Brian Kotler admits his kid sister Donna at first really wasn’t into Pink Floyd the way he was as a teen, but as the big brother who kept a lock on the stereo cabinet she had to follow along.
Donna, three-and-a-half years younger, preferred younger synth-pop groups like Depeche Mode and Duran Duran.
But he endlessly played the 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon until he and Donna bonded over its moody metaphor-filled lyrics that delved into such heavy territory as materialism, mental health, the passage of time, and mortality.
And together, brother and sister ultimately attended Pink Floyd’s last-ever Montreal concert, at the Olympic Stadium in 1994.
The siblings, the only children in a Côte St. Luc family, became exceptionally close, and so Donna’s untimely death last year from ovarian cancer at the age of 52 left Brian devastated by both her loss and the suffering she went through.
An independent music producer, Kotler turned to what he knows to …