• Band, The Last Waltz (1978)
• Blondie, Blondie (1976)
• Blondie, Parallel Lines (1978)
• David Bowie, Diamond Dogs (1974)
• Cream, Best of Cream (1970)
• Dire Straits, Communique (1979)
• Dire Straits, Making Movies (1980)
• Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms (1985)
• Doors, Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine (1972)
• Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Trilogy (1972)
• Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Brain Salad Surgery (1973)
• Fleetwood Mac, Rumors (1977)
• Steve Hackett, Spectral Mornings (1979)
• Jimi Hendrix, The Cry of Love (1970)
• Jimi Hendrix, Smash Hits (1969)
• Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968)
• Elton John, Madman Across the Water (1971)
• Kansas, Monolith (1979)
• Led Zeppelin, I (1969)
• Moody Blues, On the Threshold of a Dream (1969)
• Moody Blues, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971)
• Moody Blues, Seventh Sojourn (1972)
• Patti Smith Group, Easter (1978)
• Queen, A Night at the Opera (1975)
• Rush, Moving Pictures (1981)
• Roxy Music, Viva! (1976)
• Santana, Amigos (1976)
• Simon and Garfunkel, Bookends (1968)
• Steely Dan, Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972)
• Strawbs, Classic Strawbs (2 LP; 1970s)
• Wishbone Ash, Argus (1972)
• Stevie Wonder, Looking Back (3LP; 1977)
• Neil Young, Comes a Time (1978)

The record is, tongue in cheek, Fripp’s most “commercial” offering and it begins with his comments to that effect. Just to show how “commercial” it was, Daryl Hall’s management and record label (RCA) refused to allow Hall’s voice to appear on several songs (in part) for fear of Exposure‘s lack of commercial appeal (on which see the Allmusic article here). I should say that a Fripp-infused Daryl Hall is a Daryl Hall I can listen too, and I’ll be looking for that Fripp-produced album this week.

Several things stand out from my repeated exposures to Fripp’s album in the past few days. The main thing is the way in which the entire album is united by theme, namely exposure to suffering. Interspersed throughout the album’s lyrics or spoken samples are either painful expressions of the inevitability of human suffering (as in Buddhism) or dire warnings of more suffering to come (as in the apocalypse of ancient Judaism or Christianity). This is done in an intriguing way both lyrically and musically.

There’s “You burn me up, I’m a cigarette” with a very down-to-earth expression of suffering in terms of relationships, “Exposure” with its terrifying screams, and Gabriel’s “Here comes the flood” with its apocalyptic warnings of the coming end (on flood imagery and ancient apocalypticism, go here; on Dylan’s use of similar flood imagery, go here). Spoken samples are also built into the songs, as when a scientist speaks of the coming of catastrophic floods in the near future and when someone (a follower of the Buddha?) speaks of the inevitability of suffering, at least in this world.

Perhaps most astounding is the way in which the music itself takes you on a roller-coaster ride that involves the listener in suffering and relief from suffering. The album runs the gamut of genres, from experimental new wave and heavy-metal to soothing ballads and ambient music (reminiscent of Fripp’s ambient work with Brian Eno — I’ll have to post on that soon, since I also managed to find a copy of the LP No Pussyfooting). Quite often, you are moved from harsh and jarring sounds in one track, to a soothing aural experience in the next. The heavy-metal style vocals of Peter Hammil are juxtaposed with the soothing R&B voice of Daryl Hall or the gentle (Joni-Mitchell like) vocals of Terre Roche on some tracks. Yet Roche’s screams of “exposure” found on the title track are both impossible to listen to and impossible to abandon, despite the torture. And one could not ask for a more calm and emotive performance of Peter Gabriel’s “Here comes the flood”, which is stripped of the somewhat over-produced sounds on Gabriel’s debut album and replaced with Gabriel and his piano along with the subtle guitar loops of Frippertronics. Also interspersed throughout are ambient songs which likewise use the Frippertronics tape-loop experimentation begun on Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting.

This is one form of suffering I would recommend.

UPDATE: It seems that the vocal samples involving a scientist’s predictions of the coming flood and the quotation regarding the inevitability of suffering are both by John G. Bennett, a British scientist who combined his scientific views with Eastern religious ideas. Interesting combination.  He started up his own school to teach such things.

A 1982 live version of Rhythm of the Heat from YouTube

By haunted, I don’t mean in the halloween sense, but in the sense of losing your self entirely to the spirits, of losing your very soul. One of the most haunting and experiential songs I know of is Peter Gabriel’s “Rhythm of the Heat” on his fourth album (also known as Security; © 1982 The David Geffen Company). The low quality live version are listening to now may not do justice to the song, but it is better than nothing. You’ll have to listen to a high quality version of the entire piece (preferably on your own in the complete dark and with the volume considerably high) to understand the full emotional effect of Gabriel’s brilliant work here.

