A Look Back, And a Look Forward

This is my final blog entry for 2013 and also the 50th post I've made on this blog. This seems like a good place to look back over my previous entries and talk a little about what I hope to post here in the future (admittedly, my inability to pick a more specific topic to write about is another reason for doing this now). I've done reviews of favorite albums by the Beatles (Revolver and Abbey Road), Queen (A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races), Randy Newman (Sail Away), Genesis (Genesis and Selling England by the Pound), the Police (Synchronicity), Sting (Ten Summoner's Tales), the Super Furry Animals (Rings Around the World) and Radiohead (The Bends). I've written career retrospectives on each of the Beatles (Paul, John, George, and Ringo), the members of Queen (Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor), the members of Genesis (Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, and even Anthony Phillips), Randy Newman, Sting, Jimi Hendrix, and Lou Reed, plus a listing of my favorite Rolling Stones songs. I've posted several of my previously published articles on Taiwanese popular music, or links to articles online elsewhere. I've posted several of my imaginary post-breakup Beatles albums, and my compilations of 50s rock and roll and late 60s-early 70s classics of the psychedelic era. While some of these articles could use some revising and updating, I think for the most part I'm satisfied with them.

In the next year, I plan to continue to write articles similar to those I've already posted, particularly more album reviews, though as before I'll write whatever I'm inspired to write without following any particular plan. However, I'll probably be posting at most at a pace similar to that I've maintained for most of this year (about three articles every two months), or even less often than that. The main reason for this slower pace is I hope to be working intensely on my book on Taiwanese aboriginal music, and possibly also on my other book project, a general history of Taiwanese popular music. I also plan to post some of the reviews and articles I've written over the past year for the online music service KKBox, since for most of them the period for which I gave KKBox exclusive use has long expired. In some cases I may revise or elaborate on them, though probably I'll just post most of them in the form they were originally written. If I'm particularly busy on other projects, these articles may end up constituting the majority of my posts for the upcoming year. Fortunately I wrote a dozen reviews and articles for them this year, so even if I don't have time to write anything new at all, I should be able to post at least once a month in the upcoming year.

Imagine: A Beatles Album from 1972

This is the third of my what-if-the-Beatles-hadn't-broken-up Beatles albums, the first two of which were 1970's What Is Life and 1971's Working Class Heroes. This one would have been released in early 1972. As noted below and in my post on Working Class Heroes, I should have put "It's So Hard" on this album and "I Found Out" on this one, but until I have time to redo all of them, I'm just posting my original track listing and liner notes. The title for this one was the first to violate my original intention to avoid using the titles of any actual solo albums, but it proved to hard to resist in this case (and in the case of one later album in the series).

Imagine

Imagine (Lennon) 3:06 (1971/09/09)
Isn't It A Pity (Harrison) 7:08 (1970/11/27)
Tomorrow (McCartney/McCartney) 3:24 (1971/12/07)
Jealous Guy (Lennon) 4:17 (1971/09/09)
Bangla Desh (Harrison) (1971/07/28)
Another Day (McCartney/McCartney) 3:41 (1971/02/19)
Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Harrison) 3:04
Ram On (McCartney) (1971/05/17)
Crippled Inside (Lennon) (1971/09/09)
I Found Out (Lennon) 3:36 (1970/12/11)
Back Off Boogaloo (Starkey) 3:24 (1972/03/17)
Mumbo (McCartney/McCartney) (1971/12/07)
Give Me Some Truth (Lennon) 3:18 (1971/09/09)

Total Time - 49:21

Imagine
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Recorded 1971/06-07; Released 1971/09/09
From Imagine

Isn't It A Pity
Written and Performed by George Harrison
Drums (on about half of the album, no details available): Ringo Starr
Recorded Mid 1970; Released 1970/11/27
From All Things Must Pass

Tomorrow
Written by Paul and Linda McCartney; Performed by Wings
Recorded 1971/07; Released 1971/12/07
From Wild Life

Jealous Guy
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Recorded 1971/06-07; Released 1971/09/09
From Imagine

Bangla Desh
Written and Performed by George Harrison
Recorded 1971/07; Released 1971/07/28
Single

Another Day
Written and Performed by Paul and Linda McCartney
Recorded 1971/01; Released 1971/02/19
Single

Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp
Written and Performed by George Harrison
Drums (on about half of the album, no details available): Ringo Starr
Recorded Mid 1970; Released 1970/11/27
From All Things Must Pass

Ram On
Written and Performed by Paul and Linda McCartney
Recorded 1971/01-03; Released 1971/05/17
From Ram

Crippled Inside
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Dobro: George Harrison
Recorded 1971/06-07; Released 1971/09/09
From Imagine

I Found Out
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Drums: Ringo Starr
Recorded 1970/09-10; Released 1970/12/11
From Plastic Ono Band

Back Off Boogaloo
Written and Performed by Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr)
Guitar and Production: George Harrison
Recorded 1971-2?; Released 1972/03/17
Single

Mumbo
Written by Paul and Linda McCartney; Performed by Wings
Recorded 1971/07; Released 1971/12/07
From Wild Life

Give Me Some Truth
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Guitar: George Harrison
Recorded 1971/06-07; Released 1971/09/09
From Imagine


The third post-Beatles "Beatles" album is powered mainly by songs from John, specifically from his second solo album Imagine, which along with Plastic Ono Band is generally regarded as one of his two best solo albums. Strictly speaking "I Found Out" (a track from Plastic Ono Band) should have been on Working Class Heroes, while "It's So Hard" (a track from Imagine which I put on Working Class Heroes) should have been on this one. But it was only after I did Working Class Heroes that I decided to make use of more tracks from Plastic Ono Band. Originally I had limited myself to four tracks from any particular album (except George's All Things Must Pass, since it was a triple album), but afterward I decided that it would be a shame not to include more from the better albums, especially since many of the later albums by the various ex-Beatles lacked so much strong material. Another track that was a particularly strong contender from Plastic Ono Band was "Look At Me", which is one of the older compositions on the album (John noted that it was "pre-Janov", referring to the primal scream therapy he went through with Arthur Janov which led to most of the other soul-searching tracks on the album). But since it is a quiet, more ballad-like tune and this album already had two ballads from John ("Jealous Guy" and "Imagine"), I decided it made more sense to include a heavier song like "I Found Out".

"Imagine" and "Jealous Guy" were fairly obvious choices. Regardless of how one feels about the idealistic lyrics (which John later said Yoko should have been co-credited for, as he based them on something she had written), "Imagine" unquestionably had the greatest impact of all of John's post-1970 efforts and is in fact one of the most well known songs he ever wrote. "Jealous Guy" is also one of his best-known tracks. The music for this song dates back to the White Album period, though at the time it had different lyrics and was entitled "Child Of Nature". "Give Me Some Truth" is one of the best rockers on Imagine and, along with "I Found Out", makes a good counterbalance to the ballads. For the final selection from Imagine, I ended up choosing "Crippled Inside" over "How?" (another ballad), mainly because the jaunty music is something of a departure for John, but also because the lyrics, while vicious, are pretty well written. The song is obviously an attack on hypocrisy, and a few critics view it as an attack on Paul in particular (presumably because of the line about looking cute), though most do not. As far as I know, no one ever asked John to clarify his target, perhaps because all attention was focused on the song from Imagine which clearly was an attack on Paul, "How Do You Sleep?" (not the same as the song "How?" mentioned above). In that case there was no question about who the song was about ("The only thing you ever did was yesterday, now you're just another day"), though John defended it as a response to songs on Ram like "Too Many People". [And he later made clear that the hostility in the song was a spur of the moment emotional thing; in later years he and Paul even hung out together.]

Paul, meanwhile was going through a relatively fallow period, though as by far the most prolific of the four, he still had plenty of songs to choose from, some of which are not bad. "Another Day" was written in 1969 and was actually released before Ram, having been recorded at the beginning of the Ram sessions, and was Paul's first post-Beatles single. While I don't think it's quite as good as the best material on his first two albums, it's catchy and has a lyric which is better than many others he wrote. From Ram I decided to include one more song, and the short but pleasant "Ram On" was my choice (I also considered "Smile Away").

Paul followed Ram with his first Wings album, Wild Life. This is commonly rated as one of the worst albums of his career. This is not without justification, as it is sloppily recorded and contains some pretty poor material. Despite this, it is not entirely without merit. All Music Guide, while generally negative, calls it "frustrating and amazing", and "a pop record like no other", and Mojo gives a revisionist view, actually including it in The Mojo Collection: The Greatest Albums of All Time. "Tomorrow" is a standout track, and the opening track, "Mumbo", while not containing any actual lyrics (considering the kind of lyrics Paul sometimes wrote, this may not be a bad thing), is a decent rocker. Other tracks from the album which I considered were the title track and "Dear Friend", with the latter an especially strong contender, but unfortunately both were a little too long.

George's contributions include two more tracks from All Things Must Pass, and a single from the summer of 1971. "Isn't It A Pity" is one of the best known album tracks from All Things Must Pass, and "Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp" is one of the other many solid songs from the album. "Bangla Desh", meanwhile, was George's first effort to help that country recover from the aftereffects of the war in which it became independent. He followed this with his massive Concert For Bangladesh, which was the first major rock charity concert and an inspiration for later concerts such as Live Aid, though its actual effectiveness was limited by red tape and record company greed. The friend mentioned in the song who asked George to help was of course Ravi Shankar (he was not actually from Bangladesh, but was from neighboring West Bengal).

