Gabriel to The Game

"Gabriel"  Lamb  Ultra Chilled , Vol. 4
"Gabriel's Oboe"  Ennio Morricone  Film Music By Ennio Morricone
"Galang"  M.I.A.  Live at KEXP, Vol. 2
"Galapogos"  Smashing Pumpkins  Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
"Galaxy"  War  The Best of War & More
"Galaxy In Janaki"  Flying Lotus  Cosmogramma
"Galley Slave"  Southern Culture On The Skids  Dirt Track Date
"Gallow's Pole"  Led Zeppelin  Led Zeppelin III (Zep "videos" boring stills - link to live Page & Plant)
"Galway Races"  Paddy Reilly  40 Irish Drinking Songs
"The Game"  Love And Rockets  Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven

  This is probably my least favorite set of songs so far.  "Gabriel" was 85% a find, Flying Lotus bears more listening, and there are strong, if already-known tracks from M.I.A. and Zeppelin.  However, for the most part these are weaker tracks from most of the other albums and artists here.  (And there is an Irish drinking song in the mix.)


  On more than one occasion, I have put on a song and within five seconds of it starting my girlfriend began screaming, "what the hell is this shit?"  I am reminded of this because the Lamb song is very good in the middle, but it starts with just her (Louise Rhodes) singing.  I don't dislike her vocals, but I think I hate the lyrics and it takes some effort to wait until the music kicks in.  The same thing happens at the end, the music tapers off and she is gratingly chanting about "my angel Gabriel."  But ignoring the ends of this song, I could listen to the middle quite a bit.

  My favorite thing I learned while researching  these songs is that Flying Lotus started out doing bumper beats for Adult Swim.

   I remember playing "Gallow's Pole" once in the 1980s and a friend of mine commented that he had never heard a song used to tell a story in so direct a manner.  This is another interpretation of a "traditional" song.  Leadbelly is credited with popularizing it around 1939.  I currently own a version of it (titled "Hangman Tree") by Almeda Riddle, as well as a remix of that same version by Tangle Eye.  Not to get ahead of myself, but these three side-by-side are excellent examples of different artists taking the same song and making it "their own."  The three versions are all radically different, and each is deeply engaging in its own way.

  As I said, most of the other tracks are not wonderful.  The Morricone track (from The Mission) sounds like film music to me (which is not true of all Morricone songs).  The Pumpkins song is just a song.  Neither of them is horrible, I am just not rushing to listen to them again.  Southern Culture plays an instrumental with chanting and moaning in between the guitar breaks.  I may be a SCOTS apologist.  I have seen them live several times, and find that dismissing them as gimmicky is a disservice to their talent both as songwriters and musicians.  Rick Miller in particular is a talented guitarist.  However, even I recognize that sometimes they put the gimmick too far ahead of the song, especially if the gimmick doesn't work.  This is the case here.  The Love & Rockets song embodies all the bad about that band, with none of the good - their moody pretensions are not balanced by either the pop hooks of L&R's better work or the force of personality that Bauhaus and Peter Murphy brought - it is droning and dull, with irredeemably horrible lyrics.  "Galaxy" is a later War single presumably thrown on to this collection in order to fill it out (or to try to justify their later work as on a par with "Why Can't We Be Friends?" and "Low Rider").  At least they have the honesty to put the "and more" in the compilation title.