Posts by martinus

Quote from Backdrifter

Excellent choices and yes I too like the 'clean' unfussy approach.

Mind you, I also enjoy the "kitchen sink approach". Sgt Pepper has already been named, and I'd add The Doors's Strange Days to it. More often than not, those cluttered album covers make me want to tidy up my room, though.

I like Mike Oldfield's Crises cover. Clean, very reduced, yet it makes you curious for the story told in the picture.

And Sinéad O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, too, for similar reasons. It is difficult to have an interesting photo of the artist as the album cover that is not run off the mill.

Finally, Tori Amos's Under The Pink:

Why?

One - that deep deep voice (Is that still alto? contralto? whatever, it's deep).

Two - the oboe. So yearning, so beautiful.

Three - the atmosphere in the video, like Dorothea Lange's Dust Bowl photographs translated to South America.

Four - the song. It's one of very few where everything comes together for a perfect piece of music.

Though much could be said about the previous couple of posts,if everybody could return to and stay on the subject of this thread that would certainly be appreciated, thank you.

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.

My vote goes to Home & Second Home. I had not bought their 1983 album when I attended their show in Hannover, Germany, on the WCD or WWW tour. In fact, I distinctly remember hearing a song I did not know and thinking "huh, that must be Home By The Sea".

The only songs I knew from the album until then were Mama and That's All. While Mama has all the sweltering, ponderous heat of the big Genesis song treatment, its magic has worn off for me. I enjoy listening to it from time to time, but I don't feel the emotion in it anymore, I just remember feeling it.

That's All is a nice pop tune (and that's about all I could say against it).

The Oscar for the Song That Has Aged Worst Of All goes to Illegal Alien. Yeah, they were poking fun at something, and yeah, in the early 80s you could get away with jokes you couldn't get away with today (remember the film Soul Man? That came out in 1986, and it was successful at the box office, but its blackfacing was criticised and demonstrated against even then). I won't hold Illegal Alien against Genesis for its contents (they were okay at the time, they aren't not, and it's probably the same with Tom Sawyer) *), but for its annoying music. Yes, I do prefer Whodunnit to Illegal Alien because Whodunnit is over sooner.

Then there is the second side of the album. If we were still in the age of vinyl records, you would recognize it right away: It's the album side without any wear. That Danish prince would describe it as "Illegal Alien? Aye, there's the rub ... The rest oughta have been silence."

I am noticing a pattern in what I say in many of my posts in "Your favourite tracks on ..." polls: There are few songs I like, and many songs I don't particularly enjoy... Where does that leave me as a Genesis fan? Hmhhh... something to think about this weekend.

R.E.M. Live in Madrid - Drive

Michael Stipe had, I think, a sore throat that day and a very raspy voice, but boy does he deliver! My favourite version of the song.

now I wonder where I've been mentally... let's Keep It Dark, shall we?

Both albums have a piece called Prologue that really is the first track (the prologue, as it were) of the album.

[Blocked Image: https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1242706654_16.jpg]

I have been playing a game called Where The Water Tastes Like Wine on my PC for a couple of days.

In it, I hike, tramp or travel on freight trains across the United States, and I collect stories. The stories change when they are told again, they grow, become more elaborate and exaggerated.

The visuals are simplistic, my tasks repeat almost as often as the words "red rain" occur in Red Rain, and I only started playing it because I got it for free. I really love the soundtrack, though, the stories and their developments are excellent, the characters I encounter have been written very well, and they are brilliantly voiced.

It is a game in which very little happens. But I get told heaps of stories. Funny, fantastic, cruel, sad, scary, unusual stories. And I like that.

I'm telling you this because I am contractually obliged to pretend I love this game (no, I am not, though I do), but I also love the soundtrack. It's country, I think, and blues, too, it fits the game and I think it sounds very well on its own. You probably shouldn't listen to it when you're in the mood for very intricate music, though.

If you want to give it a try: https://ryanike.bandcamp.com/a…-original-game-soundtrack

Sledgehammer is, of course, the huge hit single from So. The song with the funny, innovative, disturbing video from So. The song from So with the most radio play (probably the most radio play of all of Peter's songs, Solsbury Hill perhaps excepted). Our collective ears may have become a bit blunt to its charm, the wonderful colours of this song have worn out and faded a bit because this song is, well, see above.

My breakfast will be cereal followed by two mugs of strong hot black tea (traditional way, with rock candy sugar, and HRH may deign to add the cream and (against tradition) stir).

Red Rain is my pet hate song, not just on So but also among all of Peter's song.

My problem with Red Rain is coming down, Red Rain, is that Red Rain is coming down, Red Rain contains the line Red Rain is coming down, Red Rain so often that the line Red Rain is coming down, Red Rain in the song Red Rain is coming down, Red Rain has become most annoying in the ceaseless repetition of ... you-know-which-line.

Having said that, my votes go to In Your Eyes, Mercy Street and This Is The Picture.

Quote from Nanunami

Hang in long enough? That's as powerful and fresh as it used to be.

I agree. But I guess we disagree whether it ever was powerful and fresh.

Doesn't sound all that bizarre after a semi-serious discussion about the effects on putting a hover to your eyeballs...

Father To Son and Find A Way To My Heart for me.

Hang In Long Enough and Something Happened.... ugh. Far too brash. Didn't like them when I listened to the album for the very first time, and they haven't aged well.

The ballads lack that special something, too. All Of My Life and That's Just The Way It Is and the other one, I can't even bother to look up the names. Do You Remember. I'd rather not.

Some songs are better... Colours, for example. Though the race/racism issue is still very relevant, I always felt this was Collins's South African song, and with apartheid gone, it kind of lost some raison d'être. I Wish It Would Rain Down is a good song, but I have gone off these big arrangements.

Saturday Night and Heat On The Street weren't on my original vinyl, so they don't count

Having complained about all that, But Seriously is the only Collins album I bought when it came out.

Come to think of it, imagine Peter did with Signal To Noise what he did with Here Comes The Flood: Take the original superbigscreen arrangement and reduce it to the bare bones in a way that retains the essence of the song. Now that might be very exciting!

I went for No Way Out, Growing Up and Sky Blue.

My first impulse was Signal To Noise, but I think the big drama of this song is starting not to age well.

My second impulse was I Grieve. While it certainly is an outstanding song that depicts the numbness that takes hold when you lose someone very dear as well as the final reassertion of life, I cannot in good faith call it a "favourite" track on UP.

Had the question been for the most accomplished song on UP, the ones that do what they do better than the other songs do what they do, I Grieve would have been first by a long margin on my list.

No Way Out is, perhaps, my proxy for I Grieve. I like Growing Up for its general "life is a funny old thing" stance and the upbeat music, and Sky Blue for its meditativeness (if that isn't a word it should be).

The German version was set to come out in time for Richard Macphail's 70th birthday last year, I hear. Only a small thing called Covid came along...

Hole In My Soul - Abba