As for Ringo, he still hadn't come out with a regular pop album, but he did release a single in 1972 to follow up "It Don't Come Easy". This song, "Back Off Boogaloo", was another hit. At the time, some interpreted it as being about Paul (supposedly "Boogaloo" was a nickname the other Beatles sometimes called him, though I haven't seen any reliable source for this), but while the lyrics do lend themselves somewhat to that interpretation, Ringo later said it was based on something his friend Marc Bolan used to say. In any case, while it's hardly as good as his previous single, it is a fair effort and is a credible contribution to the album.

My Top Fifteen Rolling Stones Songs

I’ve never been nearly as huge a fan of the Rolling Stones as I am of their friendly rivals from the 1960s, the Beatles. For that matter, there are a lot of other rock bands I listen to considerably more often than the Stones. I can only claim familiarity with a limited part of their catalog. I only own two studio albums (Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St.), the Hot Rocks compilation, and a promotional sampler with half a dozen classic tracks and half a dozen from A Bigger Bang, their most recent studio album. Other than the songs appearing on these albums, I am familiar with a few other frequently played songs from throughout their career, but that’s about it. However, out of the songs I know, there are a lot of good ones and quite a few great ones. Recently I wrote a retrospective on the Stones for an online music service (unfortunately only members can view the articles and reviews, though I will eventually post them here, after I’ve let the website have exclusive use of them for a sufficient period of time). Before doing so, I listened to the 50-track version of their new compilation GRRR! through the music service I was writing for, and was reminded of how many good songs they’ve had throughout their career. This inspired me to try to come up with a list of my fifteen favorite Rolling Stones songs.

I always have a lot of difficulty with this kind of list, because I often like a lot of songs (or albums) more or less equally, but for very different reasons, making it very hard to choose one over another. Also, my preferences will vary to some extent depending on my mood. In fact, I think it would be nearly impossible for me to make a list of my fifteen or even twenty favorite Beatles songs, because I think so many of their songs are equally great (I wasn’t even able to limit myself to twenty songs when only choosing from those written by Paul McCartney or those written by John Lennon). I might be able to make such a list for some other favorite artists like Queen, Genesis, Randy Newman or Sting, but it would be pretty hard in those cases too. It wasn’t even easy to do it for the Rolling Stones. In one respect, the difficulty was the same – choosing between several songs that I liked more or less equally well. But for the Stones, another difficulty was that problem was that there were some songs, particularly from later in their career, that I couldn’t remember well enough to decide whether I should include them. On the other hand, of course, they have a lot of songs that I’ve never even heard (the majority of the songs they’ve recorded, in fact) and therefore didn’t even consider, which at least narrowed down the field a lot. I originally intended to make a list of ten, but considering the size of the Stones’ catalog (even considering only the parts I’m familiar with), I ended up expanding that to fifteen. The first three songs are the ones that nine times out of ten I would name as my favorites, though the exact order might vary. The others I would say I have a decided preference for, but on any given day they might be in a different order or even replaced by other Stones songs that didn’t quite make the list this time.

Some might observe that few of my choices are the straight-ahead rock and roll songs that the Rolling Stones are best known for. Actually, I like that kind of song a lot as well, but in a catalog as huge as that of the Stones, it’s easier for a song to stand out if there is something unusual or quirky about it. I like clever arrangements and unusual sounds, and so these things are common features in many of my favorite songs by whatever artist. “Paint It Black”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” are not what might be called typical Rolling Stones songs, but they are in my opinion the best ones they ever recorded. I’m also quite fond of the psychedelic “2000 Light Years from Home”, which probably wouldn’t be ranked among the group’s top 15 or 20 songs by most Stones fans (it didn’t even make the 50-track version of GRRR!, unlike every other song here, though it is on the 80-track version). On the other hand, I also like some more stereotypical Stones songs like “Street Fighting Man”, “19th Nervous Breakdown”, and “Let’s Spend the Night Together”. While I imagine many ardent Stones fans would strongly disagree with some of my choices, this is after all a list of my own subjective preferences as a casual fan of the group. Maybe when I have the opportunity to listen to more of their songs, my preferences will change.

My Top Fifteen Rolling Stones Songs

Sympathy for the Devil
Paint It Black
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Ruby Tuesday
Mother’s Little Helper
2000 Light Years from Home
Street Fighting Man
Miss You
Tumbling Dice
Honky Tonk Women
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
19th Nervous Breakdown
Let’s Spend the Night Together
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
Gimmie Shelter

Honorable Mentions: The Last Time, We Love You, She’s a Rainbow, Jigsaw Puzzle, Rocks Off, Angie, It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It), Beast of Burden, Start Me Up, Streets of Love, Doom and Gloom

Note on Song Authorship: All of these songs were officially attributed to the songwriting team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. However, this may not be accurate in all cases. While the two collaborated much more than Lennon and McCartney, who despite sharing credits wrote many songs entirely separately, a number of Jagger/Richards songs were mostly written by one or the other, and some songs apparently had input from other members of the band, even though they didn’t get credit (though I should note that most of the information I’ve seen about the songwriting is secondhand, rather than being based on direct quotes by band members). As it happens, it seems Jagger was mainly responsible for writing two of my three favorite Stones songs. Both “Sympathy for the Devil” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” were mainly his work, and he really outdid himself on these two songs. Bill Wyman apparently claimed that the third song in my top three, “Paint It Black”, was a group composition that should have been attributed to “Nanker/Phelge”, the collective pseudonym the Stones used for songs written by the whole group. Whether this was true or not, Brian Jones’s sitar riff is one of the main reasons the song is as good as it is, a point that has been acknowledged by Richards. Of the other tracks, “Ruby Tuesday” apparently was written mainly by Richards with some help from Jones (one of the few instances of Jones playing a major role in writing a song). Wyman has claimed to have written the riff for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. “Gimme Shelter” was mainly written by Richards. As far as I know, the other songs on the main list are genuine Jagger/Richards collaborations (of the honorable mentions, the chorus of "The Last Time" was lifted from the traditional gospel song "This May Be the Last Time", recorded by the Staple Singers).

Lou Reed: Walking on the Wild Side

As most people probably have heard by now, Lou Reed died on October 27, at the age of 71. His unique, monotone voice and his lyrics about outcasts, drug addicts and others on the fringes of society made him one of the most important and influential artists of his day, though commercial success mostly eluded him. There was a time many years ago when the only song of his I knew was his 1972 hit "Walk on the Wild Side", which used as the closing track on the original version of my compilation A Generation Lost In Space - Rock Classics of the Psychedelic Era that I put together in college. It wasn't until many years later that I borrowed the Velvet Underground boxed set from someone and had the chance to listen to all of their music, eventually acquiring their debut and a selection of other tracks. The Velvet Underground, of course, were the seminal 1960s band that Reed was the chief songwriter and primary vocalist for. The group was a commercial failure but went on to become incredibly influential, with their debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico now being regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and their other three albums before Reed's departure being almost as highly rated. It didn't take much listening for me to appreciate the band's originality and the high quality of Reed's writing. As for his solo career, I still can't claim to heard many of his songs other than "Walk on the Wild Side", but I recently acquired The Very Best of Lou Reed and so have made a start at familiarizing myself with his post-VU work. Still, the following selection of songs is necessarily heavily slanted towards Reed's VU songs, because they are what I know best. I also stuck to songs Reed wrote on his own, which meant leaving out songs like the VU's "Sunday Morning", which he co-wrote with John Cale. [Update: Having had the opportunity to listen to a little more of Reed's solo work, I've added a few songs to the list.]

Songs by Lou Reed (1942-2013)
I'm Waiting for the Man
Run Run Run
All Tomorrow's Parties (vocals: Nico)
Heroin
White Light/White Heat
I Heard Her Call My Name
What Goes On
Pale Blue Eyes
Beginning to See the Light
Sweet Jane
Rock & Roll
Walk on the Wild Side
Satellite of Love
Vicious
Caroline Says (II)
Coney Island Baby
Rock and Roll Heart
Street Hassle
The Blue Mask
Romeo Had Juliette
Dirty Blvd.
Perfect Day (vocals: Lou Reed and many other artists)

Music News Brief: New Albums from Sting and Paul McCartney

In the past few weeks, two of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters have released new studio albums of original songs. In late September, Sting released The Last Ship, his first new album since 2003 to be made up entirely of original material. The songs were apparently composed for a play of the same name that Sting wrote (the play is supposed to debut on Broadway next year). The play is said to have been inspired in part by Sting's childhood in Newcastle, England, and by his earlier album The Soul Cages. Also, in the past few days, Paul McCartney released his first new album of original material since 2007, entitled, ahem, New. He has been fairly active in promoting it, with a release party performance being broadcast by Yahoo! just last night. While I haven't gotten these albums yet, I intend to do so in the near future, and eventually I hope to review them properly. I did listen to The Last Ship once online, which was enough to hear that there is a definite relationship to The Soul Cages (one song even mentions "the soul cages"). Since the songs were written for a play, there is a particular emphasis on the lyrics, which in places are often spoken as much as sung. Though the result is material that seems less immediate than his work with the Police or even some of his earlier solo material, it seemed to be up to his usual high standards, and he didn't neglect to include some good musical hooks. Certainly it struck me as being worth repeated listening. As for McCartney, I've only listened to two songs from New, the title track and another song called "Queenie Eye", and both sounded excellent. If they are a fair indication of the quality of the album, Paul will have managed to keep up his streak of good to great studio albums that he's been on since Flaming Pie way back in 1997.

