Dark and laid back vs bright and forward

If you're the real Lemmy Caution, "dark" means "bright", as "no" means "yes" (nod, that is, shake your head, to agree). Lemmy'll know what I mean. Glad to know there's still an audience for classic foreign cinema.

Everything has been said, provided words do not change their meanings, and meanings their words.

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0058898

Subjective meanings - bright or warm better describe sound to me. Forward and laid back just don't describe timbral or tonal variation to me.

Initially when I started reading Stereophile in the early 90's, I thought forward and laid-back described soundstages that projected from in front of or behind the speakers.
I've come to accept something more like Mshan's definition of forward and laid-back

According to J. Gordon Holt, "The Audio Glossary", 1990
(I hope the critics all read this so that we are all on the some page ;-)!

Bright/Brilliant: Describe the degree to which reproduced sound has a hard steely edge to it. Brightness relates to the amount or energy content in the 4- to 8- kHz band. It is not relating to output in the extreme high-end range.

Forward: A quality of reproduction which seems to place sound sources closer than they were recorded.

Dark: A warm, mellow, overly rich quality in reproduced sound.

Laid-back: Recessed, distant-sounding.

Great Answer - thanks