Today marks the milestone of being 40 years ago that one of the great rock records of our age was released in America, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The record from the British quartet, who created sonic platters of transcendent and translucent sights and sounds, psychedelic rock done multi-tracked and highly adventurous, was a concept album which quadrophonically reached the entire universe on a collective level, both on the mainstream and the cult, creating genres and subgenres of lifestyles and became one of the greatest selling records of all time in the process.

By the time Dark Side of the Moon was released on March 1, 1973, Pink Floyd had already been a sonically swinging juggernaut, a blues unit mixed and melded with drug-laced and addled sounds and flavors of the late 1960s, utilizing jams and instrumentations that when played, created aural emotional tunnels within its listener to be pushed and lifted to different planes within themselves. They became out-of-body experiences in a metaphorical and even literal sense, even more so if one ingested many narcotics that were on hand and in a strange way, like Bob Marley’s work, came to be associated with Pink Floyd by that proxy, something that the band, however, had never consciously promoted.

Roger Waters, one of the founding members and chief components who greatly contributed to the mind-blowing success of British psychedelic/classic rock unit Pink Floyd, celebrates his 69th birthday today.

In a way, Waters stands alone as a musical architect. His lyrics to some of the most memorable and well-made rock records of all time, bass playing, and British proper nasal vocal inflections are some of the high watermark achievements in music. Approaching music first with a keen psychedelic edge during the fad of the genre during the late 1960s, and then cultivating those sounds with a dark, spacier edge which became the Floyd trademark, Waters has helped create a body of work that is not only successful, but also had the keen foresight to become dazzling in a critical sense as well. Floyd records have the luxury of not only selling in the millions, but also for being regarded and lauded as some of the most ultimate records ever produced.

Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here, a documentary about rock group Pink Floyd‘s memorable album Wish You Were Here, is getting a DVD and Blu-ray release on June 26th from Eagle Rock Entertainment.

The album, which was their follow up to their enormously successful 1973 Dark Side of the Moon, is almost as revered by fans of the group as Dark Side is. Originally released in September 1975 and going to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world, Wish You Were Here explores themes similar to Dark Side — alienation, confusion, longing, mental breakdown, and also even dissension in the music business. It’s also a tribute of sorts to one of their founding members, the late Syd Barrett, who had left the band a few years earlier, due to mental illness. The long track “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” is a recorded nod to their fallen member, who had also made a few unannounced appearances in the studio when they were recording the album. That track opens and closes the record.