The complete tune opens up slowly with an initial cry by Gabriel and some mysterious distorted voices. The drum beat begins to slowly build at this point, moving towards the first climactic cries of “The rhythm is around me. The rhythm has control. The rhythm is inside me. . . The rhythm has my soul!!” (© 1982 Peter Gabriel Ltd).

Now the drums are incredibly heavy but still slow, backed by a repetitive chant of “the rhythm of the heat” that evokes spirits, or is it demons. The bass and drum combination is now so intense that it brings chills. There’s a hesitation in the song as it quietens, seemingly bringing relief from the intensity. Quietly: “Smash the radio. . . smash the watch. . . smash the camera (cannot steal away the spirits). The rhythm is around me. The rhythm has control. The rhythm is inside me. The rhythm has my soul!” Following on this second wild, piercing, sustained cry, the song now breaks out into an onslaught of African style drumming (by the Ekome Dance Company) that seems to never end. You cannot escape it. The rhythm has your soul.

In some ways, the Surdo and Ghanaian drum sections in this piece indicate Gabriel’s future direction into world music, which would climax, in a way, in his soundtrack, Passion (1989) for The Last Temptation of Christ. That album is saturated with the sounds of the Middle East in particular, but also Africa. Gabriel ultimately founded a record company and studio, called Real World, devoted to promoting bands and music from around the globe, particularly from “developing” countries.

Where did this haunting song, “The Rhythm of the Heat”, come from?

Gabriel’s song is based, in large part, on psychologist C.G. Jung’s autobiographical description of a nocturnal ritual dance (the n’goma) among villagers in the Sudan (in Africa). Carl Jung (1875-1961), as you may or may not know, was an influential psychologist and student of Sigmund Freud. In the autobiographical interviews collected in Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), Jung outlines his own fears of the local villagers in a particular area of the Sudan, that, to him, seemed less welcoming than those in previous African villages.

Sixty men, along with women and children, gathered together and lit fires before beginning what Jung labels “savage singing, drumming, and trumpeting” (p. 271). Jung expresses that “I did not know whether I ought to feel pleased or anxious about this mass display”, a statement which reveals a tension to which I turn below. So the uncomfortable Jung decided to join in the dancing, however hesitantly, and was somewhat comforted to notice the approval he received from the villagers for doing so.

As time passed, Jung reports, “the rhythm of the dance and the drumming accelerated” (p. 271). Here Jung begins to reveal his fears in noting that “the natives easily fall into a virtual state of possession. That was the case now. As eleven o’clock approached, their excitement began to get out of bounds. . . The dancers were being transformed into a wild horde, and I became worried about how it would end” (p. 271).

In reading these autobiographical remembrances that inspired Peter Gabriel’s song, I was struck by the tension within Jung’s own description of his experiences in the Sudan. On the one hand, his trip was ostensibly one of studying the human psyche in what he considered its more “primitive”, not-yet-conscious form, something he describes as a “primal darkness” that will only meet light with the dawning of psychological consciousness (something he believed was possessed by the psyches of Europeans). And so Jung seemingly explains away his fear of the possessive tribal dance as a fear of dying by being accidentally stabbed by the swords of the fully involved tribal members in their ecstatic, “possessed” stage. It is a down to earth fear, so he claims.

On further investigation, on the other hand, it seems that his fear may be a fear of becoming part of this collective psychological experience, a concept that he himself had developed in reference to some supposed universal human psychological makeup, and a fear of losing his soul to the possession of the tribal beat. This, I believe, is what Gabriel saw as well. For Jung concludes his story of the tribal dance with a statement of his own profound, personal experiences in Africa. For, as Jung states:

“I had undertaken my African adventure with the secret purpose of escaping from Europe and its complex problems. . . The trip revealed itself as less an investigation of primitive psychology. . . than a probing into the rather embarrassing question: What is going to happen to Jung the psychologist in the wilds of Africa? . . . It became clear to me that this study had been not so much an objective scientific project as an intensely personal one, and that any attempt to go deeper into it touched every possible sore spot in my own psychology” (p. 273).

Here, then, was the “advanced” European academic in fear of having his soul stolen by the “rhythm of the heat”, and yet unable to come to terms with his own fear and unable to analyze himself fully, let alone the supposedly “primitive” villagers.

Happy Halloween.

Peter Gabriel’s official website can be found here. Real World Records can be found here.

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I have been a fan of Genesis for some years. Just now memories are coming back of earlier days, when I was 13 (1982-83), listening to Genesis on 103 PhD, coming out of Buffalo (for many years when someone referred to a “PhD”, I thought of that station, not some degree that an academic nut might get). That station had weekend “supersets” of three or more songs for each band played and I sat eagerly waiting to record the next set if a favourite came on (Yes, The Police, Pink Floyd, The Band, Foreigner, Led Zep, and others I still listen to were regulars on that station). Thank goodness my older brother, Stephen, had a half-decent stereo in our shared room (but he was beginning to get into Opera of all things!).

