The Lamb
Went to Ameoba records yesterday and picked up some new music. I love online downloads, and am super into the iTunes music store, but I have one complaint: that you can't download at any other bitrate than 128k. If you really want CD quality, or really close to it, you still have to buy a CD. Hopefully they will change that soon. I bought the Melissa Auf Der Maur record, Shudder to Think's "Pony Express Record" (lost my copy), Audioslave (never bought it), and one of my favorite classic rock records, Genesis' 1974 double album "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway".
When I was on the road doing the "Tommy" tour, it was a CD that my friend Bill Youmans turned me on to and it absolutely blew me away. I have always been fascinated by concept records, song cycles, and "rock operas", so he was surprised that I'd never heard it. Over the years, my copy disappeared, so I bought it again. I spent last night listening to it like it was the first time. Sounded fantastic. I have never been a big Prog fan (except for early Rush), but this record is different. The concept is very surreal and otherworldly, but the music never gets too far from servicing the narrative. It changes moods and focus so quickly and really creates the effect of taking the listener on a journey. I had always been a bit perplexed about the story, just knowing the broadstrokes of the "plot" and enjoying the music was plenty for me when I first got into "The Lamb", but last night I decided to run a search on it, and came up with "The Annotated Lamb Lies Down on Broadway". A dissection of the lyrics, the "book" (the album jacket story by Gabriel), and notes, interpretations, and observations by the authors of the file. It stumped even the mighty Google for a while, but I found it, and but was worth it. It's a 70 page text file, and I stayed up last night reading it and pouring over the music.
It was the last record of Peter Gabriel era Genesis, and I was surprised to find out that at the time he was being tempted by "The Exorcist" Director Wiliam Freidkin to work on a film project, and temporarily walked out of the "Lamb" sessions. Strange to think about something so great and he was willing to drop it and walk away, and do something else completely different.
"and I'm hovering like a fly, waiting for a windshhield on a freeway"
Also this weekend, Riss and I went to the Nisei festival in Little Tokyo, wasn't much going on, but I love cruising around down there. Found an Anime store that had reams of beautiful posters for 99 cents to 5 bucks, I bought a few and plan on papering a wall in my work room with them. Also got some odd little Japanese kids masks for my wall.
Watched "Capturing the Friedmans" tonight.
Tomorrow I go to Dave's to cut some bits of video out of what we got this week (just let the camera run Monday and Tuesday while we did the songs), and brainstorm about the Panic Agency.
Comments
Hey Steve,
I haven't posted over here yet, but I figure it might be a good time now. Last night I registered the domain name ThePanicAgency.com and I've been chatting to a ton of people over at 6767 who are all willing to help out with it. We figure that we'll get a messageboard going there and there can be tons of brainstorms on how to best spread the word. Stickers and flyers and what-not are obvious, but some people over there have some great ideas about charity donations and giveaways and such. There is some really great stuff coming from this.
I have webhosting that will be up on Thursday, and then it'll get going. I'm working on a design right now and I was wondering if you have the PSD's for the TPC logo. I could use them in the design and it'd make things a lot easier on me.
Once the messageboard gets up I can set you guys up as moderators or administrators or whatever you want. FreAk and I have been talking about that too.
Good things are coming. Drop me an email if you want to chat about any of this. Otherwise, I'll keep you guys updated on what the progress is like and once a design gets going I'll post some previews.
Take care, Steve.
- Brad
Posted by: BradK | August 15, 2004 08:04 AM
Hey Steve, what did you make of the Audioslave record? Just wondered when I read that you had bought it. Stu
Posted by: Justanotherstu | August 15, 2004 05:09 PM
Steve, Wow I would have never imagined you dig Shudder to Think's Pony Express Records. That album has to be my all time favorite ever. Nathan Larson is such an awesome guitar player. You should check out his web site at nathanlarson.com. Have a great day-Brett
Posted by: Brett | August 16, 2004 09:49 AM
hi steve! that is an amazing coincidence about the ouija board incident. that you're writing a song about it, and i wrote about that. thanks so much for your reply, that means lots to me, i was nervous about putting it on here; and i feel much better now.
i did write that about an incident with a ouija board that happened to me several years ago. in New Jersey if you want to know more, i'd be glad to tell you. i only did that one time, and was talked into it by my best friend at the time. i'd avoided it on purpose.
Love
Lisa
xxxx
Posted by: ylais | August 17, 2004 03:41 PM
just been reading your post, i bet you guys have a lot of fun playing music, video recording, brainstorming.
panic agent 13 ;)
Posted by: ylais | August 17, 2004 06:13 PM
I haven't posted on here yet, but I wanted to say hello, Steve!
I live in LA and if you need assistance with anything related to the panic agency or any secretarial type work, I would love to help... just send a shout out to panicagent69@hotmail.com
I love Amoeba, probably going there tomorrow.
Maria
PA 69
(Mortisha8 on AOL Instant Messanger)
Posted by: Mortisha8 | August 17, 2004 10:10 PM
If my name sounds familiar, look at the credits for the Annotated Lamb text file. :) A version of the Annotated Lamb existed in the archives of the email discussion group Paperlate before I joined and became involved. It was mostly just a collection of different peoples posts to the discussion group. I manually transcribed the lyrics and the story from the liner notes. I collated them one within the other to form as cohesive a narrative as possible. In addition I inserted quotes from Peter's in-between-song commentary from a couple of bootleg concert tapes I have. I inserted relevant bits from the posts in the discussion group. I added my own thoughts to it and tried to force a format to the document. Also I manually transcribed the sections from Bright's authorized Peter Gabriel biography. 12 years ago? My God. We didn't have fancy web pages then. :) Anyway your link to the document should point here instead... The one at this address is much nicer. I do not know who took the time to convert it to a proper HTML rendering but they did a fine job.
http://www.rawbw.com/~marka/music/lamb.html
The work I did on this in the early nineties has a life of its own on the internet. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Now, look forward to a 5.1 surround mix of the Lamb coming out in either SACD or DVD-Audio format later this year!
Jason
Posted by: Jason Finegan | May 15, 2005 02:17 AM