The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

This weekend, we marked Labor Day with some work on a rental we own. Kar- en, Rainier and Niko helped me clean and paint the three-bedroom home where tenants had dwelled for almost a decade before moving on.

To make these mun- dane tasks more enjoy- able, we brought the boom box from the house and the boys got to play their favorite tunes. Niko chose several dub step artists and rappers. Rainier opted for Smashing Pumpkins.

All of it was too rau- cous for my taste, but lo and behold Rainier asked if we could play music from my iPhone.

"But there isn't any- thing on there you like," I said, incredulously.

" Well, yeah," he replied, as though he shouldn't have to remind me. "You have Pink Floyd on there."

When Rainier or Niko makes a general refer- ence to the classic British rock band I grew up with, they're talking about "Dark Side of the Moon," which was released 40 years ago this year and topped the U.S. music charts for 14 years.

I introduced my boys to its phenomenal sound some years back when we took weekend trips or covered Cardinals or Bulldogs away games all over eastern Washing- ton. Driving through the wheatscape with those big endless skies above us and timeless horizons before us, they fell in love with the likes of "Breathe," "Great Gig in the Sky," "Money," "Brain Damage," and the ever lyrical "Us and Them."

How could they not?

I remember when my brother and I first heard the album in 1973, when he was 16 and I was 14. We were audio buffs and both loved symphonic rock from bands like Em- erson, Lake & Palmer, Yes and Genesis. One Saturday in late spring, we went to visit a Hi Fi exposition/trade show in Amsterdam, a train ride from our home near Utrecht, Netherlands.

This was right around the time when equipment makers rolled out something called quadrophonic sound, twice the number of channels as stereo (as though we had four ears instead of two). It later became known as surround sound and put the sonic experience into a whole new dimension. We were excited to expe- rience this for ourselves.

My brother and I stopped at a booth where a manufacturer's rep was offering a demonstra- tion of the new technol- ogy with "Dark Side of the Moon" as the album that played from the four speakers inside the "tent."

Here we were, immersed in this new far-out sound projection, hearing Clare Torry's deeply soul- ful vocals come at us from another world in "Great Gig in the Sky." We were transfixed, beamed up, transported to a far corner of the universe.

Needless to say, the vi- nyl record with its prism spinning around the spindle hole became our fa- vorite rock creation. At a time when compositions soared artistically, this one eclipsed them all. Our only regret was that after one half of the album, you had to turn the record over to hear the rest, an unwelcome interruption on a sonic journey. It's easy to see why "Dark Side of the Moon" remains one of the most popular albums of mod- ern music history and still appeals to new genera- tions, Niko and Rainier included. Like other sym- phonic rock of its day, it opens the carriage door, let's you settle into the cushy sedan and takes off like a slowly build- ing bullet train floating through the landscape of your imagination, taking you by the hand like your favorite novel, twisting with plots and subplots, and returning to existen- tial questions common to us all.

But even if you didn't tune into the masterfully simple lyrics, the music stands alone as a soundscape of adventure, a mind walk in a Na'vi's body. And unlike other rock tracks that grow stale over time, the songs from "Dark Side" always sound fresh to me, no matter how often I hear them or where I am.

Snapping back to the moment, I looked at Rainier with a smile on my face.

"Sure, let's play that," I said.