In the late Eighties one of the most sonically unhinged bands of all time came together in East London. Terminal Cheesecake caused few commercial waves but gathered a devoted coterie of fans for their unholy racket at pummelling concerts.

Iain Banks, who has died at the age of 59 only two months after revealing that he was suffering from terminal cancer, was a leading purveyor of contemporary fiction. Iain M Banks was eminent in the field of science fiction. Iain "Spanks The Plank" Banks, however, was less well known as the composer of about 60 rock songs from the palaeolithic period, 1972-75.

A wise man once said: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. It's a simple concept, but it seems so very hard to grasp, even – or especially – in a supposedly media-savvy world. The oddest thing of all is that it seems to be the people who consider themselves the most resistant to, or able to rise above, hype campaigns who have been caught up the most in the frenzy around this album.

Let us go now to a foreign country. To the foreboding concrete tunnels and rooms of an RAF early-warning facility under the Sussex Downs in the early summer of 1973.The Lower Sixth has somehow procured the space for an epic late-night party. Cheap beer and cheaper cider is drunk. Cigarettes are smoked, self-consciously. Flared jeans and cheesecloth shirts are worn under Afghan coats, not with panache.

The Dark Side of the Moon and Frankie Howerd’s Roman-era television farce Up Pompeii! aren’t as unlikely bedfellows as it first seems. The link comes from Clare Torry, whose voice opened the show each week. She also provided the unrestrained vocal on The Dark Side of the Moon’s Rick Wright-penned “The Great Gig in the Sky.”

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never listened to The Dark Side of the Moon until a few weeks ago. I’ve heard loads of other esoteric vintage pop, most of it terminally unfashionable and deeply obscure. Growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, I was vaguely aware that Pink Floyd had hit an uncool patch and the album passed me by. I’ve now made up for lost time. Through vintage speakers and scratchy second hand vinyl. Via weedy iPod headphones. In the car, en route to Sainsburys.

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour once commented that whoever had the idea of synchronizing the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz (with the sound turned down) to his own band’s The Dark Side of the Moon was “some guy with too much time on his hands”. The hippy culture of the Seventies contained many who fitted that description, as well as multiple baggies of what they then called “pot” to help. As the video age dawned, poring over Dorothy and Toto’s adventures soundtracked by Floyd’s prog-angst classic became almost a rite of passage for advanced stoners.

There's a lot about stoner culture that smacks of earnestness, and The Dark Side of the Moon has been at the heart of a good deal of that. The number of long, dreary, late-night conversations that must have taken place over “doobs” and “munchies” about its themes of life, death, madness, desperation and all the rest doesn't even bear thinking about.

There are numerous tribute versions of The Dark Side of the Moon, by everybody from jazzers to electronica merchants, but the Amazon Surf version must be the most esoteric. Amazon Surf music is one of the more curious music phenomenona I've stumbled on.

In March 1973, John Lennon was 33. Elvis was 38. There was barely a musician, in the sense we understand it, over 40. No one with a mortgage – or hardly anyone – was into rock’n’roll. The Dark Side of the Moon changed all that. It made rock middle-aged.