Sep 14: The Lamb lies down on Broadway - again

This album features one of the finest vocal performances of any album, from Peter Gabriel.

It is a concept album which was released 51 years ago this year, but still sounds as fresh as ever. It was Gabriel's final album with the band and he left following the tour of the album which featured even more costumes than usual. 

I have played this regularly for well over 40 years and have various versions of the album in different formats. 

Geographically, it starts in New York and features a Puerto Rican character called 'Rael': an anagram of Real. He is a former gang member and a graffiti artist.

He has a series of bizarre encounters during the narrative of the album.

This New Yorker piece refers to it as 'the Ulysses of concept albums' - referring to James Joyce's impenetrable novel, and "representing a culmination of the excesses of the progressive-rock era and also, in some ways, a fracturing of them".

The album begins with Rael stepping out of the Times Square subway station where he has just tagged his name.

The singer has said that “The Lamb” is “like a ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ on the streets of New York,” a reference to John Bunyan’s allegory of religious salvation, composed in a jail and published in 1678. Both works are the products of vibrant imaginations populated by monsters. They share an overriding sense of life-or-death desperation.

Gabriel apparently also worked with the film director Jodorowsky to work out a possible film linked with the concept - that would have been quite something. The same director worked out a 9 hour version of 'Dune' which was never made. Check out 'The Holy Mountain' to see his style...

Someone has put together a video which explores this collaboration and where it may have led...

Spoiler alert / advistory: some imagery and language NSFW.

Sept 14: Cities and Music #9: Belfast

Sandra Patterson sent me quite a lot of useful information related to the city which helped shape this post, and has contributed a guest post to the blog as well. It's been read over 500 times.

Belfast has had a troubled history, and music is an important part of the city's history. There are several pieces of street art commemorating some key local bands.

The Undertones were formed in the city. Here's one of their classics:

Sandra said that:

"The music scent in Belfast and unique history has created a stunning sound. Stiff Little Fingers are a specific example. Barbed wire love is about love across the peace line. Alternative Ulster is an anthem for hope in the City. 

Every August they play Custom House Square in the city and it is unmissable for any Punk fan."

She also shared an album cover.

Greenday - "Saviors".

"The photo at front is taken in Belfast. It shows a young boy with a stone. The album cover is an altered version of the photo as the boy is smiling, he was not in the original. 

The photo was taken in 1978, before I was born. It makes me think about just how bad it was here and how important it is that young people are integrated today. "

U2 were also linked with the city.

The lead singer of the Undertones: Feargal Sharkey now has a very geographical campaign going to try to clean up the UK's rivers which have been polluted by water companies.

I've mentioned Karl Whitney's 'Hit Factories' before and in the chapter on Belfast he references several bands who were linked with the city.

Sep 13: Cold Haily Rainy Night

I have mentioned The Imagined Village a few times this year I think, as their music is definitely infused with place.

This is their version of a song which is an English folk song which has been recorded by numerous musicians and musical groups over the years and is a classic of the genre.

Steeleye Span are one of the other groups who have recorded a version of this song.

Sep 13: 54 years ago today...

Another classic album released today.. and one of the very best... dense, emotional, complex and thrilling.

It was the band's 5th album.

Here's the title track...

I saw some coverage of Jon Anderson and the Band Geek's first UK gig in Brighton a few years ago and apparently they opened with 'Close to the Edge'... I can't wait to see them at the London Palladium in a  weeks' time...

Sep 12: On Rotation

Thanks to Google Maps Mania for the tipoff to this new music data visualisation website.

The website has a globe showing the songs currently charting in 166 countries and 174 cities.

Each place on the globe highlights a record that the rest of the world isn't playing. 

Click on a country or city and the record starts playing, turning the map into a kind of interactive global jukebox. 

You can also switch between different chart sources, including Spotify, Apple Music and Shazam, to see how the picture changes.

I clicked on Iceland first of course, and it shows how Icelanders like listening to music made by Icelandic musicians.

Needs a little more exploration....

Sep 12: Shamal

Shamal is the name of an album by Gong, and produced by Nick Mason of Pink Floyd.

The line-up included Pierre Moerlen, Steve Hillage and Mireille Bauer, plus Didier Malherbe and Mike Howlett as well as Patrice Lemoine. Some fine musicians there.