Album Review – Selling England by the Pound by Genesis

Album Title: Selling England by the Pound
Artist: Genesis
Release Date: October 12, 1973

Side One
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (Music: Gabriel/Banks/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel)
I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) (Music: Hackett/Banks/Gabriel/Collins; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Firth of Fifth (Music/Lyrics: Banks)
More Fool Me (Music/Lyrics: Rutherford/Collins)

Side Two
The Battle of Epping Forest (Music: Gabriel/Banks/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel)
After the Ordeal (Music: Hackett/Rutherford)
The Cinema Show (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford/Banks)
Aisle of Plenty (Music/Lyrics: Gabriel?)

Note on Song Authorship: Credit is given based on what members of the band have revealed in interviews about the writing of the songs and may not be complete. In most cases the primary writer(s) of the music are listed first, though in the case of “I Know What I Like”, Hackett just came up with the riff the song was built upon, while the others wrote different parts of the melody. In some cases, deduction or guesswork are involved, such as in the case of “Aisle of Plenty”, which is musically a reprise of the opening section of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight”, which was written by Gabriel. On the original album, all songs were credited to the entire band.

Few bands had as long and varied a career as Genesis. After starting out as a sort of songwriting collective writing slightly quirky pop songs, they quickly morphed into a progressive rock (or “art rock” as it was often called then) band before slowly evolving into a very popular pop rock band with a progressive edge. They also went through quite a few personnel changes in the process, particularly the departure of original lead singer Peter Gabriel and then guitarist Steve Hackett, reducing the band to the core of keyboardist Tony Banks, guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford and drummer/vocalist Phil Collins. While as I explained in my review of the group’s 1983 album Genesis, I like the later pop incarnation of the band as much as the earlier progressive one, there are many fans with a decided preference for the “classic” five man lineup, and I would not deny that they produced some great music which has virtues that that the more concise and direct later songs lack. A good place to hear what the early Genesis sounded like is the 1973 album Selling England by the Pound, which contains some of the best music recorded by the five-man lineup of the group.

Interestingly, even though there are quite a few fans and critics who consider Selling England the best album Genesis ever released, the only member of the group who seems to consider it their favorite is Steve Hackett, though Phil Collins has said it was enjoyable to record. Peter Gabriel unsurprisingly seems to prefer The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, while Tony Banks (who has named Foxtrot as his favorite early album) and Mike Rutherford were slightly disappointed with it. Banks has said that he thinks the material was slightly uneven, with a few great songs and a few that are not so great. I can see his point, since while “Firth of Fifth”, “The Cinema Show”, and “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” are among the band’s very best songs, some of the others don’t work quite as well. In terms of the average quality of the songs, Foxtrot may be slightly stronger. But Hackett and to lesser extent Collins also rightly feel that the album features some of the group’s best playing. This in part explains the differing opinions about the album expressed by the band members, since for Banks and Rutherford (and Gabriel as well) songwriting was always the most important thing, whereas Hackett and Collins placed more emphasis on playing, particular in those days.

For myself, though I agree with Banks and Rutherford that good songwriting is ultimately more important than virtuoso playing – which is why I like Genesis better than Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer – the crisp sounds and excellent performances on this album make even the lesser tracks sound good, and make the best ones sound outstanding. While there may be times when I prefer Foxtrot or The Lamb or even Nursery Cryme, to speak only of the Gabriel-era albums (and I should emphasize that I like several of the later albums as much as any of these), Selling England is almost always near the top of my list of favorite Genesis albums, and if I were to recommend one album from this period to someone who’d never heard the five-man lineup of Genesis, chances are it would be this one.

Selling England by the Pound Song by Song

Dancing with the Moonlit Knight: The album’s opening track begins with a line sung acapella by Gabriel. The instrumentation slowly builds through the first few minutes of the song, centered on a repeated riff. Eventually it goes into an instrumental section featuring some great playing by the band before reprising the vocal section and concluding with another instrumental bit. The music for the first part of the song was written by Gabriel (who wrote the lyrics as well), though the entire band contributed to the instrumental sections. This is definitely one of the stronger tracks on the album and a great opening.

I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe): This quirky, slightly Beatlesque song was the first Genesis song to make the pop charts in the UK, narrowly missing the top 20. It was developed from a riff Hackett had come up with, while Banks wrote the chorus melody and Gabriel and Collins wrote the verse melody. While it’s not quite the equal of the songs before and after it, it’s a fun track that pointed the way to the band’s future pop success, and it remains one of the best known songs from their early days.

Firth of Fifth: This nine and a half minute song opens with a very cool minute-long piano solo by Banks followed by the main vocal section, then a lengthy instrumental featuring flute, piano and guitar in turn, and finally another vocal section. The music, all of which was written by Banks, is brilliant and performed very well by the band. Hackett’s guitar solo, which is basically his interpretation of the flute melody, is justly praised, though credit for writing the melody itself goes to Banks. The lyrics, which were mainly written by Banks (though some sources claim Rutherford helped) have been criticized, even by Banks himself, but while they are certainly not the best he ever wrote, they aren’t all that bad except for one or two weak lines. In any case, the music alone makes this the best song on the album and one of the best songs Genesis ever released.

More Fool Me: In a complete contrast to “Firth of Fifth”, this is a short, gentle acoustic song sung by Phil Collins with only Mike Rutherford’s guitar as accompaniment. Many of the “fans” with a pathological dislike of the 1980s incarnation of the band also hate this song, because they see it as a harbinger of the future. I would say that while it may not be anything spectacular, it’s a pleasant song that makes a nice break from the lengthy, heavily arranged tracks that surround it.

The Battle of Epping Forest: At almost twelve minutes in length, this track is the longest on the album (though since “The Cinema Show” segues directly into “Aisle of Plenty”, the two together could be considered longer). The music was written mostly by Banks and Gabriel, and the lyrics, a long, elaborate tale about a gangland fight, were written by Gabriel. Both the music and the lyrics have a lot to recommend them, but as Banks, Collins, Rutherford and even Gabriel have said in interviews, the song is far too busy, with the dense lyrics clashing with the music. As a result, though the song is interesting and even fairly entertaining, it doesn’t work nearly as well as the other long songs on the album.

After the Ordeal: This classical-flavored instrumental was mainly written by Hackett, with a little help from Rutherford. Banks and apparently Gabriel as well disliked it and wanted to drop it from the album, though Banks once admitted that one of his objections to it was that he thought his own playing on it was poor. I’d say it’s a decent piece of music, though perhaps not the most successful instrumental bit on the album.

The Cinema Show: The guitar-based song that makes up the first few minutes of this eleven-minute track was written by Rutherford, with help from Banks on the lyrics (Gabriel also made a few suggestions lyrically). The second half of the song is an instrumental written by Banks, Collins and Rutherford and featuring a lengthy solo by Banks. The song part is one of Rutherford’s best compositions, and the instrumental part is one of the strongest Genesis ever did, one that they were still playing live decades later. The lyrics are also quite good. The combination of these elements makes this one of the band’s best songs, though I would give the edge to “Firth of Fifth” as the best track on the album.

Aisle of Plenty: “The Cinema Show” segues directly into this short song, which musically speaking is basically a reprise of the first part of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” and so can be credited to Gabriel, who presumably wrote the lyrics as well. By returning to the album’s opening musical theme it brings the listener round full circle and so makes a good closing number.

Two Books on Music

I recently acquired a pair of books on music-related topics, both of which I thought were worth commenting on.


The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk by James Fuld

This is a very interesting book that contains a lot of information about some of the world’s best known songs and compositions. Fuld’s focus is on the earliest publication of the various pieces of music he discusses, primarily in the form of sheet music. He seems to be an avid collector of sheet music, and indeed seems to have an enormous collection of rare, early editions of the sheet music for many songs, but in the process of compiling the information for his book he also examined numerous archives around the world, such as that of the Library of Congress, and consulted with many other music historians. Flipping through the book, I learned a lot of things that I hadn’t known previously about the origins of such songs as “Auld Lang Syne”, “Away in a Manger”, “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” (“Nos Galan”), “Dixie”, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” (“Malbrouk”), “Go Down, Moses”, “Home Sweet Home”, “Jingle Bells”, “L’Internationale”, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, “Three Blind Mice”, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (“Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman”), “We Shall Overcome” and many more. Just to take a few examples, while I had read about the French origins of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, I hadn’t known that “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” was originally French also, or that “Deck the Halls” was originally Welsh, or that “Three Blind Mice” dates back to 1609, or that an uncle of the the banker J. P. Morgan wrote “Jingle Bells”. The book also contains information about the first publications of many famous classical pieces, a number of Stephen Foster songs, and 20th century popular music by songwriters such as George M. Cohen, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and George Gershwin.

