You throw your pearls before the swine, make the monkey blind

Thursday music corner: Peter Gabriel (b. Surrey, 1950) first came into the public eye thanks to his teenage band Genesis, formed with Charterhouse schoolmates Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. From 1969 to 1974 Genesis released six albums, with Gabriel providing lead vocals and wearing increasingly elaborate and theatrical costumes, some of which annoyed his bandmates. After a breakdown in band relations in 1974 Gabriel went solo and was replaced by Phil Collins as Genesis' lead vocalist. 

Gabriel has since released ten solo albums, the first four of which were all self-titled, and three of which topped the UK album charts: Peter Gabriel (1980, aka Peter Gabriel 3), So (1986) and I/O (2023). Gabriel has also released ten UK top 40 singles, including the 1986 MTV hit Sledgehammer, which also topped the US pop charts. 

Shock the Monkey appeared as the first single on Peter Gabriel (1982, aka Peter Gabriel 4). Gabriel has stated that the simian reference is a metaphor for jealousy. The single failed to reach the UK and New Zealand top 40 but reached the top 40 in Australia, Canada and the US, and reached number 2 in Italy.

Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey (1982)

See also:

Music: Peter Gabriel - Red Rain (live at Giants Stadium, 1986)

Music: Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill (live in Athens, 1987)

Music: Peter Gabriel & Youssou N'Dour - Shakin' the Tree (1989)

Nga Manu Nature Reserve

 

I've been drinking down your pain, gonna turn that whiskey into rain

Thursday music corner: Singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos (b. Myra Ellen Amos in North Carolina, 1963), a child prodigy on the piano, came to fame after an abortive record-company attempt to fashion her into a popstar (1988's Y Tori Kant Read), gaining widespread attention for her richly autobiographical songwriting and classically-trained piano performances. Her first five solo albums all went platinum in America, and her second album, Under the Pink, entered the UK album charts at number one in February 1994. She has released 16 solo albums plus two live albums, and scored a UK pop number one in 1996 with the Armand van Helden remix of her track Professional Widow.

Big Wheel was the first single from Amos' 2007 album American Doll Posse. The album features 23 tracks, each under the aegis of one of five personas derived from Greek goddesses. Some American radio stations refused to play Big Wheel due to the lyric, "I am a M.I.L.F, don't you forget".

Tori Amos - Big Wheel (2007)

See also:

Music: Tori Amos - Crucify (live at Montreux, 1991)

Music: Al Stewart & Tori Amos - Year of the Cat (live, 1991)

Music: Tori Amos w/ Trent Reznor - Past the Mission (1994)

What East Germans wanted in the 1950s

Given that most of the men and women who were involved in the governmental and party structures of the newly established GDR had suffered horrendous political persecution during the Hitler years, one might have expected more resistance to the lack of democratic process within the new constitution. Here was a chance to build the better Germany many had dreamt of, why was there not more anger at the corruption of this ideal? Paradoxically, the answer lies precisely in the experiences of fascism and war, which had led many Germans to value stability and unity over pluralistic discussion. This was true East and West. Germans were exhausted and the majority wanted little to do with politics. Since 1914, there had been little respite from ideology, war, economic turmoil and rapid political change. A middle-aged German in 1949 had seen the whole spectrum of political systems in their lifetime, but none of the offerings had shown a functioning democracy. Where was a love for voting, citizens' rights and a pluralistic society meant to come from? What the German public wanted was not an array of parties on a voting slip every four years but food on the table, a restored roof over their heads and a future without war and economic disaster.

The difference between East and West was that the West delivered these things immediately while the East did not. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the FRG, was re-elected with results that modern politicians can only dream of: in 1953 and again in 1957, when his party received an astonishing 50.2 per cent of the vote despite a system of proportional representation which usually leads to coalition governments. This enabled him to run the country without forming a coalition for the only time in its history since 1949. All of this under Adenauer's famous slogan: 'Keine Experimente' - No Experiments.

East Germans too wanted no experiments in the 1950s. They wanted peace, secure jobs, food and an opportunity to rebuild their disrupted lives...

- Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990, 2023, p.109-110.

An afternoon at Wellington Zoo

A first visit in several years to take in the red panda encounter and enjoy the other animals, on a fine capital Saturday.

Leibniz, polymath

[German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz collected fossils and conducted geological research, which eventually resulted in an innovative essay on the history of the earth. He had also begun another project, one that proved a bigger boon than any amount of efficiently extracted silver. The Hanoverian dukes were an offshoot of a junior branch of the Welf dynasty, whose long history Leibniz was commissioned to write. He never finished this compendious work—there was always a fascinating new morsel to add—but his relentless archival digging helped the duchy make its case for promotion to an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire.

Medieval history, metaphysics, and geology were not nearly enough to keep Leibniz busy in early 1686. In January, he wrote an article exposing what he took to be a notable blunder in Descartes’s physics. Descartes regarded force as the product of mass and velocity, whereas Leibniz argued that it was better seen as mass times the square of velocity. This move brought Leibniz close to the modern notion of kinetic energy. In April, he began writing a hundred-page “Examination of the Christian Religion,” and not long afterward he composed his most substantial treatise on logic. It contained a pioneering algebra of propositions, similar to the logical calculus invented in the mid-nineteenth century by the English mathematician George Boole. Boole’s creation is a large part of the basis for computer languages. When he learned of Leibniz’s precursor to his handiwork, Boole said that he felt as if Leibniz had shaken hands with him across the centuries.

- Anthony Gottlieb, ‘He Was a Genius for the Ages. Can We Give Him a Break?’, New Yorker, 6 January 2025