The score for the Ocean SNES adaptation of the mid-90s Flintstones movie is AMAZING. The game itself is wretched. The score is chill, guitar-driven electronic music by Dean Evans. Here’s a taste: http://youtu.be/WeNgNfi6-6U
Evans actually has a youtube account where he’s uploaded some of his tracks, including explaining some of the music included on the cartridge but not featured in game: http://youtu.be/WRF_7xsu10c
This is the only Kickstarter I’ve ever contributed to. This guy is great, and he’s so close to his goal.
Forward: This is my final essay for an 18th Century literature class I took back in 2008. I’ve wanted to publish it for years but with life’s grand distractions never found the time. I recently recorded a two-part episode of The Real Congregation with Marc With a C where we discussed concept albums and in Part 1, while discussing Genesis’ Lamb Lies Down On Broadway this essay came up. It’s high time I posted it somewhere. Feel free to repost as you see fit. I only ask that this work be attributed to me.
You can pick up a digital copy of the album on Amazon for only 12 bucks, listen as you read!
Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway:
A Modern Musical Revisualization of the Sublime & Beautiful
An Essay by Cap Blackard
In the last fifty years, countless Gothic texts of every possible sort and definition have come into being. The sustainment and perpetual mutation of the horror genre in novels, films, and more recently, video games, have guaranteed the Gothic’s longevity. So much has changed for the Gothic and for the art of fiction in general, that there is very little left resembling the original texts and intentions of its eighteenth century progenitors. The adherence to the aesthetics laid out by Edmund Burke in his “Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, the sense of Romanticism, ancient mythology – these elements are largely side notes to the modern Gothic. A return to these concepts comes in an unlikely form and from an unlikely medium – The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, a 1974 concept album by progressive rock group, Genesis. Lamb can be read as a Gothic text in myriad ways, the chief among which are: its themes, its personification of Burkian aesthetics, and even the nature of its music.
In order to impose my assessment of the Gothic within Lamb I must first define the essence of what it means for a text to be Gothic. “Gothic fiction is about reaching into some undefinable world beyond fictional reality, and the ‘beyond’ can never be pulled back into narrative control,” states George E. Haggerty (386). It is the “vehicle for a wild journey past the Garden of Belief to the countries of Defy Belief and Beyond Belief” says Judith Wilt in her text, “’And Still He Insists he Sees Ghosts’: Defining the Gothic”(41). She asserts that “…The Gothic [is] aimed squarely at …challenging boundaries like inside/outside, mind/body, and imagination/reality” (42) and also a “faithful record of human engagement with visible, political, cultural issues—race, class, gender, science, empire, authorities of all kinds,” as well as, “an insistent advocate for the importance of the invisible, the spiritual, even the religious” (41).
Lamb itself is this: a sequential narrative lasting over twenty-three tracks, two discs. It was composed during a prolific era of progressive rock music, by the band Genesis. The lyrics and story were almost exclusively written by the band’s front man Peter Gabriel. Most of the music was composed by the rest of the band. The narrative has three components: the music, the liner notes, and the visual presentation (being album art and the stage show). The latter will be less focused upon. Lamb’s music narrative and the narrative of Gabriel’s liner notes run tandem to each other, offering different perspectives of the same material. Musicologist David Nicholls explains:
The obvious reading of this disjunction between the prose and lyric narratives is that the prose is a framing narrative, containing preliminary or concluding material not essential to the story. However, in all other respects the prose and lyric narratives are complementary though by no means identical and in this sense the prose narrative assumes greater importance than its designation as a framing narrative might imply. (“Narrative” 310)
The story of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is this: Rael, a young, Puerto Rican gang member in New York City experiences a tremendous metaphysical episode leaving him stranded in a subterranean world. He struggles through a series of taxing and bewildering ordeals, chambers and corridors, for no reason that is plain to him or anyone else. His brother, John, is also there, but he pays little mind to Rael and ends up in trouble of his own. Ultimately, Rael undergoes a horrifying transformation. To regain his humanity and leave this place he must willingly allow himself to be castrated. No sooner is the deed done, than a massive raven abducts Rael’s detached, albeit still usable, member and he frantically attempts to get it back. In the confusion, John falls into some rapids and Rael chooses to save him. Upon rescuing John, Rael realizes that they are the same person. The two become one and Rael experiences “some kind of ultimate transmogrification” (Nicholls, “Virtual” 131).
