Your favorite tracks on ... "II" (Scratch)

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    • Official Post

    Your three favorite tracks on ... "II" (Scratch) 46

    1. Mother Of Violence (23) 50%
    2. White Shadow (23) 50%
    3. On The Air (22) 48%
    4. D.I.Y. (17) 37%
    5. Home Sweet Home (15) 33%
    6. A Wonderful Day In A One-Way World (12) 26%
    7. Indigo (11) 24%
    8. Exposure (7) 15%
    9. Flotsam And Jetsam (2) 4%
    10. Animal Magic (1) 2%
    11. Perspective (1) 2%

    Following the albums poll about Phil Collins and Genesis, we'd like to do the favorite tracks poll also for PETER GABRIEL.


    This one is about his album II (Scratch), released in 1978.


    So far available:


    Rated PG

    Scratch My Back

    UP

    US

    So

    IV

    III

    Two of my picks are fairly obvious: On the Air and DIY. Although I like the significantly different live versions of these songs, I also like the studio versions. On the Air has that strained, aggressive vocal and fuzzed up guitar. DIY is a bit more subdued, with the laid-back verses and more intimate production sound. I also picked Indigo, which I think is a lovely song that gets a bit neglected.

    Now this one was hard. Went for Indigo, White Shadow and Home Sweet Home, but love the first three tracks on the album, too.

    Nice to see some love for Home Sweet Home.

    It's always been one of my favourites on the album, but never seemed to get any mention or appreciation on previous forums I was on.

    Now we're talking. Finally some love for a shockingly overlooked album, definitely one of my favourite PG albums.


    I vaguely remember being somewhat bemused by it when I first starting listening to it (83ish probably). It doesn't seem to fit anywhere, and is LIGHT YEARS from the album that came after.


    Practically a whole album of quirky, somewhat noncommercial songs, with sometimes bizarre lyrics.


    I went for OTA, DIY and White Shadow, but to be honest, it could have been any of them.


    I play this album much more than 4, So and UP.

    Probably my favourite PG album, I voted for On the Air, Wonderful Day..... and Home Sweet Home, the latter largely due to it's story. Other standouts are DIY, but the chorus is a tad annoying, (too repetitive), White Shadow, and Exposure.


    I remember buying it, in a branch of "Our Price" in Cambridge in 1981. Didn't know Our Price was a chain at the time.


    The album brings back other memories of a friend of mine, Guy Starkey (guystarkey.com) who was at Bath University at the time. Already radio and Broadcasting focused, he had a show on University Radio Bath, and they, in turn, had a slot on the new ILR station Radio West, who chose their name for the alleged £250k worth of free publicity it brought thanks to the BBC TV series "Shoestring" which had aired a year or two earlier. By strange coincidence, Guy bore a strong resemblance to Trevor Eve, who played Eddie Shoestring, which led to several amusing moments. Anyhow, from memory, I believe Guy was present when PG was interviewed on the station, and among other things, discussed how "Wonderful Day...." had been inspired by, though was not about, the one-way system in Bath.


    Sadly, I can't confirm the details with him, as he died Aug 2018 from the effects of Von Hippel-Landau syndrome.

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

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    Thanks for sharing this background story. A Wonderful Day... and Home Sweet Home have always been all time Gabriel favorites of mine and this album surely is underrated.

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    Quote from AndE

    Always had a soft spot for One-Way World. It seems like a successor of sorts to I Know What I Like.

    for a long time, that was my favorite track from the early Gabriel albums.

    • Official Post

    PG2 is utterly underrated, I think. There are so many really brilliant songs on the album that I find it difficult to whittle the number down to three.


    My candidates in order of appearance on the album:

    Mother Of Violence. Acoustic guitars, piano-style keyboards, vocals, and you've got a great song that doesn't get boring at all. I love the sawing electric guitar bit in the climax (it is electric guitar, isn't it?) - that really completes the song. I also liked Melanie singing this song on the 2007 tour (though the sawing bit was much less pronounced - pity, because it is essential to the song).


    Wonderful Day: This is both kinds of funny, like Peter's solo Harold The Barrel.


    Home Sweet Home. A terrible story, told outstandingly well. For some reason I imagine that the high-rise the family move into is one I've spotted in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent: a bleak, dark, no-future building. And I'm quite convinced that this song is Peter dealing with his own fears of losing his own family. Spot the unemotional way Peter sings these lyrics and how undescribably cynical the chorus is.

    on the air

    mother of violence

    white shadow


    while car was a weird album of over produced great songs, that didn`t fit together, scratch sounds much more consistent. I like the album but have to be in the mood for it. Watched the rockpalast show of that tour the other day again and had the feeling that Peter was very unrelaxed and uneasy. I always thought he went through a difficult time of his life then. But that is nothing I really know.

    First we learned to walk on water.

    Then we tried something harder.

    - Red Seven -

    I LOVE that album and am probably in the minority with that opinion. I saw that tour in October of 1978 and it was awesome. We even got a punk version of LLDOB as the encore lol. There were songs played that never made it to an album (me and my teddy bear) and awesome material from the first 2 albums. Gabriel was really into Springsteen at that time and those influences definitely colored "scratch", not to mention Roy Bittan's playing. Great memories of that period..... Thanks for posting the survey.