40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon"

I first encountered Pink Floyd when I purchased a translucent pink LP at the Ivanhoe Record Shop in Melbourne in 1972. It was a bootleg recording of their Blackhills Garden Party, Hyde Park Concert of 1968, but I didn't know that at the time. The sounds of Let There Be More Light, Set The Controls For The Heart Of the Sun, Saucerful Of Secrets and Interstellar Overdrive, mixed with the sound of London buses in the background. Amazing.

By the time 1973 rolled around, I was living in Sydney and owned every LP they had released. I'd had the long-expected new Pink Floyd album on order for months before it finally arrived. The Dark Side of the Moon. The album topped the charts on its release, and remained in the charts for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988. With an estimated 50 million copies sold it is the band's most commercially successful work and is frequently ranked as one of the greatest albums of all time.

And here we are in 2013, at the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. 

To celebrate, BBC Radio 2 commissioned a new drama from legendary playwright Sir Tom Stoppard. He's created a fantastical story about fear, philosophy and madness, which is woven together with the original music. If you're in the UK, you can hear this story in full on Bank Holiday Monday 26 August 2013, 10pm, on BBC Radio 2, or if living elsewhere, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038xr3n

The show features Bill Nighy, Rufus Sewell and Adrian Scarborough, with the lead roles played by Iwan Rheon (Misfits) and Amaka Okafor (The Garbage King).

The visuals have been created by Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromit fame.

Meanwhile, here's an animated trailer: