Welcome back to Ask The A.V. Club, where this week we have a question so burning we're not going to waste any time getting to it.
More Songs About Munchkins And Scarecrows
Recently, a friend mentioned that she had heard rumors of a Talking Heads album that syncs up to The Wizard Of Oz from the point where Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon ends. This seemed intriguing enough to research, but I came up empty. There are a few synchronicity websites, but most of their suggestions seem like what's actually syncing up is coincidence and the effect of whatever drug they're taking rather than anything deliberate on the part of the artist. Is there anything to this? I suppose I could just try it with every Talking Heads album, but I feel I've wasted enough valuable time on this.
Juan
Maybe you've wasted enough time on this, Juan. But we haven't. But first, a little background for those unfamiliar with the "Dark Side Of The Rainbow" phenomenon. It arose in the mid-'90s, apparently bubbling up from Internet discussion boards. (At least, that's what Wikipedia, the apotheosis of Internet discussion boards, says.) The claim goes that if you start playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon at the first (or third) roar of the MGM lion, you will see incredible, impossible-to-dismiss coincidences. For instance, the song "Brain Damage" plays against the Scarecrow's "If I Only Had A Brain," and so on.
Is it a coincidence? Pink Floyd says it is, and The A.V. Club has always considered it a case of apophenia, the human tendency to seek out meaningful connections even when there are none to be found. (Please note: The A.V. Club only knows the word "apophenia" because we just read William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.) You've heard of the whole "Paul is dead" phenomenon, when a rumor spread that Paul McCartney had died, and everyone found mountains of "evidence" of his death? Apophenia. The connections between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations? Apophenia. It's too harsh to call them meaningless coincidences, since all creative acts of interpretation involve finding patterns and connections. An interpretive leap about the effects of some mold on bacteria gave us penicillin, after all. But sometimes those connections only exist in the mind.
Did that harsh your mellow? Sorry. Of course, we could be wrong. So with that in mind, we plunged ahead in our investigation of the theory that a Talking Heads album picks up where Dark Side Of The Moon left off. We armed our intrepid intern Kylene with a DVD of Oz and an iPod loaded with Talking Heads albums, and sent her to work. The ground rules were simple: Start 43 minutes after the first lion's roar—the point at which Dark Side fades out—and write down anything that could be a coincidence of the Dark Side Of The Rainbow variety. If three minutes or more passed without anything that might qualify, it was time to move on to the next album.
Here are her findings in their entirety.
"When you sync up Speaking In Tongues, David Byrne sings 'loosen up' while the Tin Man gets his legs oiled. That's. It."