# Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [December 17, 2006, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon-and-the-wizard-of-oz/384553 "2006-12-17T22:47:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2006, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon-and-the-wizard-of-oz/384553/41 "2006-12-22T23:57:07Z")
Have you heard of something called Confirmation Bias? Is there a list of all of the things in the movie that _don’t_ match up with the songs? Is there a list of all the things in the songs that don’t match up with anything on screen? How big would these lists be in comparison to the list of things that do appear to match? ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon-and-the-wizard-of-oz/384553/42 "2006-12-23T00:07:50Z")
[QUOTE=borat] You can’t just say that since you think you know of more obvious lyrics that SHOULD HAVE gone with certain scenes, it couldn’t possibly have been predetermined. … … (I)t doesn’t really matter that not every second of the album goes with the movie. …you simply cannot deny the fact that there are SEVERAL instances in which music or lyrics coincide PERFECTLY for it to be coincidence. [/QUOTE] You’re the one alleging the syncronicities couldn’t possibly be coincidence. I assume _your_ argument hasn’t changed, since you haven’t been here to change it. Care to retract that? The original question, I must note, was > [@Colin](#): > > Is it true that when Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon is played along with The Wizard of Oz, music changes coincide with plot changes in the movie? In other words, the question was extremely vague whether it meant “all music changes coincide with every plot change” or “some music changes coincide with a few plot changes.” The answer boils down to > [@SDSTAFF David](#): > > Fact is, there are many more instances where the album and movie don’t coincide than do. So tell me again where the article completely denies that any syncronicity happens at all? The article specifically says there _are_ some hits, and some conspicuous _non-hits._ Whaddaya want? This? > [@](#): > > Question: Is it true that when Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon is played along with The Wizard of Oz, music changes coincide with plot changes in the movie? > > Answer: Sometimes. Accurate, but it doesn’t fill space. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon-and-the-wizard-of-oz/384553/43 "2006-12-23T00:08:00Z")
To add to \*\*Mangetouts \*\*question, are you aware of the looseness of the definition of ‘synchronize?’ Here are some examples. [http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-22,GGGL:en&q=define%3Asynchronize](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-22,GGGL:en&q=define%3Asynchronize) If I write two musical pieces that are thirty minutes long, that begin and end with a clash of cymbals, and have a clash of cymbals at the fifteen minute mark, and share absolutely nothing else in common, they are synchronized. Synchronization is more commn than you think. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon-and-the-wizard-of-oz/384553/44 "2006-12-23T08:10:47Z")
Exactly: Elton John played a concert on the same day that the Soviet space program landed a remote-controlled vehicle on the moon. The two events were _synchronized_, meaning they occurred at the same time. Nobody here would argue that they didn’t happen on the same day. However, it is possible to be synchronous([def:](http://m-w.com/dictionary/synchronous) happening, existing, or arising at precisely the same time) _and_ still be a coincidence ([def:](http://m-w.com/dictionary/coinciding) to occupy the same place in space or time). ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon-and-the-wizard-of-oz/384553/45 "2006-12-23T19:53:27Z")
[QUOTE=borat] Stop coming up with reasons why it couldn’t have happened - it DID happen, check it out! [/QUOTE] So what? Every now and then, when I’m hanging around the house, and I’m randomly thinking about various people in my life, the telephone will ring, and it will happen to be the person I had in my head at that moment. Does this mean anything? Am I psychic? Is the other person psychic? Are we psychic together? Is there a grand plan to the universe? Nope. Means nothing. Okay, so, out of the billions of possible albums, movies, plays, TV shows, dance routines, magazines, novels, video games, textbooks, and on and on and on, somebody happened to find a pair of discrete works, a CD and a film, that match up coincidentally at a couple of dozen interesting points. These coincidences are noticeable because they stand out from the thousands of points where what’s happening with the music has nothing to do with what’s happening on screen. So what? It doesn’t _mean_ anything. It’s mildly interesting, to the extent that out of the trillions of possible combinations, somebody actually stumbled across a match of material that’s somewhat better than one would expect from a random pairing. On the other hand, the more people look for these, the more they will find. With the publicity on the Floyd/Oz matchup, I guarantee that thousands of people are playing their CD collections against various movies and TV shows, hoping for lightning to strike again. And eventually, something fun will, _absolutely will,_ be found. For all we know, after playing every episode of, say, _Lost_ twenty or thirty times, accompanied each time by a different CD, somebody might discover that the seventeenth episode of season one, “In Translation,” happens to match up with _Ghost in the Machine_ by The Police at seventeen critical points. Or, rather more likely, at sixteen critical points, with another one that doesn’t exactly match but for which the definition of a match is stretched in order to get the seventeen/seventeen echo and make the thing feel even spookier. And yet, the question is still the same: So what? There is no meaning to be found here. The universe is not speaking to you. Coincidences and patterns can be found everywhere, _even where they don’t actually exist in any meaningful way._ Believing there’s some significance to the matching of Floyd and Oz is approximately the cognitive equivalent of hearing the voices of dead relatives in the hiss of television static. It’s an imposition of your rational form-seeking mind on formless chaos. Period. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon-and-the-wizard-of-oz/384553.md?page=2)