Immediately some principal Gothic themes present themselves with comparisons to quintessential eighteenth century Gothic texts. The most prominent is that Rael’s journey through this subterranean series of imprisonments and labyrinthine trials (“The Carpet Crawlers” and “The Chamber of 32 Doors” CD1, tracks 10-11) is reminiscent of Emily’s stint in Udolpho in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. According to George E. Haggerty, Emily’s adventures through the Castle Udolpho, and the vivid details “helps to draw a picture that makes understandable the critical desire to connect passages of the castle and passages of memory. …The spectral presence of the castle itself has an alarming ‘uncanniness,’ as if Emily, trapped in the passages of repressed memory, recognized in these threatening spaces something about herself that she had always known.” (391). This far more strange journey of Rael’s is in tune with this parallel. Lamb’s more obvious expression of the otherworldly is likewise in tune with the male-composed Gothic being more free with its use of the supernatural.
The second immediately visible element of the Gothic within Lamb is the presence of a double. John and Rael are one, and certainly have always appeared to be so, but Rael never took notice. In the actual world John may not even exist – intoning that John is a key part of Rael’s psyche. Even Peter Gabriel had a double when performing as Rael during Lamb’s live shows-they were virtually indistinguishable from one another (Welch).
Rael cannot look away from those eyes, mesmerized by his own image. In a quick movement, his consciousness darts from one face to the other, then back again, until his presence is no longer solidly contained in one or the other. (Gabriel)
The double is a staple of the Gothic text. In Horace Walpole’s The Casle of Otranto the present day hero, Theodore, bears a striking resemblance to the lost hero, Alfonso the Good. In Udolpho Emily bears a startling resemblance to a woman who later comes to be known as her aunt. This doubling, particularly in the highly unnatural scenario of Lamb, is very closely associated with Freud’s understanding of the uncanny and similarly, Kathy Gentile’s expansion of it: “…unsolicited sighting of a double, an embodiment of unsurmounted supernaturalism, marks the eruption of the uncanny into everyday life” (24). “Unexpected sightings of doubles in adulthood …confirm the validity of the sensation evoked by the super-ego which oversees and watches the self …Seeing double may support the paranoid suspicion that the individual is actually two people, one divided against the other” (23-24). One divided against the other certainly personifies the relationship between Rael and John – such as when Rael is trapped in the cage and John doesn’t help him (“In the Cage” CD1, track 5) or when John refuses to assist Rael in catching the raven (“The Colony of Slippermen/The Raven” CD2, track 7).
Additional Gothic themes take a little more prying than a summary allows. A reoccurring theme in much of Gothic literature, particularly eighteenth century Gothic literature, is the matter of land ownership. As a gang member, Rael is well aware of the struggle for property. When we are first introduced to him he’s only just finished claiming ownership to territory:
…our hero is moving up the subway stairs into daylight. Beneath his leather jacket he holds a spray gun which has left the message R-A-E-L in big letters on the wall leading underground. It may not mean much to you but to Rael it is part of the process going towards ‘making a name for yourself.’ When you’re not even a pure-bred Puerto Rican the going gets tough and the tough gets going. (Gabriel)
Further emphasis of this element of his character is offered in the lyrics parallel to this section of the narrative, calling him: “Rael Imperial Aerosol Kid” (“The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” CD1, track 1), “Imperial” being the key word, suggesting his conquering power.
Rael’s angry youth persona comes through in the song “Back in NYC” (CD1, track 7):
You say I must be crazy, ‘cos I don’t care who I hit… But I know it’s me that’s hittin’ out, and I’m …not full of shit. I don’t care who I hurt. I don’t care who I do wrong. This is your mess I’m stuck in, I really don’t belong. When I take out my bottle, filled up high with gasoline, you can tell by the night fires where Rael has been…
Rael’s emotions are more raw and human than eighteenth century characters such as Emily, but the core of their story is the same. Both stories address cultural anxiety and fears, and both are bildungsromans. Whereas Emily endured mysterious, albeit real, peril at the hands of her relatives, Rael undergoes a surrealistic coming of age in his teenage thirst to define his existence. “Wonder Women you can draw your blind! Don’t look at me! I’m not your kind. I’m Rael! (“The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” CD1, track 1)” Rael’s own name, much like the allegorical names of the characters in early novels, offers a glance into his persona. “I’m Rael!” he shouts in defiance, really saying “I’m REAL!” This parallel is explicitly drawn in the album’s final track, “it.”(CD2, track 12), “it is here. it is now. it is Real. it is Rael.”
