Photo by Wonker, Flickr
By Lisa Bayer
John is not a Pink Floyd fan.
He was a bit incredulous, in fact, when I suggested we check out the laser-light show set to their iconic 1973 album “Dark Side of the Moon” at Parkland College’s William M. Staerkel Planetarium.
I was looking for something different leading up to Valentine’s Day this year. It’s been a rough one so far, with periods of intense family illness and more than the usual stressors at work and home. The idea of sitting in the dark under Staerkel’s enormous aluminum dome, immersed in light and sound, appealed to me.
I entered the lobby first while John parked the car and for a moment thought I’d gone through a time warp into 1983. Young men wearing mostly black lined the walls and benches, intently studying the small gadgets in their hands.
Several browsed a table offering an array of free physics textbooks. I observed one double date. At least one other couple “our age” made eye contact. Solidarity.
We both noticed a young woman who came in limping with aplomb. The heel on one of her fancy leather boots had broken. She was lovely, talking animatedly to her quiet date before the show began.
I beat back a snarky mom thought—“Why would she wear boots like that in snow like this?”—before acknowledging that practicality is often inversely proportional to adventure. I also admitted to coveting her funky boots.
Director Dave Leake provided a brief and funny introduction. He’d created the show with some colleagues in 1991 as a fundraiser for Crisis Nursery and a new scholarship fund for astronomy students. It’s been showing every year since then.
“With 35,000 UI students in town and 10,000 Parkland students, we find they may not come out to see how to find Orion, but they may come out for Floyd,” he said.
Obviously, that hook also works for grown-ups.
The 45-minute show was entertaining and well worth the $5 admission. Some of the images were dated, to be sure; John and I grinned at one another at the sax- and guitar-wielding dollar bills that accompanied “Money.”
The awesome Zeiss star projector synchronized beautifully with the heartbeat, ticking clocks, footsteps, and vocal snippets that famously punctuate the 10 tracks of the album. If you think you don’t know “Dark Side of the Moon, you’re wrong.” You will know almost all of it. It’s that much a part of our audio culture. There’s even a rumor that Pink Floyd will play the Super Bowl halftime show next year.
This classic-rock laser-light show will run every other weekend (Friday and Saturday at 9:30 p.m.) at Staerkel Planetarium from now until May, when it will be retired because it won’t be compatible with the new digital sound system to be installed this summer.
I expect that the folks at Staerkel have learned something from the nearly two decades of success with “Dark Side of the Moon,” so I hope we’ll soon see new shows that focus on new music.
To that end, we tried to think of other bands whose albums might make great light shows on the drive home. I suggested Kate Bush and Smashing Pumpkins. John thought of The Orb’s “Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.” We shared some fries and a large chocolate shake from Steak ‘n’ Shake and drove through the snow, listening for a stray synthesizer and looking up for those sax-playing dollar bills.
Lisa Bayer (photo provided)
Lisa Bayer is a southern Illinois native who comes to Chambana by way of the (other) Twin Cities. She is the marketing director at the University of Illinois Press. She and her husband, a librarian, have three children and live in the Yankee Ridge neighborhood of Urbana. She can be reached at lisambayer@gmail.com.
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I went to a Dark Side of the Moon laser light show in Houston in the early ’90s… was my first introduction to Pink Floyd. I highly recommend doing “Dark Side of Oz” for a second date!