

By: geoff.

geoff. — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:39:00 -0800

Can you imagine being the first person that this happened to stoned? They probably turned into pure energy.

By: wfc123

wfc123 — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:56:07 -0800

Cue up Lindsay Lohan's latest CD and "The Butterfly Effect"-- right when Ashton Kurcher says his first "duuude". It's a mind-bender.

By: modernerd

modernerd — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 14:01:17 -0800

It doesn't matter if it was intentional or not, it's fricken' trippy.

By: n9

n9 — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 14:40:04 -0800

cover art for DSOTM is a prism, white light going to a rainbow, mirroring the film. you see the yellow brick road the instant "money" starts 'don't give me that do goodie good bullshit' right when the good which appears ends with a heartbeat right as the straw man and dorothy are listening at the tin man's heart these were the strongest connections... there were 20-40 more that we saw (sober, 30-somethings.) I thought it was really interesting and so did my wife. I used to (cough, a long time ago) light up and watch buster keaton films with electric era miles davis going as the soundtrack a lot -- the odd connections were interesting to me... but this really seems to either have a very direct intention behoind it or some heavy Jungian element. Metafilter: everything even a tiny bit cool is shit.

By: n9

n9 — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 14:51:53 -0800

the echos/2001 thing was pretty nice. Unless I am mistaken, members of Pink Floyd admitted to that one. The fact that the song is the same length as the segment of the film to the second is a big clue. I think that the Google Video link above either got out of sync or was about 1 second off, though...

By: interrobang

interrobang — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 15:27:10 -0800

Watching any Fox News piece online synchs perfectly with Carl Stalling's Looney Tunes music. Try it!

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 15:39:36 -0800

This album always struck me as having a lot of (ahem) dead air where you hear similar things over and over again. It would probably be pretty easy to pad a few repetions + or - in certain points. today, it's very simple to do ... in 1972, it was just about impossible ... they were using analog tape for that album ... the vocal delays on "us and them" took them hours to work out, as did the cash register loop on money and what would they use to sync it to the video? ... they didn't have off the shelf vcrs then, they would have had to do it in a dedicated tv or movie production studio ... which abbey road wasn't if someone had wanted to take creative liberties with the project, as you're thinking of, they'd have had to dub the master and use razor blades and scotch tape on the dub ... remember, there were no samplers and no digital equipment back then as far as the "dead air" syndrome is concerned, that was something they'd been developing since their 2nd album ... it's part of their style

By: crataegus

crataegus — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:02:02 -0800

Watching any Fox News piece online synchs perfectly with Carl Stalling's Looney Tunes music. Try it! Everything synchs with "Powerhouse."

By: n9

n9 — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:17:23 -0800

pyramid: Alan Parsons mixed and sequeced DSOTM in his studio, which he also used to score films. There was a projector with sync to tape installed in the room where he mixed the record. Additionally, Alan was/is well known for saying tht the WOO is one of his favorite films. Considering the time and the massive number of existant prints of the film it is not unlikely he could have owned a print if he wanted one. But, for the record, he would have done nothing more complex in syncronizing the record to the film as any bit of film score work. You edit to the cue points -- hard work for certain, but thousands of films had scores with hundreds of cues by that time. The fact that analog sound sync was a bitch actually makes it more likely that they/he did cut the film to sync.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:37:20 -0800

Jupiter and Beyond meets Echoes. posted by muckster at 9:53 AM PST on July 15 [+fave] [!] Whoa. I'd never seen that before and it completely blew me away. Thanks! The Wizard of Oz, not so much.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:32:41 -0800

i really didn't know parsons had that equipment there ... i certainly didn't mean to say it couldn't have been done, but it would have been a lot of work ... sucka_mc seemed to suggest that it could have been done with some kind of looping technique and that sounds like a massive headache to me with 70s equipment ... still, parsons messing around with a projector to tape system doesn't explain the lyrical match ups ... unless roger waters was in on it i really didn't see it happening until the tornado scene ... after that, the synchronicity really is striking which of course raises the question ... has anyone noticed any synchs between alan parsons project records and old movies?

By: elr

elr — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:42:20 -0800

For me, 1999 was all about "Aenemouse". That's when you match up the VHS version of Disney's Fantasia with Tool's album Aenema. It was a confusing piece of synch to do, and I could never get it right on my own, but I had friends who would arrange a showing every weekend. You would start it up while the band was playing (again, I forget what instrument signaled that you had to press play) then you sat back and were wowed, sober drunk or stoned out of your gourd. Everything matches up, the music, the lyrics, everything! Our justification was that Tool's odd time-signatures, less present in their previous albums, were the result of writing a metal album to go with a cartoon made to go with a number of classical pieces. I'm pretty sutre it's just a coincidence now, but I can only be "pretty" sure because when I watch it, it's flawless. The reason it has top be a VHS is because, when Disney released the Fantasia on DVD, they reincorporated the intermission, which had never been a part of any home video release. Either way, the album came out shorter than the movie. You were supposed to fast forward through the "cartoony" parts, the hippos and the mythological frolicking so that the thirteen-minute "Third Eye" (and it's Bill Hicks introduction) matched up with the Hell Mountain cartoon. I swear, it's unbelievable, coincidence or no.

By: Ritchie

Ritchie — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:48:27 -0800

They really paced movies slowly back then, didn't they? In a modern remake of Oz, Dorothy would be up to her third kung fu battle by the time this one is waving goodbye to the munchkins.

By: graventy

graventy — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:26:44 -0800

That's so today's kids don't get bored. Oh look, a blue car!

By: graventy

graventy — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:28:52 -0800

Personally, I think a mischievous inventor from now or the not-to-distant future took copies of WOZ and DSOTM, synced them just enough to confuse people, and replaced the original DSOTM with the new version.

By: pokermonk

pokermonk — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:50:57 -0800

There was an insert in the original LP, a poster with the Great Pyramids in green that hints at the Emerald City, the desert in the foreground like a field of poppies... Also inside the LP, green breaks from the rainbow spectrum. I always found these things more convincing than the actual synch.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 19:51:13 -0800

From the Stanley Kubrick classic, in the end part of the movie, you will find this awesome classic by Pink Floyd synchronized to the ending of the movie. Put down the bong, dude.

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:40:13 -0800

In my senior year of high school, we did a performance of "The Wizard of Oz," and had the official party at my house afterwards. To help the festivities, my dad went out and picked up the video of Oz and a copy of DSotM... On cassette. Ahh... dad. In another weird story, in my third year at NYU, my roommate, his friend Pablo, and I stayed up way too late at night trying to sunch up Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite with echoes, even though we were all relatively sober at the time. We finally did make it work, and it was gangbusters (as I understand it, Floyd wrote the track as possible score for that sequence anyways, so it isn't as odd.) When we finally went to sleep, Pablo told Sam (my roommate) to do whatever he had to to make sure he woke up for his flight the next morning. That next morning, I woke up to Sam yelling at Pablo that a plane had just crashed into the WTC. My first thought was that it was a pretty disturbed way to try to wake him up...

By: baylink

baylink — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:49:32 -0800

For what its worth, the synch also works well playing DSotM along with the cartoon Alice in Wonderland. I'm glad you clarified. I was gonna try playing it along with the Bill Osco AiW.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 21:38:53 -0800

someone told me on my blog that tool's album undertow works well with the nightmare before christmas

By: azaner

azaner — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 22:25:23 -0800

Andy Griffith show set to Koyaanisqatsi . . . Mayberry out of Balance? Surely you mean: "Fife out of balance."

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 01:17:11 -0800

We once saw a similar effect with an R.E.M. album and an old Fleischer Superman cartoon. It was freakishly cool. And, yes, we were all sober at the time. But I was never able to recreate it (the album didn't start at any obvious cue) and now I don't even remember which album it was.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 02:41:53 -0800

I set a loop of the Zapruder film to a loop of "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. It didn't become really clear until about the seventy-fifth hour or so. But it did. Crystal clear. Of course, this was years before we knew the truth about Castro, sugar, the CIA, and Andy Kim. It was just a hunch I had.

By: handee

handee — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 07:02:04 -0800

The real problem with this idea is that you have to listen to an entire pink floyd album to see if it works.

By: milovoo

milovoo — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 08:04:45 -0800

So, a lot of people are new to the internet, huh? I guess these computer thingies are finally catching on in the remotest burbs. Perhaps someone should just set up an alternate site that highlights what you have missed in the last ten years for quick catch-up, something like "best of Metafilter, the early years"? Somewhere out there there was a whole site that covered sync-ups and rated which ones were good or not, but even that was a long time ago, and it might not still be around. Ok, I'll check ... it's here.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 08:06:43 -0800

The real problem with this idea is that you have to listen to an entire pink floyd album to see if it works. oh no you di'int

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 13:06:28 -0800

Surely you mean: "Fife out of balance." Touche.

By: elr

elr — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 15:17:44 -0800

Oh yeah, and then there was the time we tried to sabotage our own party by making everything as unparty as possible. We were blasting Ween's "Chocolate & Cheese" with visuals from the 1970s animated version of Watership Down. When it started synching up everyone shut up and watched mesmerized. The odd (near) perfection of it is one of the reasons I have trouble believing claims of synchronicity in other films.

By: kumazemi

kumazemi — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 01:44:51 -0800

MetaFilter: They probably turned into pure energy.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:26:58 -0800

Just got around to watching this (thanks for the post, Who_Am_I) after hearing about it for some time. What I found most striking was "Black (... black ... black ... black ... black)" exactly as the Wicked Witch of the West makes her appearance in Munchkinland.