It was released in 1976, and re-released in 2018.

It's also the name of a desert wind.

The album cover features a dramatic image of sand dunes. Details of the album's recording and the band line-up are here.

A detailed track by track review can be found here.

The Shamal is a wind which blows through North Africa.

Here's the album.

Some albums and tracks have the word 'Wind' in their title... e.g. Bruce Hornsby's 'Mandolin Wind'....

Can you suggest other albums or songs named after winds...

Sep 11: High Rise

"Up in the highrise, watching the girls eyes. 

Waiting to hear you, I am alive. 

Up in the highrise, tonight where the fun lies. 

Waiting I fear too...the elements rise."

This Picture from the album "City of Sin"

Image of Park Hill Flats above Sheffield Midland Train Station in the 1960s, taken by Flickr user sparkgap's dad.

Here's This Picture...

Let's play word association...

"Tower blocks..."

Try to avoid the following images: lifts smelling of urine, fear of crime, Ronan Point, concrete, demolition, windows, nowhere to play...

Why has this image developed ? Is this the image you had ?

The development company URBAN SPLASH has some intriguing web resources on their work to rethink our cities. Their website starts with an image of Park Hill Flats.

Several of their developments would be a useful counterpoint to the more negative images that people might have...

I used to live in Huddersfield, and just up from the road in Newsome where I lived was an old mutli-floored textile mill with a huge chimney which was sat empty, but would perhaps now have been redeveloped into luxury apartments.

Park Hill flats are an image I have seen regularly for the whole of my life: squatting on the hills on the approach to Sheffield from Rotherham - appearing as I sat on the 69 bus from Rotherham. I have spent some time wandering and driving through them at intervals over the past few decades as well - including when I worked in Sheffield at the Geographical Association's HQ. I've also been up to take photographs of them several times.

"Streets in the sky..." was the original plan for this block. They were built to replace slum housing which was of a desperately poor quality, with few facilities.

This is also  the name of a musical created by Richard Hawley.

Each apartment had a front door which looked out onto a twelve-feet wide access deck ('street'), which ran from one side of the scheme to the other. Bridges carried the street through the entire scheme, allowing milk floats to trundle from door to door.

Jack Lynn was worried that the lobby space in other Modernist estates tended to become a no-man's land, serving neither public needs nor offering privacy to residents, and it was hoped that the 'streets' would solve this problem. He remarked enthusiastically on the different colours of linoleum at each doorstep as proof that residents' individuality was not being smothered by gargantuan surroundings.

But Park Hill's problems quickly became apparent. The streets allowed some of the worst aspects of urban life to remain (muggers found they made convenient getaway routes), whilst failing to preserve the better aspects.

They were never really streets in the real sense. Although the architects had included shops, a school, and a pub in order to create a distinctive community within the estate, the access decks were really just long walkways with none of the vibrancy, diversity, and organic feel of a city street which has grown and changed over decades or even centuries.

Read the text in the Urban Splash brochure to get a nice feeling for the importance of Park Hill flats.

Sheffield didn't just have Park Hill. There was also the Kelvin Flats and Hyde Park Flats.

Check out the WIKIPEDIA page, which suggests that Park Hill Flats are Europe's largest listed building...

LISTER MILLS, Bradford

Also don't forget the classic Geography Programme about Glasgow which features Basil Spence's designs, and the couple who live in them, and Kitty Murphy.

Here's 'This Picture'.... and a track called 'Blacker than...'

Sep 11: Music of the Kesh

A favourite author of mine is Ursula K Le Guin.

I noticed an exhibition which was on at the Architectural Association on Bedford Square last summer.

I was able to go along in its final week and am glad that I had the chance to catch it.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

Some pictures are in an album on my Flickr page.

There were maps and illustrations created by Ursula, with some of them printed onto fabric hangings through which you walked. They included the settlements of the Kesh: the imaginary people whose history and archaeology was brought to life in 'Always Coming Home' - one of my favourite books by Ursula. A book was created to go with the exhibition.

A description of the book:

Midway through her career, Le Guin embarked on one of her most detailed, impressive literary projects, a novel that took more than five years to complete. Blending story and fable, poetry, artwork, and song, Always Coming Home is this legendary writer’s fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley.