Tony Stratton-Smith discusses the youth connection in Rael’s hunger for his existence to be acknowledged:
‘The Lamb’ is a hymn to the integral innocence of the human spirit meeting the bacon slicer of a corrupt society… Maybe Genesis offered insights into a different kind of hopelessness, a more internalized condition, from that endured by today’s largely unemployed young; but it was and is only a difference in kind.
This “hopelessness” and the threat of non-existence is defined by Gentile as a primal element of the human fear of the uncanny: “…fear that our life is not our own, that free will is an illusion and our life has been mapped out by a higher power, that something has been here before and we are strangers or interlopers, lost in an alien terrain” (30). If this is the base fear that Rael internally struggles with day-to-day, it is this fear that he must directly confront by being “ lost in an alien terrain.” What’s more he comes face to face with this “illusion of free will” in the form of “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging” (CD1, track 6). “I see no sign of freewill, so I guess I have to pay, pay my way.”
Lamb frequently taps into eighteenth century aesthetics, even sampling from Romantic poetry. The most prominent instance of this is in the track “The Lamia” (CD2, track 5) which borrows not from the ancient Grecian myth of the Lamia but from, John Keat’s, more sympathetic portrayal of the hybrid serpent-woman:
…Her head was a serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
…Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake… (47-65).
The three Lamias in Lamb are even more appealing: ““…Each reptilian creature has the diminutive head and breasts of a beautiful woman. His horror gives way to infatuation as their soft green eyes show their welcome” (Gabriel).
Rael stands astonished doubting his sight, Struck by beauty, gripped in fright; Three vermilion snakes of female face, The smallest motion, filled with grace. Muted melodies fill the echoing hall, But there is no sign of warning in the siren’s call: ‘Rael welcome, we are the Lamia of the pool. We have been waiting for our waters to bring you cool.’ (“The Lamia” CD2, track 5)
The trio of serpentine nymphs are given reference to as sirens, and indeed, for all the superficial graces Lamb grants the Lamia, they are in part returned to their vampyric origins. A sensual and unusual scene unfolds in which the nude Rael, sweating a strange blue liquid, is licked upon by the Lamia. They begin to eat his body with no pain or fear inflicted upon Rael, however, upon tasting his blood they wither and die. Rael is then compelled to eat their remains. Unbeknown to him, the experience has left him horrifically deformed – a Slipperman, something like a leper. Truly this ordeal melds the beautiful and the sublime in a horror belonging exclusively to the Gothic.
The multi-part song narrating Rael’s experience in the “Colony of Slippermen” (CD2, track 7) opens with a reference to another Romantic poet. “I wondered lonely as a cloud,” the song begins, directly quoting the Wordsworth poem; then abruptly contrasting it, “Till I came upon this dirty street.” In addition to these concrete Romantic references, Nicholls suggests that CD1 tracks 4, 5, 10 and 11 and CD2 track 1 “– together with their corresponding passages in the prose narrative – bear an at times uncanny resemblance to the first 300 or so lines of another (incomplete) poem by Keats, ‘The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream’” (“Virtual” 133). Similarly, Lamb contains many references to lyrics from popular songs and other pop culture elements of the time (particularly in “Fly On a Windshield CD1, track 2) which was a common activity of many eighteenth century texts.
“The Gothic always blurs or even dissolves the boundary between life and death” and goes further in the “…creation of a domain of the undead, the should-be-dead- but-isn’t, the never-was-alive-but-is, the looks-alive-but-isn’t” to “debate…the limits of human will and agency” (Wilt, 41).
