Great Music Circa 1979
By Rhodo Zeb. Filed in Music, Uncategorized |Tags: great.music, olde.skoole
Ok, I introduced some great tunes from an earlier generation a few weeks ago; now I am going seriously olde skoole, all the way back to 78-81, to some of the music from my earliest days.
Peter Gabriel once left a popular band, and re-emerged a few years later. He brought along, ney always found, a cast of great musicians to work with. For every video below, please do notice the quality of armor, the raw musical capability.
PG of course came to be a headlining act, a major player, for years and years, with lots of hits, almost too many to count. However, I just want to focus on his first three albums, all titled “peter gabriel’, oddly enough. Amongst fans, they are distinguished as “car’ (number one), ‘melting face’ (number three) and…scratches (number two). I listened to these three albums for years and years in the eighties, and recently re-discovered them, most happily. Going back in the day, there was a period during which I bought every single, b-side, 12-inch, or really anything with Peter Gabriel’s name, that I came across.
I would love to introduce 3-4 songs from the first album, the entire first side of the second (first side of the record…oh no one knows what that means anymore, I forgot), and 3-4 songs from the third album, but I have decided to limit myself to 2-3 per album.
Let’s go!!
First album, which is solid but somewhat unfocused, I just want to highlight the malaise, and depth of the music. My advice is, don’t listen to the words so much as drink in the emotion:
Slowburn:
There are rather a lot of these songs on the youtube, so if you like what you hear here please do click through and explore for yourself.
And then two tracks that bleed from one to another, the last two on ‘car’, Down the Dolce Vita and Here Comes the Flood:
And then two tracks that bleed from one to another, the last two on ‘car’, Down the Dolce Vita and Here Comes the Flood:
Now for scratches, the best of the three in my opinion, having gone back years later to evaluate, despite the fact that melting face has more hits:
On the Air: First cut off the album, live audio. Notice the aggressive tone and lyrics:
Second cut, even more in-your-face, another live cut, with horns as well.
Come up to me with your ‘what did you say?’, and I’ll tell you, straight in the eye: DIY
Here, I would like to highlight a few lines:
Don’t tell me what I can do, ‘cuz I wont.
Don’t tell you to believe in you, ‘cuz I don’t __~~~
Come up to me with your ‘what did you say?’, and I’ll tell you, straight in the eye: DIY
Here, I would like to highlight a few lines:
Don’t tell me what I can do, ‘cuz I wont.
Don’t tell you to believe in you, ‘cuz I don’t __~~~
Last cut from this album, gotta throw in Mother of Violence, another great live clip. If you get any sort of message informing you that the video is no longer available, just clip through and do a search. I don’t know why these messages come up.
Note the cutting guitar that finally bleeds in at the end. The same effect is a little more powerful, in my view, on the album.
Note the cutting guitar that finally bleeds in at the end. The same effect is a little more powerful, in my view, on the album.
Now, finally, Melting Face. The first Peter Gabriel song I heard was on college radio, and it was in German. The announcer only gave me the artist’s name, and I went that very day to the record store, and bought the only Peter Gabriel album that had a German version. Of course as an American I bought the English version, as I wanted to know what the heck was going on. Later, as I mention above, I bought just about anything by PG I could find, including the German versions of several albums. I could not find a good version of the song online, so I upped the German version just for this post: Intruder
Last one, Not One of Us. Very cool video. We go back to the studio now. Lyrics:
It’s only water
In a stranger’s tear
Looks are deceptive
But distinctions are clear
A foreign body
And a foreign mind
Never welcome
In the land of the blind
It’s only water
In a stranger’s tear
Looks are deceptive
But distinctions are clear
A foreign body
And a foreign mind
Never welcome
In the land of the blind
Hope everyone enjoyed this post! More information can be found on the internet!!
Wednesday, March 18th 2009 at 23:21 |
Good tunes, although I’ve always been more into Phil Colins’ stuff:
(PS – don’t know if you can embed stuff in comments, hope the above works)
Wednesday, March 18th 2009 at 23:22 |
Damn, well here’s the link anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F0vq-0jUhc
Thursday, March 19th 2009 at 18:24 |
I grew up when Phil Collins was in his prime. With the exception of the tune you linked to, which is a really wonderful song, everything else was basically shite, crap pop for the 13 year old set.
Now music is always like that, the stuff I think is great you might not find particularly interesting. And part of my feelings about Phil is based on being clubbed over the head with his stuff for years by MTV. Collins had a hit on heavy rotation on MTV throughout my time in high school (that was back when there was MTV and VH1 and nothing else), and I mean at any given time.
Basically if it was popular I hated it. Eventually I no longer continued to follow Gabriel, around the time ‘So’ came out. Red Rain? Big Time? Eh. So that is the price an artist pays for getting big. More people love you, but some people hate you, just because.
Some of those songs hold up. I am not a big fan, but in the few instances I have come across Culture Club music in say the past 10 years, I have been fairly impressed at how well they have held up, just for instance.
Yeah, ‘In the Air Tonight’ is a great song, but you have to realize all the lousy tunes that off-set it. Sussudio? One More Night? Against All Odds? Big, big eh. And that doesn’t even get into the stuff that Genesis was doing at the time, stuff like ‘Illegal Alien’. Uh, I shudder to remember that stuff.
What other stuff from Phil do you like? I don’t think I have heard anything he did after perhaps 92. Have you ever explored any of the early Genesis? There is some wild stuff in the early albums from 1972-1975.
Sorry about the lack of embedding capability in the comments, if I have time maybe I will dig into my templates and see if I can alter that.
Friday, March 20th 2009 at 03:26 |
Abacab was a great album, the prog-rocky stuff on Three Sides Live was alright too. As for Collins – well, I won’t vouch for any of his tunes except In The Air Tonight, but I think he deserves respect for that tune alone, Michael Mann did it perfect justice in Miami Vice (PS – watch Collateral), and the Cadbury’s advert – bizarre as it was – nailed it as well. Boy George was still MCing here in Brighton right up until he got sent down for assault and false imprisonment, but I can’t swear that I’ve heard any of Culture Club’s stuff except for Karma Chameleon.
Right now, after about a year of listening the hell out of Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Arcade Fire, and then a winter’s worth of Joy Division (which I’m amazed I survived) I’ve been giving the Chromatics a listen, this is probably their best stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwnsS8UG08Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUQaocQCMTs&feature=related
All very early 80’s I know, but in as much as I hear anything inventive nowadays it’s mostly in that direction – but I guess that just shows how old I’m getting!
PS – You get my email?