Every song is a memory

When Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon came out, I was 12. I knew nothing about music, relatively speaking. What I did know, I knew from my dad. He listened to CJAD-AM radio in Montreal. CJAD played music from the 1950s and 1960s. My dad's music collection was all about big band, Tijuana brass and jazz trios, with a dose of pipe organ music thrown in for good measure. My peers would have been listening to CFOX - yes, that station was originally on-the-air in Montreal, and CHOM-FM, a rock station (now a classic rock station, that currently plays the same stuff it played 30-40 years ago).

I was out of tune with the new music of the day and just got glimpses of it through my friends and schoolmates. So the first time I heard the song Money by Pink Floyd, I was probably 13. The only reason I heard it (and I heard it often), is because a certain girl who lived a block away would play it on her family's stereo while her parents were out. Play it loud. I was hanging out with her younger brother at the time. So, because she liked the song so much, I grew to like it too. The song itself meant nothing to me - I didn't identify with its content, the album's meaning, the importance of the band - nothing - at least not yet.

Only later, when my own musical awakening began, did I discover Dark Side of the Moon for myself and realize what it meant, why it mattered, how it stood up as a ground-breaking piece of music. I'm not sure how much of an impact having previous exposure to Money made in my appreciation of the whole album later on in life, but I'm sure it did have a positive impact.