Though the book covers a wide variety of songs and compositions, there are still a lot of well-known ones missing. Fuld does address this issue in the introduction, pointing out that he couldn’t include everything, and he states that the book is intended to present “a fair-sampling of well-known melodies”, which is reasonable enough – though I still can’t help wishing songs like “Amazing Grace”, “House of the Rising Sun”, “Maple Leaf Rag”, “Ten Little Indians”, “This Land Is Your Land” and “You Are My Sunshine”, among others, were also included in the book. There is next to nothing from the rock era; there is one Beatles song, “Michelle”, (which while a very good song, would not be my first choice as the sole representative of their oeuvre), the Burt Bacharach/ Hal David song “What’s New Pussycat”, and a reference to “Love Me Tender” in the entry on the song from which it was derived (“Aura Lea”), but that’s about it. This is perhaps understandable, given that the first edition of the book was published in 1965 (he states that “more old than recent compositions [were] included”, quoting the remark by Brahms that “a piece of music that is still alive after fifty years is immortal”). However, though perhaps simply updating previous entries was a sufficiently major task, it might have been nice to see a few more songs added to the later editions.

Since Fuld’s main focus is on sheet music, he doesn’t always delve deeply into debates over authorship. In many cases he settles for letting the published credits speak for themselves, which is reasonable enough absent other evidence, but for me personally learning the true origins of the songs are the most interesting aspect of their histories. In fact, relying solely on sheet music can lead to errors in attribution; for instance Fuld mentions that “Aura Lea” was rewritten as “Love Me Tender” by Vera Matson and Elvis Presley, when actually it was Ken Darby who rewrote the song and signed over the rights to his wife (Matson), with Presley also getting a credit despite not doing any of the writing (though he did do a lot of the arranging). Fuld does sometimes mention cases where the published credits are questionable due to additional information, and for some songs he even spoke to the writers himself.

Though Fuld is generally quite cautious in making definite attributions, which is very sensible, there are still a few questionable statements in the book. For instance, under “Adeste Fideles” (“Come, All Ye Faithful”), he mentions that the earliest written appearance of the music and Latin words were in manuscripts by John Francis Wade in about 1750, and yet, while dismissing several claims about the song, he says that a claim that “John Reading…composed the melody in 1780 cannot be ruled out”. The latter date is clearly an error, though perhaps it is merely a typo (there were two John Readings, a father and son, the latter of whom died in 1764). Also, under “When the Saints Go Marching In”, he states that the words and music of J.M. Black’s 1896 composition “When the Saints Are Marching In” are “quite similar” to the latter song. However, there is a midi version of the latter on a website that also has the words, and while I don’t agree with the website that the two songs are completely dissimilar – the melody of the title phrase is somewhat similar, and as Fuld says the echo is present – they are otherwise quite different. The impression Fuld gives is that they are substantially the same song, but if the website version is correct, the older song at best influenced the composition of the later one. However, this is a rare lapse on Fuld’s part. Generally, if anything, he is very reluctant to accept claims that a song is based on another, and he dismisses many such claims rather forcefully (he is particularly scathing about suggestions that Stephen Foster got his melodies from prior songs, as he reasonably objects that there is no actual evidence for this).

Overall, despite the points I mentioned above and Fuld’s slightly odd prose style, this is a great reference book for anyone interested in music history. Indeed, anyone who is familiar with the songs and melodies in question – which is almost everyone – will probably find at least a few interesting facts within. Certainly for anyone with a serious interest in music, whether as a musician or a fan, it is worth having around.


Randy Newman’s American Dreams by Kevin Courrier

I got a used copy of this account of Randy Newman’s career in music from an online bookstore for basically the cost of the postage, so it was sure to be a decent value unless it was really terrible. As it turned out, it is pretty good, though it has its flaws. Courrier covers Newman’s career fairly well, going through all his albums up to the retrospective The Randy Newman Songbook, Volume 1 (2003). Though he doesn’t talk about every song Newman wrote (there are at least a few early ones he doesn’t mention), he does at least touch on most of them, including a few Newman songs or covers of Newman songs that I hadn’t been aware of. He also provides some bibliographic details, particularly about Newman’s childhood and youth.

Courrier is quite opinionated, and while he is obviously a fan of Newman’s work, there is still plenty of it that he is negative about. For example, while he speaks positively of some of Newman’s soundtracks and movie songs, overall he is fairly dismissive of much of Newman’s movie work. He also doesn’t think much of Little Criminals or Randy Newman's Faust (though he is hardly the only critic to consider them among Newman’s less successful albums), and there are a number of other songs from throughout Newman’s career that he doesn’t think much of, including some fairly popular ones. I tend to agree with him more often than not, but almost inevitably there are songs that I am quite fond of which he dismisses, and a few he likes that hadn’t really made an impression on me. Courrier is similarly opinionated about covers of Newman’s songs by other artists, being fairly critical of many of them. Again, he is far from the only critic to assert that many who perform Newman’s songs miss the irony completely, a criticism which I can appreciate. However, for my part, I can still get some pleasure out of Three Dog Night’s version of “Mama Told Me Not to Come”, Judy Collins’ version of “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”, or Joe Cocker’s version of “You Can Leave Your Hat On”, even if they do miss the point.

Another point worth noting about the book is Courrier’s tendency to go off on tangents about other artists or non-musical topics, especially movies (the latter particularly when discussing Newman’s soundtrack work). To be sure, he connects all his tangents to Newman and his work in some way, but in some cases the relationship is rather distant. I don’t really mind this myself, as much of what he talks about is interesting, but it does mean that anyone expecting the book to be entirely about Newman will be disappointed. Of course, he is fairly opinionated about these other things he discusses as well (he is a film critic, so it is not surprising that he has definite opinions about movies), though again I don’t agree with him on everything.

Finally, it should be mentioned that while many of Courrier’s interpretations of the meanings of Newman’s songs are based on quotes from Newman himself or are at least backed up by the opinions of other critics, in some cases they seem to be entirely his own and thus should be taken with the usual grain of salt. Regrettably, he apparently never interviewed Newman himself (whether he didn’t attempt to contact Newman for an interview – perhaps in order to maintain some distance from his subject – or tried to and was turned down, he doesn’t say), so his quotes from Newman, which are still fairly numerous, are all derived from interviews done by others. Perhaps a more obvious flaw is that in several places his chronology seems confused. Despite these drawbacks, however, the book still has plenty to recommend it. Considering that Newman is one of my favorite artists and I didn’t pay much for the book, I definitely regard it as a very worthwhile purchase.

Album Review – Ten Summoner's Tales by Sting

Album Title: Ten Summoner's Tales
Artist: Sting
Release Date: March 5, 1993

If I Ever Lose My Faith in You
Love Is Stronger Than Justice (The Munificent Seven)
Fields of Gold
Heavy Cloud No Rain
She’s Too Good for Me
Seven Days
Saint Augustine in Hell
It's Probably Me (Sting, Eric Clapton, Michael Kamen)
Everybody Laughed But You
Shape of My Heart (Sting, Dominic Miller)
Something the Boy Said
Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me)

All songs written by Sting except where otherwise noted

As most music fans know, Sting first came to prominence as a member of the Police. While Andy Sumner and Stewart Copeland are great musicians and played important roles in the group, Sting was clearly the main force behind their success, as, aside from being the group’s vocalist and bassist, he wrote the vast majority of their songs and every one of their hits. While there are many who still consider the music released by the Police superior to anything that Sting has released as a solo artist, I don’t agree. While I do sometimes miss the compact, hard-hitting sound that the trio generated even on later, more sophisticated albums such as Synchronicity, I think that the very best of Sting’s solo material is by no means inferior to what he did with the Police. One album in particular stands out as being his best overall effort since the Police broke up, and that is Ten Summoner's Tales, which he released in 1993. While many of the songs I’d rate among Sting’s very best – such as “Fragile”, “All This Time” and “Fortress Around Your Heart” – are on other albums, Ten Summoner's Tales (the title refers to Sting's family name, Sumner, and the summoner's tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales) is his most consistently excellent release.

Ten Summoner's Tales Song by Song

If I Ever Lose My Faith in You: The opening track on Ten Summoner's Tales was also the first single from the album. I was not overly impressed with it at first, perhaps because it fell short of the very high standard set by “All This Time”, the lead single from Sting’s previous album The Soul Cages. The song grew on me, however, particularly its well-written lyrics, and I think it makes a very good opening track. I still like several other songs from the album better, however.

Love Is Stronger than Justice (The Munificent Seven): This is a clever, tongue-in-cheek tale modeled on the western The Magnificent Seven (which was in turn a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai). In Sting’s version, the seven gunfighters are brothers who are asked to save a town in return for brides for each of them, and when they learn that there is in fact only one bride, the narrator (the seventh brother) bumps off the others. Musically and lyrically, it’s one of the high quality album tracks that help make this Sting’s best album.

Fields of Gold: This was the second single off the album and is probably the most popular song on it, except perhaps for “Shape of My Heart”. It has been covered many times, including versions in many different languages. My initial impression was that it was good but not great; however it grew on me and now I’d rate it among the best songs on the album, though probably not my absolute favorite. It also has an excellent music video.

Heavy Cloud No Rain: A humorous track in which a variety of characters in desperate situations pray in vain for rain. Like “Love Is Stronger than Justice”, this is a good album track that shows Sting’s writing was at a consistently high level for this album.

She’s Too Good for Me: This song is even more humorous than “Heavy Cloud No Rain”, with some lines that are downright hilarious. I also like the dramatic contrast between the quiet bridge and the rest of the song, which is much heavier. This is one of my favorite songs on the album.

