Pink Floyd's DSotM + TWoO (1939) = DSotR

Wizard of Oz + Dark Side of the Moon = DSotR

The Facts:

List of Coincidental Events:

Hundreds of examples of how the music of the album somehow seems sympathetic to events in the movie have been recorded. Remove the lyrics from the album and DSotM seems to function as a perfectly natural score for The Wizard of Oz. The connection between the lyrics and events in the movie, however, is usually somewhat less obvious, especially to those who do not understand the album. The lyrics, nevertheless, are not inappropriate, and, in most cases, ironic is a better way of describing this relationship between the lyrics and events in the movie. Below is a link to a list of coincidences, where you can also find a link to the Annotated List, which points out all this irony which is not immediately apparent.

Dark Side of Oz: Unannotated List of Coincidences

The instructions for doing DSotR, as you have probably heard them, tend to be a little oversimplified. Given all the complications of doing it correctly, I only recommend this for the serious DSotR enthusiast. You can find Dark Side of Oz on Youtube; however, the quality is generally very poor. You also won't be able to find Pink Syncs With Oz on Youtube, which I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys this stuff. So if you really like this stuff, and you are particular about quality, here's the link to my instructions:

PinkSyncsWithOz: Set-up

Coincidence or by Design?

Previously, there had been much debate on the question of whether this sync was done intentionally, or if it is a product of coincidence, or some other mysterious force. I myself had debated on this at length, here on this website, and I will leave this debate included in my archives, for the benefit of those who are not persuaded by the new evidence that has come to light, regarding what this band was really intending. This new evidence concerns the fact that DSotM seems to be synchronized to the science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In light of this discovery, it seems that DSotM was intended to be a follow-up to an earlier Floyd song, "Echoes", which can be synchronized to the last segment of 2001.

So on the question of intention, I now direct people to first examine the evidence that DSotM was indeed intended as an alternative soundtrack for 2001, which is examined at the following link:

Now I am not saying that DSotM was definitely synchronized to 2001; what I am saying is that if Floyd did sync this album to some movie, then it was almost certainly to 2001, and the evidence strongly supports this conclusion. And as I myself have accepted this conclusion, the question of whether Floyd could have, or might have synced DSotM to TWoO has been rendered, more or less, moot point. My original examination of this controversy is now included in the archived materials, and can be found on the below link:

Origins of the Practice

Dark Side of Oz

As stated in the Synchronicity Arkives, the practice of seeking out exceptional pairings of random audio and visual works may have its origins as early as the 1960s, although this would have been long before the release of DSotM. Particularly extraordinary pairings came to be known as "synchroncities". Exactly when and by whom Dark Side of Oz was discovered remains a mystery, but this is partly explained by the fact that Dark Side of Oz was probably not the first such pairing to be discovered, and though it would later become a favorite among members of the movement, it did not have any special status distinguishing it from other synchronicities. Dark Side of Oz only gained special status when it began to be accepted by mainstream audiences.

Among the most popular of these synchronicities was the pairing of the last segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey to Pink Floyd's "Echoes". This synchronicity seemed a bit too perfect to some, and it was speculated that the band had deliberately synched this song to this part of the movie. The reason for Dark Side of Oz jumping to a mainstream audience may be in that it was one of these exceptional pairings, and, as an item of curiosity, it seemed to be a product of pure coincidence -or genuine synchronicity.
From a small group of "syncers", Dark Side of Oz seems to have then found its way into the Pink Floyd rock culture, and the band's huge fan base eventually helped to propel it into the attention of mainstream media. The first mainstream article on Dark Side of the Rainbow appeared in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in August, 1995. There is evidence, however, to suggest that this particular synchronicity was known to members of the movement long before it came to the attention of the mainstream media. The first major boost of awareness about Dark Side of Oz amongst the general public came in July of 2000, when Turner Classic Movies broadcast The Wizard of Oz, while offering DSotM as an alternative soundtrack. The movie was actually broadcast as a regular movie, except those who chose could mute the normal soundtrack and tune into the network's described video channel and listen to DSotM synchronized to the movie.

Possible candidates as to exactly who may have discovered Dark Side of Oz would include the band themselves and intimate associates. I don't have much evidence for this, so this may fall more under the category of speculation than of theory. Anyways, as mentioned above, it seems that DSotM is synchronized to 2001: A Space Odyssey. If Pink Floyd was synchronizing their music to popular motion pictures, then this would not exactly have been a selling point for their albums, in the days when the only device for playing home movies in most homes was the television (which didn't have on-demand movies back then). And in the world of marketing, if something isn't a selling point, as a general rule, one doesn't mention it at all.
Assuming the band was syncing their albums to movies, it stands to reason they may have wanted to let some people in on the secret, without being too up-front about it. Possible candidates as to who would be interested in this kind of thing would include those same people who were sorting through volumes of video and audio tracks, looking for those accidental, but exceptional pairings. Such persons would also likely own the equipment necessary for viewing these pairings.
Someone with secret knowledge of what the band was up to could drop subtle hints to persons involved in such activities. Even if they didn't find the correct sync right away, this might lead them to try other pairings using Pink Floyd albums. Since such persons took much delight in discovering the syncs for themselves, it was probably best that the hints given not be too obvious. One could casually strike up a conversation with a known syncer and say: "I hear that Dark Side of the Moon syncs up with The Wizard of Oz." Oz, in fact, would have been a ruse, just to get the syncer looking at DSotM as a potential sync album, and potentially get to the "real" sync. We can easily imagine such a scenario actually happening, but in a bizarre twist of fate, the ruse film turning out to be a better sync than the actual intended sync.