Having survived ecological catastrophe brought on by relentless industrialization, the Kesh are a peaceful people who reject governance and the constriction of genders, limit population growth to prevent overcrowding and preserve resources, and maintain a healthy community in which everyone works to contribute to its well-being. This richly imagined story unfolds through a series of narrated “translations” that illuminate individual lives, including a woman named Stone Telling, who travels beyond the Valley and comes to reside with another tribe, the patriarchal Condor people. With sharp poignancy, Le Guin explores the complexities of the Kesh’s unified society and presents to us—in exquisite detail—their lives, histories, adventures, customs, language, and art.

In addition to poems and folk tales, Le Guin created verse dramas, records of oral performances, recipes, and even an alphabet and glossary of the Kesh language. The novel is illustrated throughout with drawings by artist Margaret Chodos and includes a musical component—original recordings of Kesh songs that Le Guin collaborated on with composer Todd Barton—bringing this utterly original and compelling world to life.

The music was reissued more recently.

This is the 1988 edition of the book that I have - apparently it's worth quite a bit of money now....

There's a website which explores the book's "archaeology of the future"

This website also has some of the maps from the book that were included in the exhibition.

Here's some music and poetry.

Sep 10: Access to the stones

A cross posting from my GCSE Natural History blog.

There are a few locations where the labours of people from prehistory can still be seen.

The idea of following the story of human impact on natural history is part of the draft specification and one would assume it might follow through into the next iteration of the specification as one of the particular aspects of the new qualification.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES) is apparently considering charging to access some of the more well known locations they manage, including the stones of Callanish / Callanais on the Isle of Harris/Lewis. I visited many years ago.

One programme which is behind the increased interest in the area is a time-travel fantasy called 'Outlander'. This has proved very popular.

Cruise ships can arrive at some of these fragile locations in large numbers, which adds additional pressures onto fragile environments.

This album was recorded by the New Zealand musician Jon Mark in 1988 and is named after the ring at Callanish.

And here's a slightly different stone-circle related song...

Sep 9: Sanctuary I - IV

Sanctuary is a music project by the multi-instrumentalist Robert Reed. In it, he explores similar themes, instrumental combinations and progressions that are influenced by the music of Mike Oldfield.

It's a pastiche of Mike Oldfield's music, but isn't Mike's music. It's played by one person, with the addition of vocals from singers including 

The most recent edition was released in 2025.

For me, the 2nd album is perhaps the most successful in tone and themes.

Listen to this section of one of the Sanctuary albums, and if you are a fan of Mike Oldfield then check them out. Sanctuary no. 1 is on Spotify, but the other albums aren't currently. 

They can be bought from Robert's Bandcamp page. He and other musicians, including Les Penning have reimagined quite a lot of Mike's music.

A recent album revisited similar themes... here's the Swan Feathered Girl...

Aug 9: Steven Wilson: an intriguing teaser campaign...

Steven Wilson is a progressive rock musician, composer and also master remixer of other people's music - working with Jethro Tull for example to remix all their classic albums.

He has teased a new album using a video with a real sense of place... and unease.

It is suggested that it may be based on a village which you can never leave.

Accompanying the video is a really creative website made to look like an old fashioned village bulletin board style website from the 1990s complete with some icons for earlier browsers etc. I remember adding banners and buttons like that to some of my early websites.

Sep 9: One Soundtrack to rule them all...

A cross posting from my Geography in/on Film blog.

Classic FM viewers have been voting for their favourite film scores.

The results are here - you can count down from 100 to the winner.

The top five are as follows:

Here's an extract from the winning score.

And the first part of a series on the making of the music... seek out the others.

Sep 9: Favourite album covers #1 - some contributions

When I was setting up the blog, I created a Google Form for contributions. It is still available - please get involved.

One of the questions asked about memorable album covers.

Here are some suggestions from others.

The Nice - Elegy

This has a sand dune on the front.

This Hipgnosis article describes the creation of the imagery on the sleeve.

A few suggestions from readers of the blog:

Sgt. Pepper - The Beatles, due to its fusion of fantastic music and the pop art of Peter Blake

Tool - Aenima. The limited edition CD from the 1990s has this weird 3D thing going on!

Raye - My 21st Century Blues

My dad had Supertramp's Crisis? What Crisis? on LP and I enjoyed looking at that when I was younger. Still a relevant image today.

Rum, Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues - the wreck of the Medusa encapsulates the chaos of their music

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. 