Seven Days: Another great track, and one that received considerable airplay (it was released as a single in some places and has been included on some greatest hits compilations). Like the songs preceding it, it has witty, humorous lyrics (Sting was seemingly in a cheerful mood when he wrote much of this album, in contrast to the much darker mood seen in his songs on The Soul Cages), and these clever lyrics combined with a very good melody and a great arrangement make it perhaps my favorite song on the album, though there are a few other contenders.

Saint Augustine in Hell: This is another one of my favorites. Like “Mad About You” from The Soul Cages (which was based on the story of David and Bathsheba), it tells of the lustful side of a famous Judeo-Christian religious figure. It features an excellent arrangement, performed to perfection by Sting’s band, and the break in the middle with the Devil enumerating the inhabitants of Hell – including of course music critics – is great (the music playing in the background of this part is the bridge section from "I Miss You Kate", an instrumental B-side to "All This Time").

It's Probably Me: This song had been previously released on the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack in version featuring Eric Clapton, but Sting rerecorded it for this album. It’s not clear what Clapton and Kamen’s contributions were to the writing of the song, but the lyrics were probably mostly or entirely Sting’s. It’s a very good song regardless of who wrote what.

Everybody Laughed But You: This song was apparently not included on the original North American release of the album, though it was on the later reissue. While it can’t equal the tracks that preceded it, it is nevertheless a solid album track. Sting wrote an alternate set of lyrics to the same music and released that version as a B-side on two singles from the album under the title “January Stars”.

Shape of My Heart: This song, along with “Fields of Gold”, has become the best known song from the album, with numerous artists doing covers of it. It has also become a popular sample in hip hop and what’s known as “contemporary R&B”. Ironically, the music for this song was not written by Sting but by his guitarist Dominic Miller, though Sting wrote the excellent if slightly abstruse lyrics. This is another one of my favorites from the album.

Something the Boy Said: This song tells a very dark tale about an expedition that was slaughtered as prophesied by the son of their captain. While quite different in mood from the songs that make up the bulk of the album, it fits in quite well after “Shape of My Heart” and makes a solid album track.

Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me): The final track on the album is a brilliantly written riposte to all the critics and writers who try to analyze Sting (and for that matter anyone) on the basis of his work and other publicly available information. The dry wit of the lyrics is matched with an excellent, upbeat tune. This track is another contender for my favorite on the album, with only “Seven Days” and possibly “Saint Augustine in Hell” and “Shape of My Heart” equaling it. It certainly closes the album on a high point, and along with “Fortress Around My Heart” (from The Dream of the Blue Turtles) and “Brand New Day” (from Brand New Day) is one of the best closing tracks on any Sting album.

Some Comments on Taiwan's Golden Melody Awards

Recently Taiwan held its Golden Melody Awards, which is the Taiwanese equivalent of the Grammies. I have to admit I haven’t been following current popular music in Taiwan closely because I’ve been too busy researching the older stuff. I was familiar with many of the artists and musicians nominated, but there were many I didn’t know as well. I have the albums that several of the aboriginal artists were nominated for, and I’ve heard some of the stuff that was nominated in other categories, but not really enough to pass judgment on most of the awards, though I can recommend the albums by Suming (舒米恩), Ado' Kaliting Pacidal (阿洛．卡力亭．巴奇辣), Sangpuy (桑布伊), Takanow (達卡鬧) and Kao Chou Ching (拷秋勤), though I've only heard a few songs from the latter two's albums. When I have the chance, I will listen to more of the nominated music (and hopefully at least some of the better music that didn’t get nominated), but until I do so, I can’t really say if the ones who won are the ones I would have given the awards to.

However, the little bit that I’ve seen of the award ceremonies and related reports and commentary have recalled to mind some general issues about these music awards, and for that matter those in other countries, such as the Grammies in the US. For instance, one ignorant reporter named 陳于嬙 complained about too much of the ceremonies featuring “non-mainstream” artists and claimed that the ceremony only got interesting when pop idol Jolin Tsai won an award. This reminds me of complaints in the past from some fans when the awards were won by less well-known performers, instead of the usual pop superstars. What people like this fail to understand is that the point of music awards is to recognize the best music, not the most popular. Of course which one of a given batch of songs or albums is the best is always going to be somewhat subjective, but it is possible to objectively show that many mainstream pop songs are highly derivative and unoriginal, and so not deserving of recognition as the best in their field, no matter how popular they are. In any case, when it comes to judging the relative merits of different songs, albums, or artists, it is necessary to listen with an open mind, rather than dismissing some music out of hand because it is not “mainstream”. Anyone who does that isn’t qualified to have an opinion on the awards and they certainly shouldn’t be paid to write reports on them.

This year’s Golden Melody Awards were also notable for numerous artists taking the opportunity to express their opinions on various social issues. Several artists expressed their opposition to nuclear power, and when the award for Best Aboriginal Singer was given out, all the nominees went onstage together and Sangpuy (桑布伊), the winner, gave a speech in which he talked about several issues of concern to the aboriginal people of the Taidong area, such as the Taidong government’s attempt to move the graves of his people to make way for commercial development, the use of the island of Lanyu to dump nuclear waste, and the building of a resort on one of the best beaches in the Taidong area despite local opposition. His fellow nominees held signs with slogans relating to these issues while he spoke. Many people commented positively on their actions, but others, like the same idiot reporter mentioned above, complained that award ceremonies were not the place for political activism. While there are reasonable arguments both for and against an artist incorporating a lot of political activism into their music, it has common for artists and actors at award ceremonies such as the Grammies and the Academy Awards to raise political and social issues that concern them in their acceptance speeches, and there is no reason for Taiwan to be any different. This is all the more true for aboriginal artists such as these nominees from the Taidong area. While most Taiwanese are aware of the nuclear issue, many don’t know anything about what is going on in Taidong. If your home was being ruined by out of control development and bad government policies, then of course you would seize such a great opportunity to publicize your plight.

The article in which the reporter made these ridiculous criticisms irritated me enough that I intended to leave a comment. However, like most other news websites, this one requires you to register in order leave a comment. I wasn’t interested in registering, so instead I’m pasting my comment below. It’s in Chinese (probably less than perfect, though at least understandable, Chinese), but the main points are the same as those discussed above.

這個記者真是無知，還講「反核、拆美麗灣及捍衛東海岸等訴求數度出現在金曲獎的紅毯及舞台上，把紅毯當成凱達格蘭大道，把舞台視為宣示場合，保護台灣、訴求環保的立意良好，卻忘記對本應滌淨心靈、超越政治的音樂殿堂的尊重。」這種話。如果有人來摧毀妳的家鄉，難道你不會全力反對，用每一次發言機會讓人知道這個事情嗎？美國、日本長久一來有藝人用這種頒獎典禮當作針對社會議題發言的機會，台灣為何不行？基本上記者的意思是藝人不該關心社會發生的事情，要「乖乖」唱歌就好。這是什麼邏輯？

其實看得出來這個記者也不懂音樂，一直講什麼「主流」，抱怨什麼「冷門」。金曲獎主要的目的應該是鼓勵好音樂，不是頒獎給最「主流」的音樂。「最佳流行音樂」不等於「最流行的音樂」，關鍵字是「最佳」才對。如果獎只是要給「最流行的音樂」，就不用評審，可以直接頒獎給賣最多專輯的人。

Album Review – A Day at the Races by Queen

Album Title: A Day at the Races

Artist: Queen
Release Date: December 10, 1976

Side One
Tie Your Mother Down (May)
You Take My Breath Away (Mercury)
Long Away (May)
The Millionaire Waltz (Mercury)
You and I (Deacon)

Side Two
Somebody to Love (Mercury)
White Man (May)
Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy (Mercury)
Drowse (Taylor)
Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together) (May)

While I agree with the general consensus among critics that A Night at the Opera was the best album released by the British rock group Queen, the group had a remarkably good string of albums beginning with their second one and lasting to the end of the 1970s, with several of them coming close to matching A Night at the Opera. Among these was that album’s sequel, A Day at the Races, released a year later and likewise named after a Marx Brothers film. While it didn’t contain anything quite like “Bohemian Rhapsody”, it contained a number of excellent songs and was marked by similarly high quality musicianship, arrangement and production (though in this case the band produced the album without help from Roy Thomas Baker, who had worked on the previous record). In fact, the two albums are something of a matched pair. While some reviewers criticized A Day at the Races for this reason, considering it something of a retread, the band explored some new genres on the album (most notably gospel on “Somebody to Love”) and the variety and quality of the songs make it more than a mere repeat of their previous album. While I would be hard pressed to pick a second favorite Queen album, this, along with other albums like Sheer Heart Attack and News of the World, would be a strong contender.

A Day at the Races Song by Song

Tie Your Mother Down: After an instrumental introduction that reappears at the end of “Teo Torriate”, the album’s final track, A Day of the Races kicks off with this excellent rocker written by guitarist Brian May. The lyrics expressing the frustrations of a young man whose girlfriend’s family gets in the way of their romance are clearly tongue in cheek.

You Take My Breath Away: This ballad by vocalist Freddie Mercury features his piano and layers of overdubbed vocals. It’s a nice tune, though not equal to his previous ballads “Love of My Life”, “Lily of the Valley” and “Nevermore”.

Long Away: This song by May was the only one he sang lead vocals for on this album. With its rhythm guitar and catchy melody, it is somewhat in the vein of “’39” from the previous album. It can’t quite match its brilliant predecessor, but it is very good nonetheless.