The entire narrative of Lamb is mysterious enough it could easily exist in some Dante-esque portion of the after life, yet within this underworld Rael meets with death on a few occasions, figuratively and literally. The initial death of Rael is his experience as a “Fly On a Windshield” (CD1, track 2) when he is struck by a mysterious force (“the wall of death”) and catapulted on his adventure, “don’t tell me this is dying, ‘cause I ain’t changed that much. (“Cuckoo Cocoon” CD1, track 4)” Later on his experience with the Lamia could be perceived as a death and rebirth, and, of course, the finale when Rael/John merge and emerge into who-knows-what. In the middle of the album, in a scene somewhat reminiscent of Lucifer’s first appearance in Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, Rael actually meets Death. First, Rael is led to the Waiting Room by Lilywhite Lilith (“Lilywhite Lilith” CD2, track 1) [“‘Lilywhite Lilith’ – ‘wholly blind, [with] pale face and … pale skin’ – is presumably an incarnation of the succubus of Jewish folklore, who (like the Lamia) has also been identified in some contexts as a demon enemy of newborn children” (Nicholls, “Virtual” 133)] and experiences a cave-in where he speculates that he’s been buried alive (“Anyway” CD2, track 3) until Death shows up:
…Our hero gets the chance in a lifetime to meet his hero: Death. Death is wearing a light disguise, he made the outfit himself. He calls it the “Supernatural Anaesthetist.” Death likes meeting people and wants to travel. Death approaches Rael with his special cannister, releases a puff, and appears to walk away content into the wall. (Gabriel)
This experience is translated into the lyrics: “here comes the supernatural anaesthetist. If he wants you to snuff it, All he has to do is puff it — he’s such a fine dancer” (“Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist” CD2, track 4). The music of the track is a bobbing dance tune, and the falsetto singing of “he’s such a fine dancer” paired with the text concerning Death’s fancy for friendliness and dressing up in the text suggest an unlikely appeal to the black angel, much like Lewis’ appealing and nude Satan. It’s a mixed message and certainly confusing, particularly as the next scene is the Lamia pool. “Rael touches his face to confirm that he is still alive. He writes Death off as an illusion, but notices a thick musky scent hanging in the air” (Gabriel).
All of these otherworldly musings, Gothic though they certainly are, would mean very little in scope were it not for Lamb’s constant employment of Edmund Burke’s principles of the sublime and beautiful. Burke equates the sublime as “productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling” (86) often, but not always, of a terrifying nature. By “beauty” he refers to “that quality or those qualities in bodies by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it” (128). Lamb certainly has its beauties, particularly in its musical elements, but like any good Gothic text, the sublime is rampant on all fronts.
Lamb executes Burke’s concepts so perfectly in no small part due to its many qualifying factors as what David Nicholl’s refers to as a “virtual opera”: “an extended texted dramatic plot, performed theatrically before an audience, mainly sung, and accompanied by instruments” (103), which, “transcend[s] the fundamental features of …supposedly separate source genres” (104).
[Virtual operas] “take place in the minds, and between the ears, of individual listeners. Through the process of hybridization, the basic features outlined above define a quite distinctive artistic form, magically freed from the constrictions usually imposed by the use of human performers in real time and three- dimensional space. …Consequently, the overall narrative plot of a virtual opera may be (apparently) unreal or even surreal in nature; the units within the narrative …can sustain an unprecedented degree of independence, with each unit being able to focus on a specific vignette, tableau or situation[.] …Individual listeners [have] a major role in creating imagined contexts for each unit, through the provision of synopses, lyrics, pictorial matter and unifying graphic and/or other visual motifs” (105).
The virtual opera enables the minds of the audience to be retro-fitted as Burkian playgrounds under the influence of immersive music and none so spectacularly as Lamb.
The album opens with the uncanny image of a lamb lying down in a shaft of steam on a Broadway street. Rael emerges from the subway and there it is. “Somehow it’s lying there, Brings a stillness to the air. Though man-made light, at night is very bright, There’s no whitewash victim, As the neons dim, to the coat of white. (“The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” CD1, track 1)” No sooner has this come to pass, than a vast white screen descends upon New York, growing ever larger and perusing Rael. “Astonishment,” says Burke, “is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree” and is “that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it” (101). The concept of the vast begets the infinite - “infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime” (115). Rael is paralyzed and consumed by this vastness and from it comes a sensory explosion the likes of which Burke could’ve never imagined, as though every television station was beamed into Rael’s mind and warped into repugnant scenarios
The moment of impact bursts through the silence and in a roar of sound, the final second is prolonged in a world of echoes as if the concrete and clay of Broadway itself was reliving its memories. (Gabriel)
“Klu Klux Klan serve hot soul food, and the band plays ‘In the Mood.’ …There’s Howard Hughes in blue suede shoes, Smiling at the majorettes smoking Winston Cigarettes.” (“Broadway Melody of 1974” CD1 track 2)
– the intensity of the deluge images perfectly portrayed by the intense synths and electric guitar.
In “Cuckoo Cocoon” (CD1, track 4) we are first confronted with the obscurity of confinement and darkness, elements of the sublime, but the softness, delicacy, placidness, and slow changes in sound (the dripping of water) turn the experience into one of beauty. Only when the extent of the prison is revealed in the next track, “In the Cage” (CD1, track 5) does anxiety return. “Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging” (CD1, track 6) offers not just succession and uniformity creating the illusion of the infinite, but doing so with lifeless human bodies. “Wrinkled wrappers on human bandage,” some of whom Rael recognizes - including his brother John!
