Woke up this morning with the wonderful lyrics from “Eclipse” in my head. It’s hard to explain how they make me feel. They encompass everything, yet still make me feel desolate? And then the heartbeat with that mystical ending.
But as Ed McMahon would say to Johnny after such a list, “Amazing. What a comprehensive list. There is absolutely nothing you could add to that list…” Johnny would swivel his head to stare at Ed and, “Wrong, lunatic breath…”
All that you touch And all that you see
All that you taste All you feel
And all that you love And all that you hate
All you distrust All you save
And all that you give And all that you deal
And all that you buy, beg, borrow or steal
And all you create And all you destroy
And all that you do And all that you say
And all that you eat And everyone you meet
And all that you slight And everyone you fight
And all that is now And all that is gone
And all that’s to come And everything under the sun is in tune…
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon
There is no dark side in the moon, really
Matter of fact, it’s all dark
It’s factually correct. The albedo of the Moon is only about 0.12 (that’s a scale on which the blackest black is 0 and the whitest white is 1), which is pretty dark. It’s just that we’re seeing it against a total black background, so it’s only bright by comparison.
DSotM was released when I was in college. My friends and I all bought it. I put up the pyramid stickers on the glass next to my office door. Spent 990 weeks total, here and there, on the charts. It sells 8-9k copies a week 50+ years later.
Whenever the album comes up on my car stereo’s memory card, I rewind and listen again to the lyrics in the OP.
“Darkest Africa” is not referring to the shade under the trees in the jungle or the skin tone if it’s inhabitants but rather that it was unknown – to Victorian Europeans, anyway.