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View ProfilesPublished April 3, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
Picture the scene: Ireland, 3340 BC.
Early humans are hanging around, hunting and, I don't know ... cultivating grain? Modeling loincloths? Gathering with small furry animals in a cave, grooving with a Pict? (I was a film major, guys.)
Anyway, these proto-Irish people (dare I say cave leprechauns?) are just doing their thing, building some nice tombs in Loughcrew, when suddenly the sun disappears and goodbye, blue sky — it all goes black. Considering that ancient cultures from the Egyptians to the Maya worshipped the sun — shout-out to the OG, Mithras — I'm guessing our early Celts were pretty fucking weirded out.
They were so freaked, in fact, that they carved trippy, spiral-shaped petroglyphs around their fancy tombs. And, no big deal, they maybe-but-probably burned 50 or so people alive. Who knows, maybe they thought they needed to bribe the sun to come back. Hey, it worked, didn't it? (And yes, my editors are worried I'm endorsing eclipse-themed human sacrifice right before a million or so tourists show up in Vermont!)
But one thing modern humans have that those unlucky, possibly murderous ancient Irish stargazers didn't is Pink Floyd.
Five thousand years or so later, as Vermont prepares to witness a total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, we don't need to get all weird and carve things into rocks or sacrifice anything — other than our freedom to drive anywhere. We can stare upward as darkness envelops the sky, hit "play" on The Dark Side of the Moon and wait as the kick drum, playing the part of the human heart, beats us toward Clare Torry's frantic scream that introduces "Breathe (In the Air)."
It's no mystery why the English rock giants are so associated with all things cosmic and specifically eclipses. From the Syd Barrett-era psychedelic wonder of "Astronomy Domine" to the band's proggier period and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," Floyd leaned into the space-age excitement of the late 1960s. The 1973 ultra-smash hit The Dark Side of the Moon cemented the thematic connection between Floyd and the brightest object in our night sky — to the point where they spent the rest of their careers performing live under a giant, circular screen that turned into an image of the moon at the end of the set.
Fittingly, Floyd's music will feature heavily around the Green Mountains during the eclipse. Rock outfit the Grift — no strangers to covers — are set to play Dark Side in its entirety on Monday at the Lincoln Peak Courtyard at Sugarbush Resort. They'll kick off at 2 p.m.
Over at Jay Peak Resort's sold-out Foeger Ballroom, tribute triple threat Pink Talking Fish will focus on the first part of their name and play Dark Side in its entirety. In the most Vermont thing I've heard this week, all the ski lifts at the resort will stop at 2 p.m. sharp so the band can time its set to the totality. OK, they're probably stopping the lifts as a safety precaution. And, considering that the eclipse's estimated two-plus-hour run time far outpaces Dark Side's 45 minutes of music, the band might not have Dark Side of Oz levels of synchronicity going on.
You just know that so many other bands will cover Floyd over the weekend leading into the eclipse. On Sunday and Monday, Vermont's all-star Floyd tribute, Dark Side of the Mountain, will play a two-night stand (sort of, more on that in a second) at Foam Brewers on the Burlington waterfront. Composed of former Grace Potter and the Nocturnals drummer Matt Burr, guitarists Bob Wagner (Kat Wright) and Matt Hagen (the High Breaks), Josh Weinstein (Kat Wright) on bass, and Dan Munzing (Errands) and Mike Fried (Sad Turtle) holding down the Rick Wright role on keys and synths, they're the only Floyd cover band I've seen live that went deep enough to open their show with a cut from Obscured by Clouds, Floyd's soundtrack to the 1972 French film La Vallée.
Regular readers of this column know I can run hot and cold on tribute acts, but I've said on a few occasions how good Dark Side of the Mountain are. They don't try to be a note-perfect re-creation or do cosplay or sound like a jam band disguised as Pink Floyd.
"I think one of the reasons it's been such a cool thing for us is that we didn't try to sound like the records or how the band sounded when they were this giant stadium thing," Wagner told me recently in a call with Hagen. "We tried to go for our version of Floyd as a killer live club band from the '70s."
The band debuted in 2013 at Nectar's in Burlington and has played less frequently since Burr moved to San Mateo, Puerto Rico. But as the musicians gathered sporadically over the years, something happened at the rehearsals: They started not playing Floyd.
"We recorded us as a band jamming on some ideas, but we didn't think anything would really come of it," Hagen recalled. "But when we listened to it later, we had this moment where we looked at each other and said 'Hang on. This is cool.'"
They started writing original material, with Wagner and Hagen bringing in songs for a band set up to play iconic space rock. The results are ... well, I have no clue, because the group has yet to release any recordings or perform any of its original songs.
That changes on Monday at Foam. After giving the people all the Floyd they can handle on Sunday night, the group will debut as Bloodmoon a few hours after the eclipse.
So what are Bloodmoon? Are they doing an impression of Floyd? Music inspired by Floyd? According to Wagner, the project is already defying the band's own expectations.
"We really haven't had any intention past just making music together. We weren't trying to sound like anything, per se," he said. "But what it sounds like to me is almost like an indie-rock take on psychedelic music, which is really exciting to me."
With a record coming in the future, Bloodmoon is no one-off project, Wagner and Hagen said.
I love the idea of tribute acts morphing into original bands. I get why we all love hearing the classics, but I'm so much more interested in hearing what a group of musicians as good as DSOTM/Bloodmoon come up with.
That being said, I'm totally going on Sunday to hear some killer Pink Floyd and thank the cosmos that we're not doing that human sacrifice thing these days.
Tags: Music News + Views, Seven Days Aloud, Seven Days Aloud, Seven Days Aloud, Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, Grift, Pink Talking Fish, Dark Side of the Mountain, Bloodmoon, Seven Days Aloud, Seven Days Aloud
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