The second in my continuing series of the greatest rock and roll songwriters. The first is here.

I was only eleven when Dark Side of the Moon was released, so I didn't pick up on it until a couple of years later when rummaging through an older cousin's albums. Even then, I just listened to Money because I liked the cash register sounds. Oh yes, I also liked to say the bullshit line real loud because I was under the impression that if you were singing a song, cursing didn't count and God couldn't smite you.

I picked the album up again in high school and it immediately became the soundtrack to our smoke-filled, hazy nights. We sat around debating the whole concept of the record. We had theories and guesses and every lyric was a metaphor for life and death and all the crap that comes in between.

Mary (whose car, a big white boat of a vehicle, was named Floyd) had an egg-shaped chair in her basement that had speakers built into it. Sort of a pre-cursor to today's surround sound, but with an embryonic feel to it. So I would sit there in this womb of a chair, Dark Side playing over and over, the tightly rolled joints and whatever other illicit substances we came up with for the night being passed around and I drifted off into other worlds, worlds where - in the folly of my youth - only Pink Floyd and some nice Panama Red could take me.

I miss listening to music on vinyl because I miss those anticipatory scratches and pops that emitted from the speakers when you first put the needle down.

Crackle. Hiss. Scratch.

Breathe, breathe in the air...

And thus began my journey. Every song held the secret key to life. Every lyric was profound.

Speak to me/Breathe was sort of a desolate song. The words that seemed so deep and meaningful under the cloud of smoke were rather succintly summed up better by the Godfathers many years later: Birth, School, Work, Death.

In fact, the whole album could be summed up in those four words. But unlike my obsession with other bands of the time, Pink Floyd was more than the sum of their poetry. It was the music. My fling with the Doors was based on the words of Jim Morrison; I really didn't care for the music at all. Waters and company changed that. It was the sheer art of the music that lifted me out of that egg chair and into other planes.