Fun, strong instrumental track from Low, the first of David Bowie’s post cocaine psychosis “Berlin albums“. Side two is mostly ambient and revolutionary in its way, but side one is where it all starts really: the big ass drum sound that came to define the 1980s (ultimately in a bad way). Credit usually goes to Phil Collins and/or Peter Gabriel, but that was three years after the fact.
Upon leaving the then cool sort of cutting edge underground band known as Genesis in early 1975, Peter Gabriel embarked on period of serious reinvention. His second solo album found none other than Robert Fripp in the producer’s chair and Mr. Gabriel very much ready for whatever weirdness the coming decade (the 1980s) might have to throw his way. Indeed, a song such as White Shadow suggests that he’d be doing a bunch of the throwing.
Back in NYC‘s just odd and intense from beginning to end, and particularly in the middle, nothing really sounding like you think it should, but why would it? It’s Genesis (the earlier, better Peter Gabriel version) at the peak of their powers tearing all preconceptions to shreds. Found at about the one-quarter point of The Lamb Lies Down on a Broadway a double concept album concerning a Puerto Rican street punk named Rael who sees the world end one morning on Broadway, then somehow finds himself lost in a purgatorial netherworld wherein convoluted stuff happens that even Peter Gabriel (who wrote lyrics and sang the song) was probably never quite clear on. Which may just explain some of the rage here.
Randophonic 