PinkSyncsWithOz

There is an interesting story behind the discovery of Pink Syncs With Oz, also known as Dark Side of the Rainbow 2.0, or DSotR2. An obvious problem with Dark Side of Oz is that the album ends long before the movie does, so different theories developed around this problem of what to play when DSotM finishes. (See the Synchronicity Arkives @ http://web.archive.org/web/20050404005531/http://www.synchronicityarkive.com/dsotr.php) The most common advice came to be to simply set the CD player on repeat (Loop method), and finish watching the movie while listening to DSotM. This method results in rather poor synchronization after the first run through of the album.
Among synchronicity enthusiasts, there is one known as Baker B., who has been involved in this phenomenon for many years. Baker is the one who originally suggested DSotR3 and DSotR4, mentioned on the instructions page. As Baker recalls it, he first heard the suggestion of starting DSotM at Cowardly Lion's third roar in a post on Stegokitty's Definitive List site, around 1999. This poster apparently was not very clear about the exact start time, and those who did follow up on this suggestion experienced some confusion as to exactly where this "third roar" is found. We should note that when Cowardly Lion first appears in the movie, he does a lot of woofing and growling (here, this lion is actually played by a stand-in), making it difficult to count distinct roars. Nevertheless, this suggestion led Baker to the discovery of DSotR3 & 4, where we do hear two sets of three lion roars by Lion. Baker also notes that at the time many suggestions were being made for various alternative start times, along with a host of other audio-visual pairings. This alternative start time is also mentioned in the Synchronicity Arkive, on the above link.

So I don't take credit for discovering Pink Syncs With Oz, but I do take some credit for pursuing the matter, working out an exact start time, and publishing what I believe was the first list of coincidences for Pink Syncs With Oz. As I recall, I probably first heard about Dark Side of Oz around 2005 /2006, while surfing the net. It probably wasn't until a couple years later that I decided to buy a copy of the CD and try it for myself. I got the instructions off Wikipedia, and, at the time, they included a suggestion of restarting the CD, for the second half of the movie, at Cowardly Lion's third roar, but, once again, these instructions were sparse on the precise details. Like others who tried to follow this suggestion, I experienced some confusion while looking for distinct lion roars to count. I'm not sure why, but I started counting lion roars after the part with the stand-in, when the camera goes in for a close-up of Lion played by the real actor. To my amazement, the sync I got seemed to me better than what I had seen with the first half of the movie.

Since my experiment with the third cowardly lion roar as a cuing point had worked so well, I naturally assumed that I had just done it correctly. However, it was also around this same time that the Loop method had become the standard method for syncing the entire movie to an alternative soundtrack, while this other obscure suggestion was fading into oblivion among fans of Dark Side of Oz. What I couldn't comprehend is why people would recommend the Loop method, when there was this much better method, which I assumed Dark Side of Oz fans all knew about. Like the UFO hunter who becomes convinced of government conspiracies and cover-ups, I was becoming convinced that the Loop method was part of a conspiracy to cover up something that would have been just too much for the public to accept. One can always explain a single sync by believing that it had been done intentionally, but the double-sync makes it all a little harder to believe that this was either coincidence, or the result of a band of musicians trying to have some fun with their music. It wasn't until my later conversations with Baker that I realized exactly what had happened.

Reproducing Dark Side of the Rainbow Yourself

PinkSyncsWithOz: Set-up

"Dark Side of Oz Only For Stoners" -Not So

A popular rumour has it that Dark Side of Oz is only for acid-heads, and if a sober person watches it, he or she will experience only disappointment. Having enjoyed it many times, while completely sober, personally, I must disagree with this assertion. While it cannot be denied that Dark Side of Oz has its roots in the counterculture movement, saying that it can only be enjoyed by stoners is like saying The Wizard of Oz can only be enjoyed by gays.
I've given detailed instructions for doing Dark Side of Oz properly on the instructions page, as well as pointing out many of the things that can go wrong while trying to set it up. Probably the biggest mistake people make is running off to watch this thing, without consulting any of the lists, to find out what makes this thing so bizarre. They have no understanding of the album, and maybe a vague recollection of the movie, and, as a result, they miss 90% of the coincidences, while failing to appreciate the significance of the coincidences they do happen to catch. They conclude that the only person who could like this is one completely zonked on acid.

Dark Side of the Rainbow News

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