The experience of the two golden orbs emitting a blinding light after Lilith leaves him is a sublime experience in premise, but not so sublime as the instrumental track which personifies it, “The Waiting Room” (CD2, track 2). “Waiting Room” is an audio collage, produced by Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno, containing only the most sublime noises: suddenness, excess, obscurity, harshness, shrillness, even going so far as to electronically replicate animal cries which Burke cites as particularly sublime noises for as many reasons as there are animals.
Musically Lamb weaves a tapestry of sincerely diverse sound. It is as if a Gothic cathedral, in all its opposing and infrequently symmetrical elements were deconstructed into corresponding sounds. As both are mathematical endeavors, the concept of Lamb having a Gothic architecture to the structure of its music doesn’t seem like such a far fetched idea. In his article, “The Sound of Architecture”, John Wheatley writes:
“There is a widespread perception that music and architecture are profoundly dissimilar, far removed from each other in the creative spectrum. While music is regarded as ephemeral, transient, involving vibration, pitch and time – you hear it, you feel it, its beauty is assigned to your memory – the general response to architecture is fundamentally different. Those homogeneous, concrete volumes and solid, three-dimensional forms are thought to occupy a permanent, static and
unyielding part of our environment… Architecture just does not float away into space like music …But …they are inexorably bonded together by their very nature and by the cultural history that surrounds them” (11).
In the instrumental “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats” (CD2, track 6) you can comprehend in its ambient rhythms and synthetic choirs a physical space of Burkian beauty, sporting repetitious columns of sound intermingled with dancing lights, changing luminosity at appealing paces. “Hairless Heart” (CD1, track 8) paints soundscapes worthy of the natural pastorals of Mysteries of Udolpho with the grace of smooth castle towers emerging from the forests. Conversely, “The Waiting Room” would be a jumble of harsh angles made from dark, rough, and muddied stone. “Goethe’s expression ‘I call architecture frozen music’ is surprisingly relevant when you start to consider the extraordinary fascination that architects can have with music and composers with architecture” (Wheatley, 11).
The juxtaposition of expertly crafted imagery, allusion and story with powerful music earn Lamb not just a place in the bosom of modern Gothic texts, but “place it on a par with the some of the finest operatic plots and libretti; and the sophistication of much of the music – whether it be the metric modulation of ‘In the Cage’ …or the sheer melodic, harmonic and textural beauty of ‘The Lamia’ – is equal to that of many works in the art-music opera repertory” (“Virtual” 136). Stephen Bruhm notes the parallels with the Gothic and the Italian opera, that it, “produces a Gothic that continues to be haunted by operatic tropes so that the Gothic becomes `spectralized’ by the ghost of opera…” (4). This comparison could be easily suggested towards Lamb, not just some rinky-dink musical, but an opera in all fullness of the word, and a Gothic text capable of great power.
“Subway sounds, the sounds of complaint The smell of acid on his gun of paint. As it carves out anger in a blood-red band, Destroyed tomorrow by an unknown hand; — My home. Is this the way out from this endless scene? Or just an entrance to another dream? And the light dies down on Broadway.”
Works Cited:
Black, Joseph., Leonard Conolly, [et al] eds. The Boadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition Volume B. Toronto: Broadview, 2007.
Keats, John. “Lamia.” Black, Conolly, et al. 445-55.
Broadview’s second volume of British Literature covers a broad scope of literature from the last four centuries. What makes these collections distinct from other collections of literature are its annotations and copious notes elaborating on textual background and the cultures of the time. I have several volumes of work containing Keat’s poetry, this was the closest on hand. Investigating Keat’s original text of “Lamia” was insightful in examining Genesis’ “The Lamia.”
Bruhm, Stephen. “Introduction: Encrypted Identities”. Gothic Studies. 2.1 (2000): 1-6.
“Encrypted Identities” serves as the introduction to the issue of Gothic Studies it was taken from. The article explores Gothic literature’s obsession with language as well as Jodey Castricano’s discussion of `cryptomimesis’, her neologism for the writing of the dead. This is one of a few texts utilized to assist in defining the Gothic so that I can define Lamb as Gothic.