The Millionaire Waltz: This composition by Freddie Mercury is the most complex track on the album, and the best song on side one except perhaps for the opening song. There are several key changes and dramatic transitions, and it features some great piano and vocals from Mercury plus elaborate guitar orchestrations by May.

You and I: This is bassist John Deacon’s songwriting contribution to the album, and it’s an excellent one, with a catchy tune and some of the most melodic bass playing from anyone besides Paul McCartney. I even prefer this somewhat to “Your My Best Friend”, Deacon’s song on A Night at the Opera, though this was not a hit single like the earlier song.

Somebody to Love: While no song on A Day at the Races quite matches “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Mercury’s magnum opus from A Night at the Opera, he came closest with “The Millionaire Waltz” and this song, which was the biggest hit off the album and deservedly so. This gospel flavored tune is built around some great piano playing by Mercury and features a stupendous lead vocal from its composer and an excellent gospel choir made up of layered vocals by Mercury, May and Roger Taylor. This is my favorite song on this album and one of my all time favorite Queen songs.

White Man: This straightforward hard rock track written by Brian May is musically solid but not exceptional, somewhat like “Sweet Lady” on the previous album. But lyrically, despite a few weak lines, overall it is very good, with its scathing indictment of the European seizure of America from the indigenous peoples.

Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy: A composition by Mercury in British music hall style (Mercury referred to it as his “ragtime” song from the album), this was the second biggest UK hit from the album. A fast paced, catchy tune, it is very enjoyable, though I slightly prefer Mercury’s “ragtime” song on A Night at the Opera, “Seaside Rendezvous”.

Drowse: This was drummer Roger Taylor’s songwriting contribution to the album, and he sang all the vocals and played rhythm guitar on it. As the title indicates, it has a laidback, sleepy feel; it was the first slow tempo song Taylor had written for Queen. Both musically and particularly lyrically it’s quite good; in fact, I’d say it was second only to “Tenement Funster” from Sheer Heart Attack as the best song Taylor had written for the band up to that point (though admittedly he’d only written five, one on each album).

Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together): This ballad written by Brian May is especially notable for its chorus, which is sung in Japanese as well as English (this was done as a tribute to Queen’s Japanese fans). It is a well-done, almost anthemic ballad with a good melody, and makes a good closer for the album.

Old Article: The Popular Music of Taiwan’s Aboriginal Peoples

Since I haven't had time to write anything new for this blog, I'm resorting once again to a republication of old material. This article was originally written for the December 2007 issue of the magazine Fountain (the published version was changed slightly by the magazine's editor). Of course being several years old, the article fails to mention any of the numerous aboriginal artists who have become prominent in the past few years, including Matzka, Suming (one of the lead singers of Totem, which is mentioned at the end), and Ilid Kaolo, among others. I am working on a much longer and more detailed history of Taiwanese aboriginal "popular" music, in Chinese rather than English, though who knows when that will be finished....

When Taiwanese songwriter Baliwakes was a student in Tainan in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he developed an interest in the piano and practiced intensely, eventually winning a school piano competition. When the Japanese emperor's younger brother came to visit the school, the principal chose Lu to perform in the welcoming ceremony and introduced him to the prince by saying "He's not Japanese, he's not Chinese, he's a real Taiwanese! He has exceptional ability; his name is Baliwakes!"

Baliwakes was identified by his principal as a “real Taiwanese” because he was a Puyuma, one of the peoples who had settled in Taiwan thousands of years before Chinese settlers came to the island. These peoples, collectively referred to as Taiwanese aborigines, speak languages belonging to the Austronesian language family, which includes the languages of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hawaii, the Maori of New Zealand, the various Polynesian islands, and even Madagascar. The aboriginal groups living in the plains areas of western Taiwan were assimilated, driven out or destroyed in the centuries of large-scale Chinese immigration beginning in the 1600s, so most of the remaining aboriginal population is concentrated in the mountainous areas of central Taiwan and on the east coast. There are 13 aboriginal groups currently recognized by the Taiwanese government: Amis (also called Ami or Pangcah), Atayal (also called Tayan), Bunun, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, Tao, Thao, Tsou, Truku, and Sakizaya, of which the Amis, Atayal, and Paiwan are the most numerous. Taiwan’s aboriginals today total about 460,000 in number, making up a little over 2% of the total population. Like other aboriginal groups such as the Native Americans in the US or the Australian Aborigines, they tend to suffer much more from poverty and unemployment than the general population.

For many Western listeners, the music of Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples is among the most intriguing genres to be found in the country. Ironically, however, aboriginal music was mostly ignored by the mainstream popular music industry until the past decade or so. Many songs which have achieved massive popularity among the aboriginal population remain almost completely unknown among the Han Chinese, and the same is true of top aboriginal singers. In addition, until recently, mainstream popular singers of aboriginal origin tended to deemphasize their ethnic background due to prejudice against indigenous peoples among the majority population. There have, however, been a number of notable exceptions to these general rules, as we shall see.

The influence of traditional aboriginal songs on Taiwanese music dates back centuries, as many Taiwanese folk songs are believed to have been based on aboriginal melodies (for instance, the melodies of a number of folk songs from Hengchun in southern Taiwan are believed by many scholars to have originated with the aboriginal peoples of the area). Traditional aboriginal songs consist largely of vocables, sounds with no meaning such as "naluwan" or "hohaiyan," equivalent to sounds like "la" and "wo" in English songs. This remains a characteristic of many aboriginal songs to this day, though many modern aboriginal songs have actual lyrics in one of the aboriginal tongues or in another language, such as Japanese or, in recent decades, Mandarin. Aboriginal songs are mostly vocal, though certain tribes used occasional musical accompaniment, such as the nose flute of the Paiwan. Many traditional songs are sung in a call and response style, with one singer leading and the rest answering, regardless of whether the song has any lyrical content or not (such content is usually fairly simply in any case, mostly describing the situation in which it is sung, i.e., songs sung while working describe the working day). Polyphonic singing is common among many groups, such the Amis and the Bunun, the latter being particularly famous in world music circles for their complex eight-part harmonies. Many songs were (and still are) sung at harvest festivals, and most such songs tend to be upbeat, rhythmic, and suitable for dancing. Other songs were traditionally sung while doing chores, when preparing for hunting or warfare, or as part of religious rites. In general, singing permeated every part of life in the past, and this remains true among many aboriginals today, who still sing every time they get together.

While there were no doubt many original (i.e., newly composed, as opposed to traditional) aboriginal songs that appeared in the first half of the twentieth century, next to nothing is known of them due to an almost total lack of documentation. However, three important aboriginal songwriters appeared in the 1940s and 1950s, all of them educated under the Japanese. The first of these was Uyongu Yatauyungana, who is now best known by his Mandarin name Gao Yisheng (高一生). Gao, a member of the Tsou group of aborigines, and, as one of the few Tsou to receive higher education, wrote a number of songs in the 1940s and early 1950s before he fell victim to the White Terror and was arrested and subsequently executed by the KMT government. His songs were strongly influenced by Japanese music, and most of them were written in Japanese. The second songwriter was PangTer, a member of the Puyuma tribe from Zhiben, a village near Taidong in southeast Taiwan. PangTer's Mandarin name, by which he is now usually called, was Chen Shi (陳實). He collected many folk songs from the Taidong area as well as composing his own. His songs, in contrast to Gao’s, were more influenced by Western music. One of his notable compositions, “Ocean” (海洋) was later turned into a church hymn and translated into Hoklo and English (as "Let All Nations Come, Praise the Lord").

The third and perhaps the best-known aboriginal songwriter from this era was Baliwakes, the young man who played piano for the Japanese emperor’s brother. As mentioned above, Baliwakes, best known today by his Chinese name Lu Senbao (陸森寶), was, like Chen Shi, a Puyuma. He was from the village also called Puyuma, known as Nanwang (南王) in Mandarin, which is located just outside the city of Taidong. Lu’s compositions were strongly influenced by traditional Puyuma folk songs. Among the better known are "Let's Take A Walk" (散步歌kayta sampu), "Praising The Ancestors" (頌祭祖先miamiami La I nirebuwaan), and "Remembering Yearly Ceremony" (懷念年祭mikiyakarunan ku I sidumayan). Probably the best known of all his songs is "Beautiful Rice Grains" (美麗的稻穗pasalaw bulay naniyam kalalumayan), popularized during the "folk song movement" by aboriginal folk singer Kimbo (Hu Defu [胡德夫] in Chinese) and recorded by the "father of modern Chinese folk songs" Yang Xian (楊弦) on his second album.

