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Creativity Quote by Alan Parsons

"The Dark Side of the Moon has flash - the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance"

About this Quote

Calling something "flash" is usually a backhand: spectacle without substance, the musical equivalent of a shiny hood ornament. Alan Parsons flips the insult into a standard. In his telling, The Dark Side of the Moon dazzles not because it piles on gimmicks, but because its craft is so airtight it generates its own glow. That phrase "true flash" is doing a lot of quiet gatekeeping: it separates the kind of attention you can buy (stage tricks, volume, hype) from the kind you earn through obsessive execution.

Parsons is also speaking as an insider with receipts. As the engineer on the album, he wasnt just watching greatness from the crowd; he was inside the machinery that made it feel effortless. The line reads like a defense of studio labor at a time when rock mythology worshipped the frontman and treated production as invisible plumbing. By tying "flash" to "performance", he collapses the false divide between live authenticity and studio artifice: the performance here includes the mix, the edits, the sonic architecture that turns songs into a continuous psychological trip.

Context matters too. Dark Side became a cultural monument, so its reputation risks turning into mere brand recognition. Parsons resists nostalgia by pointing to a measurable cause: excellence. The subtext is almost moralistic - real shine is the byproduct of discipline - and its aimed at every era that confuses loudness, trend, or tech with impact.

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TopicMusic
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Parsons, Alan. (2026, January 15). The Dark Side of the Moon has flash - the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dark-side-of-the-moon-has-flash-the-true-149423/

Chicago Style
Parsons, Alan. "The Dark Side of the Moon has flash - the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dark-side-of-the-moon-has-flash-the-true-149423/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The Dark Side of the Moon has flash - the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dark-side-of-the-moon-has-flash-the-true-149423/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2026.

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Alan Parsons: The Dark Side of the Moon and true flash
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Alan Parsons (born December 20, 1948) is a Musician from United Kingdom.

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