Burke, Edmund. “A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”. 2nd ed. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful and Other Pre- Revolutionary Writings. Ed. David Womersley. London: Penguin, 1998. 49-199
The basis for Gothic writer’s understanding of what affects the human mind and how through simple concepts. Utilizing this text I am able to isolate how Lamb utilizes the sublime and the beautiful to full, Gothic potential.
Finegan, Jason, and Scott McMahan. The Annotated Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. 5 May 1994. 1 Nov. 2008. <http://www.bloovis.com/music/lamb.html>.
A fan-created annotation of the Genesis album featuring the lyrics inter-spliced with liner notes, quotes, and analytical insights. As this is an informal website I have not cited or directly used information from it. However, it was invaluable to me during the brainstorming of this paper, offering clarity for my own deconstruction of the text.
Gabriel, Peter. “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”. Liner notes. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Atlantic, 1974.
The liner notes for Lamb provide a more detailed, sometimes more cohesive perspective on the narrative of the piece, composed entirely by the mastermind of the project, Peter Gabriel. This is a part of the primary source.
Genesis. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Atlantic, 1974.
A double-disc progressive rock album produced in 1974 by Genesis. It details the journey of a Puerto Rican gang youth through a surreal and existential encounter. This is the primary source for this essay.
Gentile, Kathy Justice. “Anxious Supernaturalism: An Analytic of the Uncanny”. Gothic Studies. 2.1 (2000): 23-38.
Gentile dissects and deconstructs the works of Jentsch and Freud to observe how the uncanny operates on the human psyche. She outlines the mental process by which a person can view something wholly unnatural, most likely imagined, and rationalize it until the fear is gone. She also discusses the instance of perceiving a double of yourself or someone else. The uncanny plays a strong part in Lamb and goes hand in hand with the sublime, doubling is also an element in the story.
Haggerty, George E. “Queer Gothic”. In A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture. Ed. Paula R. Backscheider and Catherine Ingrassia. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. 383-96.
Haggerty outlines a number of instances where actual or implied instances of sexual deviancy occur in Gothic texts. He focuses on the works of Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin. While very little of this specifically involved my subject, at times it served well in outlining basic principles of Gothic and also aided in comparing texts.
Nicholls, David. “Narrative Theory as an Analytical Tool in the Study of Popular Music Texts”. Music & Letters. 88.2 (2007): 297–315.
Nicholls outlines five types of narratives occurring in British pop hits between 1960 and 1985. one of his major focuses in the final tier of narrative impact is Lamb. This text offered support to understanding the functionality of Lamb’s narrative structure.
Nicholls, David. “Virtual Opera, or, Opera Between the Ears.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association.129.1(2004): 100-142.
In this essay Nicholls defines his premise of virtual opera – a specific sort of concept album or rock opera with strong narrative and character emphasis. His primary focuses are Tommy, Quadrophenia, Joe’s Garage, and Lamb. This text elaborated on much of the musical intricacies of the album which I may have otherwise been hard-pressed to express.
Stratton-Smith, Tony. “ The Genesis Reunion: A Rattle in the Old Man’s Sack”. Booklet. Genesis Archives 1967-75. By Genesis. Atlantic, 1998.
One of several articles in the book accompanying the expansive collection of Genesis’ Peter Gabriel years. This specific article is from someone who was present throughout their career and has some good passages about the nature of the album.
Welch, Chris. “The Early Years: Batwings Over Watford”. Booklet. Genesis Archives 1967-75. By Genesis. Atlantic, 1998.
One of several articles in the book accompanying the expansive collection of Genesis’ Peter Gabriel years. This article takes a broad over-view of Genesis’ then burgeoning career and discusses the details of the elaborate stage shows that were put on for Lamb.
Wheatley, John. “The Sound of Architecture”. TEMPO, A Quarterly Review of Modern Music. 62.242 (2007): 11-19.
Wheatley discusses the inseparable bond between architecture and music, in both form and performance spaces. This helps give structure to my discussion of the theoretical “architecture” of Lamb’s music.
Wilt, Judith. “’And Still He Insists he Sees Ghosts’: Defining the Gothic”. Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction: The British and American Traditions. Ed. Diane Long Hoeveler and Tamar Heller. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2003. 39-45.
This article was written to assist others in teaching Gothic texts to classes. Wilt discusses the three classes she’d taught and the variety of curriculum she used, including interpreting very modern texts as Gothic. She has a three part definition of what defines a Gothic text. This was the strongest resource for my establishment of what is truly Gothic.
Balloons. Motherfucking balloons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbCNotpW_yk