Still, in recent years my Genesis fixation had been primarily on the years when Peter Gabriel was lead-singer (the “true” Genesis as some say). There is a sense in which I too began to think of the Gabriel years as Eden and the post-Gabriel years as the Fall along with some others who preferred Gabriel (Gabriel wrote the majority of the lyrics during his time). Selling England by the Pound (1973) is perhaps my favourite among the Gabriel-Genesis albums, and still remains so.

But my views are changing somewhat now that I have been listening more often to later Genesis albums on vinyl (I’ve got just about all of them now, both good and not-so-good). In particular, the two albums immediately following Gabriel’s departure, which were both released in 1976, are consistently impressive and yet distinctive from one another. This is quite a feat considering that they were produced so closely together right after the departure of their lead singer. Both precede the shift from progressive rock to a more pop-based sound that emerged as the band went into the 1980s (the true “Fall”, if you want to put it that way). Memories of the progressive rock days begin to fade following Duke (1980).

Listen while you read: “Entangled” (audio snippet)

The first post Gabriel album, A Trick of the Tail (© 1976 Atlantic Recording Corporation; Atco SD 36-129), is cohesive and alive! The majority of the tracks are co-written by Rutherford, Banks and Hackett, but Collins is also included as co-composer of two pieces. The heavy, opening prelude that you listened to at the beginning of this post (“Dance on a volcano”) sets the stage for recurring themes that echo throughout the rest of the album and come to completion in the postlude (“Los endos”). The complicated time changes and dramatic movement (as well as some good, heavy drumming) in that opening track find echoes throughout the rest of the album in interesting variations.

Magically, the drummer, Phil Collins, who had no intentions of being the main vocalist, managed to take on the role of lead singer, seemingly without a glitch. At the same time there is not a high likelihood of confusing him with the unique vocal stylings of Gabriel (my wife gets them mixed up nonetheless). Collins may well hit the notes more accurately and cleanly, but Gabriel’s vocals had an unidentifiable mystery to them which few can capture. (For the interesting story about how Collins ended up in this role, see the Wikipedia article). Alongside the heavier tunes are rather calm and medieval sounding tracks, such as “Entangled”, which are reminscient of some more acoustic sounding songs on earlier albums. Overall, this blend of heavy and not-so-heavy provides an even balance for the album as a whole. The lyrics, too, keep things interesting as they return to the sort of fairy tale world of adventures with a medieval spin.

In many ways, the follow-up of the same year, Wind and Wuthering comes across as a darker, more moody, album in terms of both its sound and its lyrics. Still, it is also very impressive when it comes to the band’s overall performance and the intricacies of the music. Both of these albums are among the high-points of progressive rock, which was soon to fall out of vogue. Phil Collins ain’t so bad after all–if you can forgive him “Against all odds” and such (I kid: even “Against all odds” and “Sussudio” have a charm of sorts, at least for someone who grew up in the 1980s, such as myself).

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I was lucky enough to find one of Peter Gabriel‘s lesser known albums at the local record store in Waterloo (“Orange Monkey”). After leaving the then well-known Genesis to pursue his solo career in the mid 1970s, Gabriel went on to create a number of interesting and somewhat experimental albums. For full discography and other info, visit Peter Gabriel’s own official website www.petergabriel.com.

Gabriel’s experimentation went beyond many other contemporaries in that he decided to release his third album (known as “Melt” — none of Peter Gabriel’s first four albums had a title) simultaneously in both English and German, with the subtitle “ein deutsches album (a german album)” (© 1980 Charisma Records Ltd.). This was to be the first of two albums released in this way (the second is known as “Security” 1982).

The German version of Melt is especially interesting if you are familiar with the already excellent album in English. Suddenly things sound new and more intriguing again with the German lyrics. The famous “Games without frontiers” becomes “Spiel ohne Grenzen” and, appropriate to the song, “Du bist nicht wie wir” sounds a little more intimidating in German than “Not one of us”.

With this first German album, Gabriel stuck with the same basic musical tracks and made only modest adjustments here and there, so that the instrumentation sounds mostly identical to the English version. One change that was made is in the song in honour of the anti-apartheid activist Stephen Bantu Biko (who died in police custody in September 1977). Here Gabriel substituted a different African song as the lead-in. You can listen to a cleaned-up snippet of this tune here, which will also give you a taste for the German: “Biko” (audio snippet) There are other audio samples from the album on Peter Gabriel’s own site here.

In his next German album of 1982 (Security), however, he was to rework arrangements of the music more considerably. That one’s harder to find in vinyl and I’m anxious to get a hold of it soon. Don’t you dare buy a copy in the Toronto area!

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