Books and Miscellanea at the Do-tique 4

On the stereo...

I recently re-organized our fairly small CD collection here at The Do-tique and rediscovered Peter Gabriel's Up album (2002). I had forgotten how much I like this recording. Most of us know Gabriel from his days as a member of the prog rock band, Genesis and what I remember best are the more popular hits of the 1980's.

This record deals a lot with overcoming personal demons, death and re-birth and there are some lyrics that I think are particularly good. The music itself is extremely complex and can even be described as "haunting" in some places.

In the song Darkness, Gabriel explores the experience of facing his own fears and the demons deep within himself that represent the darker parts of his personality. The music suitably creates an atmosphere of terror and then relief:

when I allow it to be 

there's no control over me 

I have my fears 

but they do not have me 

walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods 

the deeper I go, the darker it gets 

I peer through the window 

knock at the door 

and the monster I was 

so afraid of 

lies curled up on the floor 

is curled up on the floor just like a baby boy 

I cry until I laugh

Another song on the album is I Grieve. I always like music that tries to take us through that incomprehensible feeling of shock that we experience in the initial moments and days following a death or a loss. Gabriel captures this well:

It was only one hour ago 

It was all so different then 

There's nothing yet has really sunk in 

Looks like it always did 

This flesh and bone 

It's just the way that you were tied in 

Now there's no-one home...

The news that truly shocks is the empty empty page 

While the final rattle rocks it's empty empty cage 

And I can't handle this 

The song ends with a fairly upbeat tempo and the sentiment that humans only live for short moments in time. Life carries on and we are more than the things we surround ourselves with in this life time.

Finally, there is Signal to Noise which is really an incredible song both musically and lyrically. For me, it speaks of the modern world and the existential crisis that comes from so many empty voices bombarding us daily. Deep inside, there is still a truth, but we have to "wipe out the noise" to hear it:

Man I'm losing sound and sight
Of all those who can tell me wrong from right
When all things beautiful and bright
Sink in the night
Yet there's still something in my heart
That can find a way
To make a start
So turn up the signal
Wipe out the noise

Interestingly, we are introduced to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's tremendous vocals in this song. Ali Khan was a well known musician from Pakistan, primarily a singer of Qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis (a mystical tradition within Islam). He passed away in 1997, before Up was released. Prior recordings were sampled into the final version of Signal to Noise.

This is an earlier version of the song and the video is from some years before the Up album was released, but it shows Gabriel and Ali Khan performing together.