Sunday, November 1, 2009

PETER GABRIEL'S NEXT PROJECT: "SCRATCH MY BACK"

A few months ago, I wrote about Peter Gabriel's new project, and that he has reunited with Bob Ezrin, who produced some of his early albums. Well, I just looked into it a bit, and it turns out that the album is going to be called Scratch My Back, according to Peter's website. The idea of the album is that is a "song-swap": Peter will cover songs by artists, who, in turn, will cover his songs. Stylistically, it is an acoustic, orchestral album, meaning that there will be no guitars, drums, or "world music" instruments. One of the songs on the album will be Paul Simon's "The Boy In The Bubble," which is an interesting choice. Peter 's So and Paul's Graceland were some of the first albums by so-called "western" artists that were referred to as "world music" in the '80s. They were both incredibly original albums that still hold up to this day. Coincidentally (or not!) I wrote about both albums for VH1's 100 Greatest Albums of All Time book. Anyway, Peter is collaborating on the new album with a guy named John Metcalfe, who, in an interview with the UK's Guardian, said that other "swaps" on the album would be with Radiohead, Lou Reed, Bon Iver, David Bowie and Neil Young. The album is supposed to come out in the spring of 2010.

If you're a Peter Gabriel fan and new to No Expiration, by the way, check out Big Blue Ball, a hard-to-explain album that Peter curated which was released last year. I wrote about it here.

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