Two of the first aboriginal records were made as a set in about 1961 by a group of singers from the village of Nanwang and not surprisingly featured songs by Lu Senbao (and Chen Shi as well). These records were released by Lingling Records (鈴鈴唱片), which went on to release dozens of aboriginal records during the 1960s and 1970s, mostly featuring songs of the Amis (Taiwan’s largest aboriginal group) but occasionally other groups such as the Puyuma, Atayal and Tsou. By far the most prominent singer on these records was Lu Jingzi (盧靜子), an Amis from the village of Malan (馬蘭) near Taidong, who became the aboriginal community’s first star singer. She recorded dozens of albums worth of songs, and records featuring her singing were by far the biggest selling aboriginal records of the 1960s and 1970s, selling not only in Taiwan but also in Japan. She recorded mostly in Amis, but made several records in Japanese as well (including Japanese versions of aboriginal songs, aboriginal songs written in Japanese, and Japanese enka tunes). Though she wasn't well known among Han Chinese listeners, her clear and powerful singing was popular in all the aboriginal communities and influenced virtually all the aboriginal singers who came after her. She popularized numerous songs which are still sung frequently today. Her most famous song was "Malan Romance" (馬蘭之戀), which was turned into a hit song in Mandarin and Hoklo and was covered by many popular Taiwanese singers, thus becoming one of the first aboriginal songs to crossover to a mainstream audience. The melody is upbeat and cheerful, in contrast to the Amis lyrics, in which a girl threatens to commit suicide by lying down in front of a train if her parents don’t let her marry the boy she loves. Needless to say, the Mandarin version of the song, known as "Malan Mountain Song" (馬蘭山歌) or "Malan Girl" (馬蘭姑娘), is much more innocuous. Another song Lu helped popularize was turned into the patriotic song “Good Taiwan” (台灣好).

While "Malan Romance" was one of the first actual aboriginal songs to become a crossover hit, mainstream Taiwanese audiences had already become accustomed to hearing similar melodies through what might be called “faux aboriginal songs” – songs written by Han Chinese songwriters in imitation of aboriginal songs. The best known of such songs was "High Green Mountain" (高山青), which became so associated with aboriginals that many aboriginal singers performed it. To this day, many people mistakenly believe it to be a traditional aboriginal song. There were many other such aboriginal-flavored Mandarin songs, including "Bilan Village Girl" (碧蘭村的姑娘) and "Passion Flower Of Li Mountain" (梨山痴情花). In the early 1970s, aboriginal singer Wanshalang (萬沙浪), one of the few popular singers of aboriginal origin in that era to openly advertise his ethnic background, had one of his first big hits with "Nanuwa Love Song" (娜奴娃情歌), written by ethnic Chinese composer Zuo Hongyuan (左宏元). No doubt one reason for the popularity of these aboriginal-style songs (including genuine aboriginal tunes such as "Malan Girl" and “Good Taiwan”) was simply that the melodies were appealing and strikingly different from other pop songs, and another was probably the imagery typical of the lyrics of such songs, featuring the natural beauty of Taiwan and the innocent, happy aboriginal people (though this at the same time served to reinforce Han feelings of superiority by implying that the aboriginals were naïve and unsophisticated).

Even before Wanshalang, many aboriginal singers had been successful among mainstream audiences in Taiwan, though they rarely performed songs with an aboriginal flavor. The first aboriginal singer to become popular in Taiwan was Gao Juhua (高菊花), the eldest daughter of Gao Yisheng, who was a popular live performer in Taiwan in the 1950s under the name Painana (派娜娜). Her cousin Tang Lanhua (湯蘭花) also became a popular singer and actress in the 1960s, and many other singers of the 1960s had aboriginal backgrounds. Wanshalang, however, was the first major singer to have an aboriginal image, though ironically he often dressed in outfits that more closely resembled Native American clothing than actual Taiwanese aboriginal costumes.

Before Wanshalang became a pop singer, he was briefly the lead singer in a “hit music” cover band. Another member of this band was a fellow Puyuma from the Taidong area named Hu Defu (胡德夫), commonly known by his nickname, Kimbo. In the early 1970s, Kimbo began performing Western folk songs, making a number of appearances on television and in folk song concerts. In 1974, he put on a solo concert which helped kick start Taiwan’s folk song movement of the 1970s, in which young Taiwanese wrote and performed original songs in Mandarin in a style influenced by the American folk songs of the 1960s. As one of the founders of the folk song movement, Kimbo performed frequently in the 1970s, becoming one of the top singers of the genre. He frequently performed aboriginal songs such as “Beautiful Rice Grains” and “Ocean”, and his original songs often had an aboriginal flavor, though they were written in Mandarin. In the 1980s, Kimbo became a social and political activist, which resulted in restrictions on his public performances. He often performed at “dangwai” (“outside the party,” a term referring to the political opposition to the ruling KMT) activities, and in the mid-1980s he became involved in the movement for aboriginal rights, becoming the first chairman of the Association for Promotion of Taiwanese Aboriginal Rights (台灣原住民權力促進會). He performed less in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but has returned to music since, finally releasing a critically-acclaimed solo album entitled In a Flash (匆匆) in 2005. For many listeners, Kimbo, with his soulful voice and thoughtful lyrics reflecting on the beauty of Taiwan and the struggles of its aboriginal people, is the most important aboriginal singer still performing regularly today.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many young aboriginals traveled to Taipei to take jobs as laborers and began writing songs in Mandarin, though most of them differed from Kimbo in that they were influenced less by American folk music and more by traditional melodies and a performance style known as nakashi, which was popular among street musicians and beggars in Taiwan. One such songwriter was Gao Feilong (高飛龍), who now goes by the name Gao Ziyang (高子洋). Perhaps his best-known composition is “We Are All Family” (我們都是一家人), which became something of an aboriginal anthem, and is well known even among non-aborigines. Another very popular song of his was “Pitiful Luckless Man” (可憐的落魄人), recorded and popularized by fellow Puyuma Chen Mingren (陳明仁), the son of songwriter Chen Shi. This song became wildly popular not only in Taiwan but in Southeast Asia as well, and was recorded by numerous singers and performed by countless others, becoming the biggest crossover hit of aboriginal origins since “Malan Romance.” It was also more than a little controversial, thanks to lyrics like “You can tease me / And you can use me…You can play with me / And you can dump me,” which were considered suggestive. Not surprisingly, it was banned by the government, which didn’t prevent it from selling hundreds of thousands of records.

Numerous aboriginal songs with Mandarin lyrics in this vein appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, many becoming popular in aboriginal communities throughout the island, though most of them didn’t become crossover hits like “Pitiful Luckless Man.” Songs like “Goodbye, Lover” (再會吧！心上人), “What Should I Do” (我該怎麼辦), “My Wife Called Me an Old Drunk” (老婆罵我是老酒鬼) and “White Rice Liquor” (白米酒) were recorded many times (often under a variety of names) and remain popular among aboriginal singers to this day. The origins of most of these songs are virtually impossible to trace nowadays, as they have been passed from singer to singer many times, undergoing many alterations along the way, making them true folk songs in the traditional sense. Though most of these songs are not familiar among non-aboriginals, if you spend an evening eating and drinking with a group of aboriginals, you are likely to hear at least one or two of them.

The 1980s also saw the appearance of an aboriginal-oriented music industry centered in Taidong and Pingdong in east and south Taiwan, following in the footsteps of companies like Lingling Records. Most of these releases were on cassette tape only and featured very inexpensive production, usually in a nakashi style with cheap keyboards and mechanical beats. Many tapes were in Mandarin, often featuring the songs discussed above, but more were in aboriginal languages, particularly Amis and Paiwan. Though few ethnic Chinese heard any of this music, some of the singers on these tapes became stars in the aboriginal communities. Some of the aboriginal stars from the last few decades include Wang Qiulan (王秋蘭), Xia Guoxing (夏國星), Lin Xiuying (林秀英), Ma Chunmei (馬春美) and Pan Jinsong (潘金松). Albums of this type are still being released today, though now on CD rather than on tape. Though many are ruined by cheap production values, there are occasional minor gems to be heard, such as Xifu (喜富) and Hawang (哈旺)’s “Denas” (得ㄋㄚㄕ/得那詩). Even today, while ethnic Chinese fans of aboriginal music listen to singers like Kimbo, Purdur, Samingad, and Biung, aborigines living in the east and south of Taiwan are just as likely to buy recordings by Xia Guoxing or Pan Jinsong.

What really made the mainstream Taiwanese pop industry finally take notice of aboriginal music, however, was not these locally-produced aboriginal albums, modern aboriginal folk songs like “White Rice Liquor” (白米酒), or the Western-influenced folk songs of singers like Kimbo, but a recording of a traditional Amis folk song. In early 1994, the European group Enigma released the song “Return to Innocence,” which was chosen as the theme song for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. This song prominently featured a sample of Amis singer Difang, known as Guo Yingnan (郭英男) in Chinese, and his wife singing the traditional “Elders’ Drinking Song” (老人飲酒歌). The Guos, who were in their sixties at the time, had been previously invited to Europe to perform traditional Amis songs. They had recorded the song at a performance in Paris, and Enigma acquired the tape from the French museum which held the master recordings. Since the Guos had not been paid for their contribution, the song started an international copyright battle (in which Difang and his wife were ultimately successful), and its popularity led the Taiwanese music industry to pay more attention to aboriginal music.