I was fascinated when I would fold it out as a child trying to work out everything in there it was so weird and surreal.

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - God Fodder. I had the record and it brings back good memories. I think kids nowadays miss out on album covers - they were great!

Public Service Broadcasting - The Race for Space

Thanks to all those who have contributed so far... still time for you to suggest your own... the Google Form is at the top of the right hand column on the blog page.

Sep 8: 39 years ago today

"Tough times demand tough talk

demand tough hearts,

demand tough songs."

'Hold your Fire' was released. I bought my copy from Jumbo Records in Leeds on vinyl...

'Time Stand Still' has become part of their live sets on their current tour - with Aimee Mann turning up at certain concerts very excitingly.

Here's 'Force Ten' - the album's opening track...

Sep 8: Dick Gaughan

I came across a fundraising effort to produce a box set capturing Dick Gaughan's music, and also to provide some financial benefit for Dick himself, whose music has received little promotion and support for some time. I was fortunate to see him perform many times in the 1980s and early 1990s, including in small rooms in pubs where he was just a few feet away as he sang.

Dick Gaughan is a Scottish folk musician and songwriter. He has played with a number of other musicians, including a group called Five Hand Reel.

His music is very much tied to work and the landscape. He has recorded albums with songs about collieries and miners.

He performs songs by other songwriters as well as his own songs.

His most famous album perhaps is called 'Handful of Earth'

This is part of a line from Ed Pickford's 'Workers' Song'. Here is Dick performing it.

Sep 8: Kelham Island

Oli Sykes is the frontman of the band 'Bring me the Horizon'. 

He also owns a restaurant called 'Temple of Fun' in the Kelham Island area of Sheffield.

Kelham Island is an industrial part of the city of Sheffield and a place I used to visit a lot back in the 1980s and 90s when it was still quite industrial and not yet 'gentrified' with warehouses turned into housing, old derelict areas of land built on and new developments where the Whitbread brewery used to be. There are also still some empty areas to be developed.

Here's a recent BMTH track from their newest album. When they get it right, they get it right.

It's got some sweary Mary lyrics as you would expect.

And here's a Lyric video....

Sep 7: Cities and Music #8: Birmingham

Birmingham is the home of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne. The band was founded in the city, with the four original members: Terence "Geezer" Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward. Ozzy passed away in 2025.

The band were part of a wave of heavy metal bands at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Here's 'Paranoid'.

In June 2025, they were given the freedom of the city.

This was ahead of their last ever concert with lots of special guests in July 2025.

It was expected to give a boost of £20 million to the local economy and also raised millions for charity.

There are a number of murals and other shrines to Sabbath around the city. 

It includes a new one in Navigation Street and a bridge with bench for your selfie. There is also Ozzy the bull from the Commonwealth Games at New Street Station.

Black Sabbath Bridge, Birmingham - image copyright: Jon Hird

The band were closely linked with the origins of heavy metal, allegedly because of the noise of industry inspiring their music.

Birmingham is also the home of the NEC: a venue that I visited many times over the years, always with a bit of trepidation about the traffic and parking and route finding. This was a bit of a barn and filled by larger bands such as Genesis, Yes and Rush.

I haven't been back for some years.

I have a signed print of Birmingham which was printed by Cold War Steve.

It's called Benny's Babbies, and you can see a key on the link above. This shows some musicians and other cultural people associated with the city. 

How many can you recognise before you check the key?

Along with Sabbath, other bands associated with Birmingham include Judas Priest (another heavy metal band), UB40, the Moody Blues and Duran Duran, plus the Fine Young Cannibals.

Its culture of popular music started in the 1950s.

Ozzy died in July 2025, just a few weeks after the final reunion performance of the band at Aston Villa Football Club's stadium.

Other bands in what has been called the Iron Triangle include Led Zeppelin and Judas Priest.

Which bands have I missed?

Sep 7: Important recording locations: Real World Studios

Real World Studios was created by Peter Gabriel and his team in 1986 and is located in Box just outside Bath, and near Solsbury Hill. It has developed since it was created.

It has been the location where a great many of his own albums have been recorded, along with those by musicians on his Real World record label, and others who have hired the space known as the 'Big Room' or other spaces such as the 'Wood Room'. It also offers a residential experience.

A partial list of clients is here.