Taken from my Neo JES youtube channel - hope you enjoy it, guys! :) As we all know, live in concert, Gabriel would appear in his flower mask (by Gabriels own admission, partly inspired by the BBC childrens programme The Flower Pot Men). This section features vaudeville-style sections, the Mellotron Mark IIs combined brass tape set, sped-up vocals, and musique concrète noises of trains and explosions. Lyrically, it has a Python-esque quality, dealing with elements of the absurd in the English psyche, theres Winston Churchill, dressed in drag, he used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag! and numerous elements of word play, boarding schools, agricultural depravity and social conformity. At this point there is a reflective interlude, not definitely belonging to either Willow Farm or the following Apocalypse In 9/8, with bass pedal, electric guitar, organ and mellotron drones, followed by a reprise of the Lovers Leap melody on acoustic guitars, flute and Hammond organ. Its interesting to note that, on the original recordings of this song (at 14:12), where the tune drops a tone (US = wholestep), there was a problem with the speed of the tape machine, which causes the width of a drop to fall somewhere between a tone and a minor third. This anomaly has been corrected on the most recent remix/remastered release of the album. The programme describes this section as follows: Climbing out of the pool, they are once again in a different existence. Theyre right in the middle of a myriad of bright colours, filled with all manner of objects, plants, animals and humans. Life flows freely and everything is mindlessly busy. At random, a whistle blows and every single thing is instantly changed into another. Willow Farm was originally a stand-alone song, with music and lyrics by Gabriel. At one point, while Suppers Ready was being written and assembled, Banks or Gabriel had the idea of including Willow Farm in the middle of it. Banks commented that this jarring, fast-paced piece prevented Suppers Ready from seeming too much like a repeat of their earlier epic Stagnation. O:) NYX O:)
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 08:28:55 +0000