Every now and then, I'll be confronted with something - natural, human, usually cultural - and it's enough to make me just go "wow, this is what it's about". Little things sometimes, big things too - and I need to start writing them down, in no particular order, if for no other reason than to cheer me up on glum days. I want to see how many of them there are, to start with.

Randomly Great Things no. 1

Today I'm going to rhapsodise about the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, a universal tale of love, loss and how to cope when an unexplained force traps the entire population of New York in a nonsensical underground netherworld. No wonder it sounds so great on the Tube.

This is Genesis' most shamelessly pretentious piece of prog rock, lovingly spread out across four sides of weirdness. I's far from my favourite album of theirs, and te amount of sense it makes tends to be directly proportional to the amount you have smoked. Nevertheless, you can be sure of some things - Counting out Time is definitely about sex, The Lamia is definitely about sex, the Raven is definitely about castration, and Cocoon Cocoon is definitely about having a romantic heart to heart with a small fluffy mammal. That or "cuddle the porcupine" is a euphemism for sex.

No, I'm not pretending the Lamb is as deep as it thinks it is, or that anyone (Peter Gabriel included) has all the answers. But Riding the Scree and In the Rapids are definitely not about sex, and its the moment (for me at least) when the whole, daft thing explodes into sense.

The plot so far: Rael, a no good nasty street punk has now been trying to get out and back to New York for two disks (or three sides if you're a traditionalist), being subjected to all sorts of weird happenings and bad experiences along the way. Suddenly he is confronted with a door back home - but at the same time he sees his brother, John, drowning, and after a moment's thought he goes to rescue John. This in itself is a moving moment, especially as John refused to rescue him earlier.

So he dives into the water, and the magical door closes as inexplicably as it has appeared - and then he swims through these rapids and drags his brother out and onto the land. But when he looks, something has changed - "that's not John's face...it's mine. It's mine!"

For me, it says that in deciding to help and love others Rael, who was always an angry piece of work, has discovered how to help and love himself. But that's not the point. It's already a spine tingler of a moment - the place the album has been building to, the character discovering a sort of peace, things coming full circle, the crescendo of an alredy great song - but the production here just lifts it out of the water. The background music is almost silent on the first "it's mine", so you can hear his shock exactly - one of Peter Gabriel's greatest strengths as a singer is that cracked emotion he can bring to his voice. But the repetition of the word "mine" vanishes into this sound, which just shoots up and takes all the hairs on the back of my neck with it.

And I know that maybe the rest of it's pretentious, and makes no sense - but at this moment, everything is perfect, and I understand it perfectly.


The whole sequence is here, but if you're short on time skip straight to In the Rapids - you might have to put the volume up to catch the jangly guitars. Unfortunately, due to the web streaming, there might be a slight break - but hold your breath, it's well worth it. Don't bother to listen to the whole of It, I've always thought it was a very bad song.



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"Through it he can see the green grass of home, well not exactly; he can see Broadway.
His heart, now a little bristly, is shaken by a surge of joy and he starts to run, arms wide open, to the way out. At this precise point in time his ears pick up a voice screaming for help. Someone is struggling in the rapids below. It's John. He pauses for a moment remembering how his brother had abandoned him. Then the window begins to fade -- it's time for action.
He rushes to the cliff and scrambles down the rocks. It takes him a long time to get down to the water, trying to keep up with the current at the same time. As he nears the water's edge he sees John losing strength."

"He dives down into the cold water. At first he is thrown onto the rocks, and pulled under the water by a fast moving channel, which takes him right past John, down river."

"Rael manages to grab a rock, pull himself to the surface and catch his breath. As John is carried past, Rael throws himself in again and catches hold of his arm. He knocks John unconscious and then locking themselves together, he rides the rapids into the slow running water, where he can swim to safety.But as he hauls his brother's limp body onto the bank he lies him out and looks hopefully into his eyes for a sign of life. He staggers back in recoil, for staring at him with eyes wide open is not John's face -- but his own."

"Rael cannot look away from those eyes, mesmerized by his own image. In a quick movement, his consciousness darts from one face to the other, then back again, until his presence is no longer solidly contained in one or the other. In this fluid state he observes both bodies outlined in yellow and the surrounding scenery melting into a purple haze. With a sudden rush of energy up both spinal columns, their bodies, as well, finally dissolve into the haze. All this takes place without a single sunset, without a single bell ringing and without a single blossom falling from the sky. Yet it fills everything with its mysterious intoxicating presence. It's over to you."

In retrospect, my love of this moment may ultimately end up tainted by the fact it now strongly reminds me of a sound effect used in very similar circumstances in Caves of Androzani, which was itself inspired by a rock song - can't recall which, maybe Beatles? Which begs two questions: were Genesis inspired by the same source, and was Rael regenerating (have another look at that description above)?

In any case, anyone who wants to decipher the Lamb should really read this excellent site - or at least think about it: http://www.bloovis.com/music/lamb.html