Conference rdvax::grateful

578.0. "Pink Oz" by ASABET::DCLARK (Howl!) Fri May 30 1997 16:25

    Follow the Yellow Rock Road 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 'The Wizard 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 
    he 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 watchin 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 eventhe 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.
    

Yeah, I heard that.
If that was the case, amazing that it took 24 years
to render itself.
Intense.

I watched it, there are definitely some rather amazing coincidences.
It was fun

    
    was it really as mindblowing as the author describes? 

    probably depends on what you were blowing yer mind with at the time

How strange.  I just noticed this one...

My kids were just talking about the Wizard of Oz
last week.  They're trying to tell me that in one
scene you can see a stage hand in the background
hang himself - they swear there's documentation to
support the story...

There is something wierd going on in the background,
just after Dorothy and Scarecrow meet the Tin Man, and
the three of them go skipping away down the Yellow
Brick Road....seems far-fetched, though.

Well, the next rainy Saturday afternoon, I know what
I'll be watching/listening to...;-)

tim

    i've seen the story about the guy hanging himself...  i've also seen
    a story that explains it being a stage hand on a ladder or soemthing
    like that...  right up there with the one about the kids ghost that
    suppsedly appears in a window in some other movie that turned out to be
    someone's kid who got loose on the set and can be seen vaguely through
    some curtains...
    
    they do make for fun stories though...  :^)
    
    						da ve

    
    The other movie is "Three Men and a Baby"--it's the scene
    where Ted Danson and his mother are in the living room and
    she is meeting the baby for the first time.  They pan around
    the room and you see this little kid in the window behind
    a curtain.  I heard some outrageous stories when this came out,
    but I think it is only somebodies kid who was in the movie.
    
    Alicia "cheesy movie buff"

    yeah!  that's the one!  thanks Alicia!  :^)
    
    					da ve

That's what I get for hanging out with teenagers
all the time.  I've gotta get out more often. ;-)

    http://www.chelmsford.com/home/aharm/woodsotm.html

    I'd say pretty much all of the coincidences listed in the
    base-note article are valid.  When watching I frequently
    went "wow".  But there were a few times when, if Roger was
    really intending to score Oz, it could have been even more 
    striking.  Still, the coincidences that exist are truly
    uncanny, or so they seem.

    Tom