One of the first non-aboriginal Taiwanese musicians to make serious use of aboriginal sounds following the release of “Return to Innocence” was Zhu Yuezin (朱約信), better known as Jutoupi (豬頭皮), who in 1996 released the album Harmonious Evening OAA (和諧的夜晚OAA), which combined aboriginal music with house and featured numerous aboriginal guest singers (including Kimbo). Kimbo had also done some aboriginal-style singing earlier that same year as a guest on an album by the Blacklist Workshop (黑名單工作室). As for actual aboriginal musicians, thanks largely to the sudden popularity of aboriginal sounds in the wake of the Enigma recording, there was a flurry of releases beginning in 1996, as record companies suddenly began to take an interest in recording and releasing albums by aboriginal singers. Chen Mingren formed a group with Atayal singer Wu Tinghong (吳廷宏) called Beiyuan Shanmao (北原山貓), or “Northern Aboriginal Mountain Cats”, and released a series of albums featuring humorous readings of aboriginal songs, many of which sold quite well. The traditionally-oriented Amis duo Betel Nut Brothers (檳榔兄弟) released their first album in 1996, gaining some attention on the world music scene, and aboriginal rock band Yuanshilin released its first album in late 1997, mixing aboriginal melodies into their rock sound. Also in late 1997, the first release by the alternative music label Taiwan Colors (角頭音樂) included a track by the aboriginal collective Aboriginal Sound Society (原音社), which went on to release a full album in early 1999 featuring a varied mix of songs by different aboriginal singers. The increased profile of aboriginal music is illustrated by the fact that aboriginal singers who emerged in 1996 and 1997 such as Zhang Huimei (張惠妹), also known as A-mei, and Power Station (動力火車) had brief snippets of aboriginal singing added to their songs, which were otherwise pure Mandopop.

Aboriginal music received a further boost in 1999, when Taiwan Colors released the album Ocean (海洋) by aboriginal singer-songwriter Purdur (Chen Jiannian [陳建年] in Chinese), a grandson of Lu Senbao, and Rock Records’ Magic Stone label released an album by his relative Samingad, called Ji Xiaojun (紀曉君) in Chinese. Purdur’s album featured his own folk-influenced compositions (he had been writing and singing since the mid-1980s) and Samingad’s included a mix of songs by Purdur and Lu Senbao with traditional songs. Both of these albums were big winners at the following year’s Golden Melody Awards, putting an additional spotlight on aboriginal music. Samingad in particular has, like Difang and the Betel Nut Brothers before her, become successful on the world music circuit, which had always been open to Taiwanese aboriginal singing (though even here the Enigma song no doubt helped focus attention on Taiwanese aboriginal music).
In the years since, Taiwan’s aboriginal musicians have remained a major force in Taiwanese music, even if they haven’t always attained the massive commercial success of singers like A-mei. The most notable of the musicians performing in recent years, aside from those mentioned above, include Panai (巴奈), whose melancholy aboriginal folk has been characterized by one critic as “Taiwanese blues”; Biung, known as Wang Hongen (王宏恩) in Chinese, who incorporates the eight-part harmonies of the Bunun into his songs; the aboriginal collective Flying Fish, Cloud Leopard (飛魚雲豹), formed to raise money for aboriginal communities devastated by the September 21, 1999 earthquake; and more recently the group Totem (圖騰), who spice up their combination of rock and rap with aboriginal lyrics.

Taiwanese aboriginals are generally stereotyped as being born with great voices (along with other, more negative stereotypes), and if you hear just a few of the aboriginal singers mentioned you will understand why. What’s more, aboriginal music adds a very distinctive element to the music of Taiwan, whether it’s being performed on its own or mixed with more modern musical styles. While there is more to Taiwanese music than just aboriginal music, the latter is a vital element in the former, and aboriginal singers and musicians continue to stand in the forefront of today’s Taiwanese popular music.

Album Review – Genesis by Genesis

Album Title: Genesis

Artist: Genesis
Release Date: October 3, 1983

Side One
Mama
That’s All
Home by the Sea
Second Home by the Sea

Side Two
Illegal Alien
Taking It All Too Hard
Just a Job to Do
Silver Rainbow
It’s Gonna Get Better

All songs written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford

In their long career, the music of Genesis evolved from the theatrical art rock (or prog rock as it is usually called now) of their early 1970s albums to the more commercially successful pop rock of their 1980s work. It is common among certain groups of fans to disparage the group’s later work, even accusing them of selling out because they wrote songs that had a broader appeal. While taste in music is of course subjective, most of the more extreme criticisms of Genesis’s later work are by any remotely objective measure patently false. There is no evidence that the group sold out in the sense of deliberately doing work that they themselves felt had little artistic value but great commercial potential; on the contrary, all indications are that they wrote and recorded music that appealed first and foremost to the group themselves and just happened to appeal to others. What’s more, their 1980s work was not run-of the-mill pop. For the most part, their songs sounded different from most other pop music of the era and had depth that most other music on commercial radio lacked. As far as I am concerned, Genesis’s 1980s albums are just as enjoyable – and artistically worthwhile – as their early ones.

An interesting thing about Genesis is that while I think most of their albums are very good and even the few that don’t particularly appeal to me have their enjoyable aspects, the group doesn’t have any single album that has the brilliance of albums like Queen’s A Night at the Opera, Radiohead's OK Computer, Randy Newman’s Sail Away, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited or the best three or four Beatles albums. Most of their albums have a lot of strong points and a few weak ones, making for a fairly consistent level of quality that makes it difficult to single out any single album as the best, a task made more difficult by the fairly dramatic difference between their earlier and later material, albeit a difference that evolved gradually. Nevertheless, if I had to pick a favorite, the eponymous 1983 album Genesis (also referred to as "Shapes" because of the cover image or the "Mama" album because of the opening track) would be a strong contender, along with a few of their earlier albums.

Despite progressive elements in a few songs, Genesis was the group’s most pop album yet, but this was not necessarily a bad thing, as it was very good and highly distinctive pop. With only one or two exceptions, the songs were great, and the material was highly varied, which is something I always appreciate in an album. Mike Rutherford’s guitar and bass playing created a solid foundation for the excellent keyboard sounds of Tony Banks. Phil Collins of course was excellent on the drums, even if he didn’t do as much virtuoso playing as on the group’s 1970s albums, and his vocals on this album was among the best he did with the band. While many of the band’s songs were written individually in the 1970s, with Banks and to a slightly lesser extent Rutherford dominating the songwriting (though former members Steve Hackett and especially Peter Gabriel had also written a lot), on Genesis the band wrote all the songs together in the studio, completing an evolution toward group compositions that had been apparent on their previous two albums (the one before Genesis, 1981’s Abacab, had only three individually written songs – one from each member of the group). With the three of them writing the music together (the lyrics were split among the three with each doing several songs) and all contributing more or less equally, the results were rather different from their earlier work, but just as satisfying in its way.

Genesis Song by Song

Mama: The opening track has to be one of the most unusual sounding songs Genesis ever recorded. An odd drum machine rhythm created by Mike Rutherford, strange keyboard sounds from Tony Banks, and powerful but slightly creepy vocals from Phil Collins (including a sinister laugh) combine to make one of the most original songs the group did. The lyrics, written by Collins, are about a young man in love with a prostitute some years older than himself. The song was a big hit in the UK but was too weird to get airplay in the US. While subjectively speaking there are a couple of tracks on the album I enjoy more, this one may be the most creative.

That’s All: A very melodic, slightly Beatlesque song that was Genesis's first top 10 hit in the US, this was as far as I can recall the first Genesis song I heard, and it stood out even in those days when I didn't really listen to music. Banks's keyboards are central to the song, and Rutherford plays some nice acoustic guitar at the end. Phil Collins, who wrote the lyrics, contributes an excellent vocal performance. This is still one of my favorite Genesis songs.

Home by the Sea: This is another favorite of mine. The music, dominated by Banks's keyboards but with Rutherford's guitar forming the backbone, is great, and the lyrics, about a burglar who breaks into a haunted house, much to his regret, are among Banks's best. This song segues into "Second Home by the Sea", and together they form a ten-minute song that is the most "prog" one on the album.

Second Home by the Sea: This is mostly an instrumental with Rutherford's guitar, Collins's drums and especially Banks's keyboard building constantly to a climax at the end in which Collins reprises a verse of "Home by the Sea", bringing the first half of the album to a strong conclusion.

Illegal Alien: This is the album's weakest track. Some people find the lyrics (which I had thought were by Collins, but were attributed by Banks to Rutherford in a contemporary interview I came across the other day) and Collins's fake accent to be condescending and even racist. I don't think this is really the case, as the song is intended to be tongue in cheek and is actually sympathetic to undocumented immigrants. But though it has good music and even a few good lines in the lyrics, it doesn't work very well overall, and despite the band's good intentions, it makes for slightly uncomfortable listening (and viewing, in the case of the video).

Taking It All Too Hard: This is a pleasant but not exceptional ballad in which Rutherford's guitar takes center stage. Both musically and lyrically (Rutherford was also responsible for the lyrics) it is something of a precursor to the band's hit "Throwing It All Away" from their next album.

Just a Job to Do: This is the hardest driving song on the album, and features some powerful guitar and bass by Rutherford and excellent drumming and vocals by Collins, with Banks adding color on top. The lyrics, written by Rutherford, are about an assassin or bounty hunter in pursuit of his prey. All these elements combine to make an excellent album track.

Silver Rainbow: This is probably my favorite song on the second half of the album. It is dominated by Banks's keyboards which create a surreal, slightly psychedelic atmosphere which fit well with the strange imagery in Banks's lyrics, which are actually about how people in the middle of making out can become completely oblivious to the world around them.

It’s Gonna Get Better: This mid-tempo ballad features a good melody and great vocals by Collins. The lyrics are about holding on to hope in difficult situations and so are ultimately optimistic, despite a slightly dark edge. A good if not brilliant track, it brings the album to a satisfying close.